Fortunately, seldom do I have to deal with copyright issues and usually they are handled quickly and quietly, nobody knows about them. Once in a while, perhaps once a year, I have to deal with someone who won't comply or who will make a big deal out of it. I, most sincerely, apologize for the latest issues that were made public about the ChipGuide. I did not start it, I just responded when appropriate with factual information, no name calling or negativity. The individuals who made public remarks made this unpleasant for everyone and most unpleasant for me. I wish that they would have kept their sentiments off the ChipBoard. Going forward, I will not respond to any controversial issues on the ChipBoard.

Once, an individual took 1,000's of images from the ChipGuide for their personal website. They did not respond with our requests to comply. I was able to use a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) Take Down notice to have their website provider remove the images taken from the ChipGuide. And believe it or not, the same individual did the same thing a 2nd time. Some people just have no respect for others. They think that they are entitled to do whatever they please with other's property.

As far as making our images ugly, many have suggested they we add a watermark to our images to protect them, but I resisted. I don't want chip images to look ugly and in some cases watermarks can be removed, so it is not a perfect solution. I hope that it never comes to that for the ChipGuide.