Solution
Some folks are using our material to publicise the sale for private gain of bits they (or others) have recovered from crash sites.
WE DO NOT APPROVE OF THIS. We don't want to be associated with a practice we consider unacceptable. Crash sites are places where men died, they aren't for treasure seeking. That's our opinion. Others may see things differently. All we can say is that when we saw bits from the crash that killed our family member Aleksander Pietrzak (309 Squadron PAF 1945) on eBay for private gain we were both distraught and distressed.
In fact, this is what led us to abandon working with the pair for whom we spent 4000 hours of our own time and plenty of our own money developing and running a website. We chose to start again in January 2012 and through hard work and integrity built Aircrew Remembered into the large and well-respected site we can be very proud of.
We can easily see why family members connected to other crash sites would feel the same if they saw their own family member's memory tarnished and indeed, people have told us this is so.
Aircrew Remembered is a proud member of the British Aviation Archaeological Council which forbids such practices.
However, there's not a lot we can do if people want to quote from our site, so this is our policy:
We ask folks to remove references to us unless they comply with these conditions:
(1) It must be clear we are NOT endorsing the sale. They can use quotes from our material, but we ask that they do not use complete pages because this increases the risk that a casual reader will think we are endorsing the sale. The integrity of our site is important to us, our contributors and our readers and we need consistency to achieve this. They can quote a link to our site where a reader can see the complete story about the crash. We think it's OK to point readers to the actual story, maybe they'll learn something.
(2) They include a prominent statement that 'Aircrew Remembered is NOT a party to this sale and NEVER sells crash site artifacts itself.'
If the seller doesn't comply without delay (sales are usually over in 7 days, so speed is of the essence) we will request eBay to remove the item. Whether they do so or not is out of our control.
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