Named and shamed
Deciding to have a quick glance at the Thurrock UDC's website today just to see what they've been up to, I happened to look at their new masterplan [pdf] for Purfleet, one of the areas that we looked at in detail on our project in the borough. When we presented the work from our project, which was commissioned by the borough council and various other agencies, the UDC (then in its early stages) told us in no uncertain terms that they weren't interested in any of our ideas despite the wide consensus among other local stakeholders supporting them - that they would do all their own work, thank-you-very-much, and that basically we weren't ever going to be able to influence their masterplanning so our project was a waste of space.
So imagine my surprise to find, on pages 59, 61 and 75, some drawings that I personally drew for our project, used without any credit whatseoever in their document. You really might think they had more respect than to go to our website, download the maps, ignore the fact that they are under copyright and not even bother asking us for our permission before dumping them into their ugly masterplan document.
The irony is, we drew the maps because there was an existing lack of information about the borough and we wanted to make an accessible resource for all. If they had asked, we would have gladly given them our permission, and asked for nothing apart from a small credit. We believe in open-source and the exchange of knowledge. It's just really sad that one of our public bodies doesn't know how to play the game with any sort of respect.
So imagine my surprise to find, on pages 59, 61 and 75, some drawings that I personally drew for our project, used without any credit whatseoever in their document. You really might think they had more respect than to go to our website, download the maps, ignore the fact that they are under copyright and not even bother asking us for our permission before dumping them into their ugly masterplan document.
The irony is, we drew the maps because there was an existing lack of information about the borough and we wanted to make an accessible resource for all. If they had asked, we would have gladly given them our permission, and asked for nothing apart from a small credit. We believe in open-source and the exchange of knowledge. It's just really sad that one of our public bodies doesn't know how to play the game with any sort of respect.
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