[Harp-L] Copyright violation and JP Allen's harmonica.com

[Tony Eyers <tony@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've been following J.P. Allen for some years.

The reason - I'm active in the online harmonica teaching space, and have 
gone to considerable effort to get my name out there. It's worked. My 
sites get a lot of traffic.

The name of the game is Google rankings, and here J.P. Allen has been 
very strategic. No problem with this, I've tried to do the same. Some 
years ago he bought harmonica.com. It was previously a poor site, it is 
now his own. Whatever he paid for it, I suspect the extra traffic from 
Google has made it very worthwhile.

Adam Gussow, Dave Gage, Howard Levy, Dave Barrett and others fight it 
out with me (and J.P. Allen) for Google rankings in the online harmonica 
teaching space. I say good luck to all of them, and let the best man 
win. At the end of the day we all do, because there is more choice for 
harmonica students. As a beginner in the 1970s, I wish I'd been able to 
access people like Howard Levy and Dave Barrett from my desk...

All good, so long everyone plays by the rules, and plays fair.

Directing Winslow's book icon to harmonica.com is clearly not fair. 
Likewise directing a picture of Gregoire Maret to harmonica.com

It could be that J.P. Allen has outsourced his Search Engine 
Optimisation work, and is not aware of what is happening. I can't 
imagine he would feel comfortable with this discussion on harp-l, 
neither should he.

Perhaps an email to him pointing out these issues, and suggesting he 
address them would be worthwhile. It may well solve the problem.

Tony Eyers
Australia
www.HarmonicaAcademy.com
...everyone plays