Open Letter #2 to Mr. Jim Haywood

Open Letter #2 to Mr. Jim Haywood

From Ace:
acefrombbc@gmail.com

Jim,

First of all, I must admit I was not expecting a reply from you and it caught me by surprise, so thank you for replying. On top of that, as an addd bonus, you posted my letter on your site. That is truly remarkeable, I must admit. So thank you for for doing both of those things. Below you will find my response to your response....I will address the points in my letter in the order that you addressed the points in your last message.

First of all, are you sure that you have never contacted any of the local TV stations? You said you didn't do it to "exploit" savingbellevue.com, but did you do it to address the issues in the church? And then while you did the interview, you decided to give savingbellevue.com a plug? And you state that you "may have" contacted the media to return a phone call. Let's be completely honest, here, alright? You either did call them or you didn't....there shouldn't be any "may haves" - at least in my mind, there shouldn't. It should be a pretty concrete statement. And that's all I really have to say about that. I think you are being truthful with those statements, but a little...deceiving. If I am incorrect on that, then I apologize.

Now...let's talk about the book deal. You said you charged him $125 for web space and said that you pay almost $400 a year for your sites. If those are honest figures, I think $125 is a rip-off for Mr. Russell, and $400 is a rip-off for yourself. Do you have a dedicated server or something? Because you could get PLENTY of web space and bandwidth to cover all of your sites for $15 a month which would essentially be $180 for the year...half of what you are paying. There are plently of reputable hosts that offer these low prices compared to what you're paying. Email me and I'd be happy to recommend a few to you. So with that being said, after I look at Mr. Russell's site, for web space only, it looks like there is no more than 2MB of files on the page....which a site with that little file sizes could be hosted for less than $3 a month....$36 for the year. I'm not saying you're scamming him, I'm just saying I think YOU are being scammed and in effect, you midjudged the price on which you should charge him, esentially mischarging him.

Now regarding your expenses, you first state that "meet him a Danvers in which he bought my supper" then later you list $5 as a business expense to show that you're not making a profit....I just want to point on that you said one thing then another...but I'll let it slide this time. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you payed $5....in my opinion, that's not a good expense to list because you did get dinner out of the deal...but whatever. And thank you for letting me know what you ate. Anf if I may inquire, what salad dressing did you use? And he payed the bill with cash? While I appreciate your honesty and detail, please know that you don't have to be *that* detailed with me unless you just have the urge to be!

Speaking of Mr. Russell, yes, I have been following the site for several months now and notice the constant changes. You said you already paid $130 for the hosting....again, I think that is an incorrect amount, but I have already addressed that issue. Something has to be wrong here, though....$130 for less than 3MB of files just isn't right. And I would love his phone number, could you please send it to me?

As for your spelling issues...Frontpage has an excellent feature called Spell Check....try it out sometime. It's the F-7 key.

Now, regarding the website counter....you pay $19.95 per month for the extra report? Wow...is that really nessecary though? Why does it even matter how many people view your site? I think by having a counter it says, "hey, look how great this site is, it has XXX,XXX hits! We are the best!" There should be a way in your options to "hide" the counter....I challenge you to use that option on your website. Let the stats be known to you and you alone. You now have an Excel file of 300,000 more hits? Now - let's break down that file. How many UNIQUE visitors or there in that file? And what I mean by that is this....if I visited your site 377 times personally, that would only count as one hit...because it's per visitor. And I would love to take a look at that file for myself, but there is no way I will ever go to your home. You'll have your video camera ready and will post me on your site...and that isn't going to happen!

Oh...speaking of video cameras, regarding the "camcorder incident" you posted on your site...here's the deal on that. I just realize I never completely finished my thoughts in my last letter to you. You posted your story at http://www.savingbellevue.com/camcorderincident.htm --- Then you posted copyright exceptions at http://www.savingbellevue.com/copyrightslaw.htm

I'll have you know this.... Bellevue Baptist Church is private property. And because of that, recording restrictions CAN indeed be placed on the premises and there is absolutely no legal backing saying that they are forced to allow someone to record. Not the news media, and definately not you.

And that's where your "copyright exception" page comes into play. Are you an expert in the field of law? I highly doubt that... so I'll clear this up for you. The page you put up only describes what can be done with a work ALREADY CREATED to which one does not own the copyright, and has absolutely NOTHING to do with whether or not somebody can create a work and where. Sorry, buddy. Nice try but you were wrong. I anticipate you to remove that deceiving information off of your website soon....

Now, I'm sure you've received a ton of emails...some probably praising you and some attacking you. You are of course under no obigation to reply to hate mail, but you should at least give people the common courtesy of letting them know they get your suggestions when it comes to stuff other than gossip/rumors/lies. Otherwise, put up a disclaimer on your site saying not all emails will be replied to. You just "pick and choose" what YOU want to deal with and ignore the stuff that makes you look bad....which is quite sad, if you ask me.

About the picture you put up...thank you for the apology and admitting it was a mistake. I'll leave that issue at that. Here's another question for you...Josh Manning is your friend, right? I'm wondering if he paid you for his website for hosting and webspace? He is on your server....that's the only reason I'm asking. And concerning Mike Bratton, I have never seen any bad comments directed towards you on his site. Don't rely on the word of others, that's how rumors start, you know? Go to your site for yourself to see what is being said about you.

Well, I will wrap this up since it has been rather long already...I thank you again for your reply and I look forward to hearing your response to this email.

Your friend,
Ace