In reply to the message posted by Mark Krenz on June 18 in the Philip Glass newsgroup, the team that maintains the "GlassPages - Philip Glass on the Web" is forced to expose the entire facts that made up this affair. Our intention is not to create a polemical discussion on the Internet, but to give a public explanation of what the reality is. So let us first objectively expose the facts and then analyze them.
This is the message that José Jiménez sent to Mark Krenz on June 10, 8:31:
Hello Mark,My name is Jose Jimenez. I write you from Spain and since one year ago I was sending the discographical information to Jordi Petit, the owner of the GlassPages but since three months ago I am updating myself the discoglassy section of the GlassPages.
As you can see it at:
http://www.glasspages.org//discoglassy.html
I am updating these pages from my own disc collection.
---> Any comment or addition?
Because we have in common our interest to the music of Philip Glass, if you wish, we can change impressions, not only about Glass music, but also about music with repetitve structures, as Philip Glass likes define his music, in a open sense, and I have also a large discography from composers like:
John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Robert Ashley, Balanescu Quartet, Llorenc Barber, (Spanish) David Borden, Gavin Bryars, Morton Feldman, Graham Fitkin, Henryk Gorecki, Tom Johnson, Rodrigo Leao, (Portuguese) Steve Martland, Wim Mertens, Piero Milesi, (Italian) Robert Moran, Michael Nyman, Arvo Part, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Frederic Rzewski, Carles Santos, (Spanish) Geoff Smith, John Tavener, La Monte Young y others.
>I want all of you to know that I started making this page solely because I
>got tired of waiting for stuff to download from
>Alex Christaki and Jordi Petit i Silvestre's GlassPages in Spain. I also noticed
>that they seemed reluctant to update their information lately.
Please, update this information, because as I have said previously, this is not true because I am working on these pages since one year ago. It is true from Jordi and from Alex (he lives in England not in Spain) but not for me (I live 1000 Km far from Jordi).
I think I have done a very hard work, including a full chronological list (74 discs), most of them extensively described, with 18 (and growing) news and rare items I have collected.
Is because that, I am very annoyed to see my work at your discography pages. For example, I spent one week copying all the information by the Spanish compilation "Obras maestras" I bought and you have copied it with exactly the same structure and pictures and even without a reference to me. And this is only an example, because you have copied almost (if not all) the discographical information and also many wav files I have recorded.
I think it has no sense to do that. Of course, all the links to the GlassPages are welcome but, please, stop copying the GlassPages.
PD: I am going to fly this week-end to Germany (Heidelberg) in order to see the new opera by Philip Glass and Doris Lessing "Marriages between zones 3, 4 & 5". I hope it will worth it.
The full answer from Mark Krenz to the previous message from José Jiménez is shown bellow. No part of the text has been changed, we reproduce it exactly as it has been received on June 13, 9:16, except for the boldface we have used to give strength to some of its fragments.
First of all thank you for being friendly and inviting me to share information with you, after all I do owe you a lot. Also I have the highest respect for the amount of information at the GlassPages and who wrote it. As I have said before I wouldn't have been able to get started without it. And also I'm sorry if what I am about to say to you ruins any possible friendship that we might have had, but I have to say it.WELCOME TO THE WORLD WIDE WEB!!!!!! Incase you didn't realize it, everybody on the web takes things from other pages, even you probably took some ideas and information from somewhere and forgot to give them credit. All I did was try to make my job easier by listing one big credit to you guys on my Credits page, I think that it was enough. Everyone who goes to my page is most likely aware of your page. I'll be sure to change some of the documents so that I do give you credit for some things in the discography.
Secondly, I'm very angry that after 6 months of trying to email each one of you at the Glasspages, asking for permission to use a lot of your information and then finally giving up, that you FINALLY write me back and tell me that you don't like what I'm doing. Well it's too late for that now.
You must realize that I started to make the Philip Glass Library primarily because it takes WAY TOO LONG to load your Glasspages. I don't know whether the server you are on is too slow or maybe it's just because you are overseas but I am not alone. Hundreds of people have emailed me telling me what a great service I am doing for them by making a mirror site for your page. And now it isn't even a mirror site anymore, It's a unique source of information and I intend to keep it that way. So you guys can take your attitudes that you probably have towards me and fuck off!
In a way it is almost like you are afraid that people will stop goiing to your page after a while, in fact that is my goal now. I am going to make a page so full of information and lavishness that you couldn't possibly beat me. And if you start copying off of me, it will be obvious to all the other people who are regualar visitors to my page.
In case you haven't already guessed it Jose, you really pissed me off with that last and ONLY email that you wrote me. I now intend to make you really mad by copying the rest of your site, and giving you less credit for it.
Another thing before I go, you should realize that I don't have access to all of the CDs that you have been able to get and that is the reason why I HAVE TO copy off of you for some things. It really baffles me how you are able to find out about so many of those albulms. Also I don't spend all of my time worrying about Philip Glass stuff, I do have a life. It seems like you guys spend all of your money and time looking for all the extra recordings and stuff that really don't make your site any better, they just end up filling your discography page with a lot of copies of the same thing.
Have fun in Germany,
Mark Krenz
PS. Once again I am sorry that this letter will probably ruin any kind of friendship that we could've had. If you would have just written me sooner this could've been prevented.
After receiving this astonished message, José answered on June 17, 18:45, with the following message:
Thanks for your answer.I always reply the e-mail and I am 100% sure I have never received an e-mail from you. I have asked to the owner of the GlassPages (Jordi Petit), he saves all the e-mail received and he has been searching on his archives some letter from you but without success.
Anyway, you should have lessons about education and respect before send any letter.
You are right, I am not interested at all to be friend of a poor little boy like you.
The comunity of the world wide web and specially Philip Glass do not deserve to have people like you, Mark S. Krenz, with pages on the Internet.
Good luck with your mirror pages.
Finally, this is the message Mark Krenz posted on the newsgroup about Philip Glass on June 18:
On another note, ever since I started my web site(Philip Glass Library). I've been trying to get ahold of the guys who run the GlassPages in Spain. And I swear that I've written to each one of them about 3 times. I even have copies of the emails on my hard drive somewhere. But anyways since I never got a response from them I went ahead and used the information on their page to further the info on my own.
Well just about a week ago Jose Jimenez Mesa who runs the Discoglassy over there FINALLY wrote me back and told me that I was copying too much of what he had and that I should give him more credit. I plan on giving him more credit but don't you think that I've given them enough on my Credits page and elsewhere on the site. I wrote him back and told him my predicament with the page and that I am just trying to do a service to the PG community by making a "faster" site for those of us not in Europe. He replied back to my saying the following:" The comunity of the world wide web and specially Philip Glass do not deserve to have people like you, Mark S. Krenz, with pages on the Internet."
Now I don't think that he realizes how many people have written me telling me what a great page I have and what a great service I am doing for the people in general by making a faster, better and more extensive site. I'm interested to know what all of you think about this. Please let me know if I am doing everything ok with my page. I do realize that I haven't given everyone credit yet for the information, but it takes time to cite everything that I have on there. I plan to do it though within a month.
I don't see how the Glasspages could be respected by all of you after one of their founders makes a comment like that. And some others that I fail to mention here. Especially when by the end of the summer I will have most definately beat as far as a source of information and a fan site in general. Oh well, let me know what you think.
mark
http://php.indiana.edu/~mkrenz/pg/pgstart.html
Here followsis our analysis. We are sure that the careful reader will not need it, but we will write it anyway in order to enable people to know our thoughts.
From GlassPages, we were very surprised when a new web site on Philip Glass appeared on the WWW. There were some other Glass pages covering different point of views not treated on the GlassPages that were two years old and well known by Philip Glass enthusiasts on the Internet.The GlassLibrary created by Mark Krenz seemed a good possibility to enrich our GlassPages. At the first sight we were happy to know that more information about Philip Glass was becoming available freely on the Internet, but reading it we perceived that this was not really new information, but almost a mere copy of the pages we (and many contributors) had written.
Of course, we at GlassPages have never pretended that we were the owners of the information we were making public. It is clear that this ownership belongs to Philip Glass, his representatives, the record companies and other artists. What left us astonished is that Kark Krenz was copying all the pages we had written late at nights, as a hobby (we do not have any connection with Philip Glass or any recording or publishing company) and was simply changing the page background. This can be proved for many of our readers, many of the contributors who sent us discographies, pictures, record information (as Kyong Il Lee, Robert Neveldine, Ronald Kennedy, and many others) and even parts of their current work as Alex Christaki. Collaboration and help was the kindly spirit that existed on the WWW a couple of years ago, at least in relation to GlassPages.
As Mark Krenz recognizes, all his work is heavily based on GlassPages. He claims that he started to "write" the Glass Library because loading the GlassPages was too slow for him. We have not received any message from him explaining us his plans, even not a sentence from our "Word of Wisdom" section!
But even if received, it is clear that we will answer him in a negative way because nobody can approve other people take advantage of his work. For everybody, is totally clear you can not take something that is not yours unless you have a permission from his owner and even from his supposed point of view, the absence of that permission can not be interpreted at all as a license to thieve.
By the way, it seems that Mark Krenz has not understood that for us accessing his pages is as slow as for him accessing ours.
After we have noticed Mark Krenz was copying our pages, José Jimenez decided to contact Mark Krenz (that is the first message we have reproduced). We think that the style of his message was fairly kindly, as his intention was. In this message, José presents himself to Mark Krenz as a Philip Glass fan and a lover of other music composers and tries to establish contact with Mark Krenz. He also remarks that one statement written in the Glass Library is not true, namely that we are reluctant to update our pages lately. Finally he informs Mark Krenz that he is annoyed by the fact he is copying shamelessly all our work.
The answer of Mark Krenz was the most funny thing we have never seen in the WWW. He says that he has sent us lot of messages during 6 months (in other message he says only 3 messages), that we contact him too late, that we can take out attitudes that we probably have towards him, that we can be fucked off, that he will remove us any credit, that José pissed of him, and that we spend all of out time worrying about Philip Glass stuff, and that he does have a life. As he admits, it is difficult to be his friend after he has said!
Let us answer Mark S. Krenz:
Please, let us finish this open letter asking excuses for our English. Since the motherhood languages of Jordi and José are Catalan and Spanish respectively, we are not native English speakers. And even if we were, we would not use the kind of words Mark S. Krenz uses in his messages.
Jordi Petit i Silvestre & José Jiménez
Mesa
July 1997