Hi Guido

I fully understand your reasons to remove information and pictures from your website. We also had
some images being used by other dealers - and I made sure they removed them before any legal actions
were taken.  Even local competitors use our website all the time since they don't have knowledge or
books to identify shells - but I refuse to remove anything from there because of this kind of
people...

In the other hand, nowadays it makes no sense to try to put any information on a vault on your
website - people will always find a way to break any codes if they want to do it.

Internet is a great source of information, but nothing like books since if you remove your website
everything is lost. We do not put pictures of every single specimen on our website, but we keep all
images for different specimens or locations for research purpose. And I guess it is working since we
got more than 13 million hits in one year (too bad not all of them were customers...)

What you need to make sure is to protect your images and do take legal measures to make people pay
for your rights. For example, a guy here stole images from our shell club's website and after
slightly altering them with Photoshop he sold to our Mail Company who made stamps! We will sue him -
and get some money for our club.

Regards

Marcus

It is with regrets that I have to announce the closure of the Shell Encyclopedia on the Conchology,
Inc. homepage.

This database which showed 16000 species and over 200 000 fully documented specimen is no longer
online.

Reasons are obvious:

- there is virtually no input from the conchological society. Apart from Jan Johan Ter Poorten for
Cardiidae, which I want to thank here in public for his efforts, no "experts" brought up the energy
and enthusiasm to correct the database and modify the database as taxonomy and nomenclature change
over a 4 year period.

- the database is used actively by competitors and would-be dealers who take the information to
compete with the very company that creates and maintains the database at high expenses.

- apart from NO INPUT whatsoever, the funds needed to maintain this database are impossible to find
and the implosion of shell prices this year does not allow Conchology, Inc. any longer to maintain
this fantastic tool.

On a personal level I want to express my deception and some remarks on the above facts which are
unavoidable in the present climate. Apparently the world is less than ever interested in the
advancement of science and the discovery of the planet. Even the collector's world which I have
known for the major part of my life as "interested and enthusiast" has turned its back and the
majority of conchologists "do not mind" what is done in the very field where they are supposed to
make things advance. Our little company has proven that much is possible if the means and enthusiasm
are available: we documented and photographed over 300 000 items in 4 years time, which corresponds
about to the number of shells that have been described (including synonyms). In fact, it is pretty
easy to put documented photographs of all holotypes online in a very short laps of time but one
wonders why nothing happens ? Without this tool, the discovery and description of thousands of
species can not go smoothly, even the knowledge on respective ranges of valid species cannot be
established.

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