I had a similar encounter with Perez about four years ago when he published
a directory or maintained a mailing list (I'm not sure which).  I called him
and asked about the nature of his listing.  He screamed that it was none of
my business and hung up on me.  I just checked to see if we are listed on
his web page and we are not on it.

If all of the posted museums would contact him and question his motives, he
might short a fuse and move on to another venture (insane asylums).

Tom Edmonds
Andover Historical Society, Andover, MA

-----Original Message-----
From: Webmaster <[log in to unmask]>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.museum-l
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tuesday, August 03, 1999 4:56 PM
Subject: question about Artcom


>Dear Members of the List,
>
>in my function as a Webmaster at the Oakland Museum of California, I have
>been approached by Gerard V. Perez of Artcom requestion updated /
>corrections to his website at http://www.artcom.com/. The site claims to
>list 1600 museums nationwide plus provide information on them, down to
>exhibition schedules, and your institution probably has an entry on his
>list. The entry for OMCA was wrong on each and every count, most
>disturbingly on name of the institution and the opening hours, and it does
>not provide a link to our museum website. The entry for the Berkeley Art
>Museum, another institution I work for, also proved to be extremely
>outdated. Chances are, if you check out the institution you're workin for,
>you will find incorrect information, too.
>
>I had a rather interesting e-mail exchange with Mr Perez during which he
>turned from flippant to downright rude. After I requested that he remove
the
>incorrect information and just list our museum by its correct name plus a
>link to our website, I got the following reply:
>
>
>
>"Gerard V. Perez" wrote:
>
>> Dear Guenter:
>>
>> There is still a First Amendment in this country....
>>
>> We can list whomever we want and it's up to us to decide what we publish.
>>
>> Not you.
>>
>> If you do not want to participate in our project.... so be it.
>>
>> No big deal.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Gerard V. Perez
>
>On the splash page of his website, he claims that "This page, and all
>contents, are copyright © 1995-1999 by Art Emotion Corp." It seems to me
>that most of the information on the webpage actually is copied and pasted
>off of official museum websites, maybe with slight alterations here and
>there. Then Mr Perez sends out an e-mail requesting updates: if you don't
>submit updates, outdated, incorrect and misleading information will stay on
>his site. The site seems to create revenue from sponsors (advertisement),
>plus every year, Mr Perez burns a CD and sells it.
>
>As you have probably already noticed, I do not think that this is a
business
>practise I'd like to see succeed. In my mind, Mr Perez co-opts copyrighted
>information, re-arranges it, has it proof-read by the very people he stole
>it from in the first place, and then sells it, copyrighted to his own
>corporation.
>
>I am sending out this e-mail both to alert professionals in museums to this
>practise, and to get some "reality-check" feedback. Has anyone out there
had
>experience with artcom, or with similar sites? Do you know about any legal
>recourse museums might have in this case? Do you have a policy about
dealing
>with third party sites listing information about your institution?
>
>I'd love to get your input.
>
>Guenter Waibel
>Webmaster, Oakland Museum of California [log in to unmask]
>Digital Access Specialist, UC Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive
>[log in to unmask]
>
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