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Your Paracast Newsletter — February 1, 2015


Gene Steinberg

Forum Super Hero
Staff member
THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
February 1, 2015
www.theparacast.com


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About The Paracast: The Paracast covers a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions across the planet.

Set Up: The Paracast is a paranormal radio show that takes you on a journey to a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions. The Paracast seeks to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.

Join long-time paranormal researcher Gene Steinberg, co-host and acclaimed field investigator Christopher O'Brien, and a panel of special guest experts and experiencers, as they explore the realms of the known and unknown. Listen each week to the great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.

This Week's Episode: Gene and Chris present one of our most prolific and knowledgeable forum posters, a gentleman who calls himself "Burnt State." As he describes himself, Burnt State is a "self described paranormal aficionado who has grown increasingly skeptical over the years in my quest to try to understand some specific personal experiences. In the process I have been immersed in various aspects of the history of paranormal inquiry to better understand its origin. Trying to separate the actual experience from the effects of paranormal events on human culture are a personal fascination. Specifically I feel that the CE3 experience offers us a way of better understanding its effect on us and could be an indicator of its point of origin." He'll talk about his experiences and answer listener questions.

Chris O’Brien’s Site: Our Strange Planet

Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums.

Project Blue Book Story Comes to a Curious Conclusion
By Gene Steinberg

In last week’s issue, I wrote about the mainstream media coverage about the supposed release of hundreds of thousands of Project Blue Book documents. The stories were all similar, quoting The Black Vault’s John Greenewald on how he managed to accumulate all that material for the first time in part via persistent Freedom of Information requests.

The story was played straight for the most part, but there were the usual curious and sharp asides, such as labeling people who believe in UFOs as “extraterrestrial believers.” That actually may be true for most people interested in the subject, but it doesn’t represent the focus on a wide range of possible solutions undertaken by some in the UFO field.

But such fine distinctions generally elude the media. That comes as no surprise.

Unfortunately, the story quickly turned sour. It turned out that this information has been online for years. It was even publicized decades ago by the late National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), that famous UFO group once headed by Major Donald Keyhoe.

I did catch a sort of retraction in the Washington Post, but after all the brouhaha had erupted, the Huffington Post, an online publication owned by AOL, simply repeated the original story more or less.

Now when all this was brought to the attention of Greenewald, he blamed the media. He said all of them misinterpreted the story, that he made it clear from the start that he wasn’t the first to post those Blue Book documents, that others had preceded him. But that very significant fact was not disclosed in any of these articles, as if the reporters didn’t notice. Or were they just copying each other? Well, that just doesn’t wash.

Since I wasn’t present during this interview, I will not dispute what Greenewald said, but when the files first went up, you didn’t see such clarification on the site. Greenewald did say it was there, though perhaps it was added later.

But as of now the documents are no longer available at The Black Vault. Seems Greenewald received a takedown request from Ancestry.com, a popular online repository for tracing your family history. In passing, this would seem an unusual place to house documents about the Air Force’s late flying saucer studies. In any case, the site asserted a copyright claim under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Now web hosts and datacenters will, when confronted with a DMCA request, which usually comes from a lawyer, contact the presumed offender and request an explanation. I know I received such a request only once over the years and, lacking any evidence to the contrary, I complied. If Greenewald felt he was in the right, that this material was in the public domain, he would presumably want to contact his lawyer, if he has one, to assert that right.

Instead, Greenewald merely took it all down with the assumption that he would not be able to fight the request. He also claims that efforts to make piece with Ancestry.com and Fold3, a subsidiary, came to new avail. They did offer him the opportunity to sign up as an affiliate, which means he could put their ads on his site, and earn commissions on sales.

Now being an affiliate is a very common way for site owners to earn a little money, although I often question the accuracy of their statistics, which you depend on to determine if you made any sales. But Greenewald claims that he refused, mainly because it would require some sort of membership fee.

But when I checked, I found this just isn’t true. You see Ancestry.com runs its affiliate system through Commission Junction, which serves a number of online vendors. As the affiliate information page explains, “Apply now to be an Ancestry.com affiliate. It's FREE.”

Exactly. All of the affiliate programs I’ve checked say the very same thing, which is that there is no cost to participate. If you generate sales — or sales inquiries in some cases — you earn a commission. It seems to me that if Greenewald wants to monetize his site, and I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t, he should consider just such a proposal. In this case, if it gives him unfettered access to those Blue Book files, why not? What does he lose?

Curiously, even though he claimed there’s a fee to become an affiliate, Greenewald doesn’t mention what that fee is. If there is such a fee, if it’s modest, and there’s earnings potential, it might have made sense to sign up. But, according to the information I consulted, there is no fee, unless Ancestry.com somehow imposed a special requirement on him for his presumed transgression. Hopefully, Greenewald will publish that letter so we an all see what really happened.

Now I hope this represents the end of this sorry episode. If there’s any benefit, it might arise from people doing online searches to locate the Blue Book documents from other sources. More to the point, since the documents have been online for years, why didn’t Ancestry.com go after the other sites too? Or has there been some previous accommodation none of us know about?

Of course, nothing here really helps to provide illumination about UFOs, or the Air Force’s infamous study on the subject that ran for more than 20 years. As it is, there is a wealth of information to be found on classic cases, although Roswell isn’t part of the Air Force’s records, since Project Blue Book and its predecessors never officially investigated that case.

My opinion is this: If a collection of UFO documents are in the public domain, nobody should be allowed to claim the right of ownership. If there are copyright considerations, perhaps because of custom presentations or annotations, it would make sense to offer some sort of deal that would allow other web publishers to link to the documents, or post their own copies. I would think the research community would be well served by being sensible rather than greedy in handling such material.

I also hope that Greenewald will come clean about the missing details in his accounts of this episode, so we can all see exactly what happened with all relevant documentation. If he has a recording of those newspaper interviews, it would be nice to hear it.

These days it appears that Greenewald is now also pushing a UFO detector app. While he has every right to seek tie-ins, commercial or otherwise, with products of this sort, in light of what’s been going on of late, it just doesn’t strike the right cord with me.

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wow, absolutely sheisty.
why do these type of guys always end up thrown in the same category as us? why Gene?
there should be some sort of built-in character gauge in the human brain that works like Google glass.
 
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