CHANNEL FIVE (UK), THE HISTORY CHANNEL, SCREEN YORKSHIRE, RDF INTERNATIONAL, and REAL LIFE MEDIA STOLE THE SOLUTION TO THE MARY CELESTE MYSTERY FROM THE OWNER OF THIS WEBSITE!
HERE'S HOW THEY DID IT:
FIRST, THEY ENTERED INTO A VERBAL CONTRACT TO HIRE THE EXPERTISE AND SERVICES OF CAPTAIN DAVID WILLIAMS TO HELP THEM DEVELOP A DOCUMENTARY FILM BASED ON HIS SEAQUAKE RESEARCH. CAPTAIN WILLIAMS AGREED TO ADVISE THEM ON HOW BEST TO FILM THE PROJECT AND WHO COULD BEST GIVE SUPPORTING EVIDENCE AND TESTIMONY. HE ALSO FURNISHED THEM WITH 30 YEARS OF RESEARCH.
THE DIRECTOR OF THE FILM SPENT A WEEK AT THE HOME OF CAPTAIN WILLIAMS RECORDING EVERYTHING HE SAID AND THEN THESE FIVE MEDIA GIANTS WENT BACK ON THEIR WORD TO PAY FOR THESE SERVICES AND EXPERTISE.
THEY TOLD CAPTAIN WILLIAMS THAT THE LAW ALLOWED THEM TO STEAL 30 YEARS OF HIS WORK WITHOUT GIVING HIM ANY CREDIT OR PAYING HIM A CONSULTATION FEE AS THEY ORIGINALLY AGREED.
THESE MEDIA GIANTS THEN TURNED HIS SEAQUAKE SOLUTION INTO AN AWARD-WINNING ONE HOUR TELEVISION SPECIAL, MAKING MILLIONS, WITHOUT EVEN GIVING CAPTAIN WILLIAMS ANY CREDIT!
THIS 132-YEAR-OLD ENIGMA IS THE WORLD'S GREATEST SEA MYSTERY!
__________David Williams_________
(email: david07 at deafwhale.com)
LEGAL QUESTION: As shown in the second letter (below) REAL LIFE MEDIA of Leeds England agreed to negotiate a final consultant fee with Captain Williams after they had assessed the results of the planning meetings held in the home of Captain Williams with the film's director, Diana Muir. Diana Muir flew from Leeds England to visited with Captain Williams at his house in the Philippines for five days. The two conducted at least 30 hours of planning sessions and meetings and a 2-hour screen test. Then, when Diana Muir returned to the Real Life's offices, Real Life Media's management broke their written agreement to negotiate a consulting/research fee in good faith. Is this a legal breach of contract?
Did Real Life Media entered into a fiduciary relationship with Captain Williams to sell thirty years of his work to TV broadcasters and then, once they had extracted all the inside information and research from him, breached this relationship and thereby create a moral and legal liability?
We need legal help so any opinion would be of great value.
(click here to see the first legal opinion on this issue)
BRIEF SUMMARY OF WHAT TRANSPIRED
In August 2004, Matthew Medd from Real Life Media (link), a television production company from Leeds England, contacted me by email and said his firm was interested in making a film of my solution to the mystery of the Mary Celeste as it appeared at the time on the Deafwhale Society's web site (link). We exchanged several emails and then, in April 2005, Simon Schofield, Director of Programmes for Real Life call me and expressed interest in securing my permission and cooperation in helping Real Life secure financing to film my solution to the Mary Celeste Mystery. I said I would be delighted as long as I could get a little free publicity for a novel I was finishing called SEAQUAKE. I explained that I needed the TV exposure since I did not yet have a publisher and the free publicity would help me in negotiating a publishing contract.
Simon Schofield then assured me that the SEAQUAKE novel would get a nice plug and that my wife and I would be flown all over Europe and the USA (all expenses paid) during the filming of the project. All I had to do was provide research and reveal everything I had uncovered over the last 30 years about seaquakes and the Mary Celeste, including scientific material to support my conclusions and the names of any scientific contacts and seaquake witnesses. He said not to worry about my copyrighted work since if he intended to steal it, he would have never contacted me. He said he wanted a partnership whereby I would help plan and research the film and STAR in it as the camera followed me around the world as I interviewed scientists in an effort to prove my work to the TV audience. He said he would be the one to put all the financing together and sell the film to the broadcasters. In other words, I needed to reveal all my scientific research and contacts and planning ideas since he needed to calculate the expense of a camera crew following me all around the world. I was jumping up and down with joy... my big break had finally came!
Simon Schofield also told me in an email that any scientific material, support from scientists, and seaquake witnesses that I could furnish were absolutely necessary to help Real Life Media attract financial backers for the documentary film.
I told him we could make a great film and I would furnish all the planning and research he needed to secure the financing as long as he was sure I could plug the book in the film. The publicity he offered was the key to helping me find a publisher and I explained this and make it clear that if there were no publicity, there would not likely be a publisher and thus no deal to film my material. He assured me that the novel would get publicity and reminded me that everything hinged on Real Life Media being able to find the financing and sell the film to a broadcaster. In other words, we both had to cooperate with each other if there was going to be a film of my work; therefore, to help Simon Schofield secure financing and sell my work, I provided him with everything he asked for as evidenced in our email exchange below. I trusted the promises he made and believed that Real Life Media and I had a fiduciary relationship in which we were partners in securing the financial backing to do the film and in planning and making the final product.
Simon Schofield promised me that Real Life Media would draw up a written contract spelling out our agreement as soon as they could get around to it. But each time I requested the written contract, Simon said he was too busy with personal travel and with securing the financing contracts and securing contracts with the directors and producers and all the other hard work that went into putting together a fantastic film project such as my solution to the mystery of the Mary Celeste.
As the evidence unfolds below, you will see that Simon Schofield was in bad faith from the beginning. His intention from the first phone call was to con and trick me and steal my work. But he was not content to steal what was on the web site, he wanted to pick my brain and get my planning expertise and every little bit of useful information I might have and then steal the work on the web site plus my expertise.
The evidence outlined below will show that he knew from the beginning that certain UK media laws would not allow the film to plug the novel. If Simon Schofield and Real Life Media were in good faith, Simon should have made it clear from the beginning that he could not deliver the free publicity. Had he been honest from the start, I might have worked out a different deal with him and simply tried to secure a cash fee for my services as the films chief advisor and researcher. But he misled me to believe that I would receive compensation in the form of free publicity for my book and a fantastic free travel package for my wife and I, all of which was nothing more than a con game on his part.
As will be shown below, Simon Schofield believed all along that he could easily get away with stealing the copyrighted material from my web site. But just stealing the work was not enough for him. He also wanted to gain my confidence so that he could then steal my planning and research expertise. After all, I am the world's leading expert of the Mary Celeste Mystery since I am the first to solve it and the one who has worked on it for 30 years, much longer than anyone else alive today. Simon Schofield wanted to make sure that he got all the inside research and contacts I had developed and then he would steal it all. In other words, there is overwhelming evidence below of bad faith, misleading trickery, the use of unfair advantage, and fraud.
Obviously, as intended all along, after Real Life Media had secured a deal with CHANNEL FIVE TELEVISION, THE HISTORY CHANNEL, SCREEN YORKSHIRE (link), and RDF INTERNATIONAL (link) to film my work, and after Simon Schofield sent Director Muir here to the Philippines to conduct five days of film-planning meetings with me and make sure that the director got all my expertise and capture all my ideas, he then began withdrawing all the promises one by one and eventually told me that the budget for doing the film was extremely limited so the best they could give me would be £10,000, take it or leave it, since the filming was already underway without my permission or approval. Real Life also informed me that there would be no publicity for my SEAQUAKE novel whatsoever since this was illegal in the UK. Bottom line was I either take the £10,000 or I would get nothing since the filming was already underway without me.
At first, I was highly upset with the way he had handled everything and believed that he should just cancel the project and walk away. The £10,000 meant nothing to me without a publisher for me book. If I could not get the plug for the book, then I would wait until a deal came along that was more attractive. I spent 30 years developing this material so why should I give it away to a dishonest person?
When asked about the free publicity, Simon denied having promised a plug for a book saying such a thing was illegal in the UK and he had known it for a long time. When asked how he planned to get around my copyright, Simon Schofield said the copyright meant nothing to him and his partners since copyright never applied to facts gather in research no matter how much hard work went into developing the solution to the world's greatest sea mystery. Simon Schofield furnished the name of Channel Five's attorney who supposedly had volunteered to explain everything to me on how they could easily steal my work.
One of REAL LIFE'S partners, RDF MEDIA RIGHTS, started promoting the film on their website. In their first version, they stated clearing that the film was based on the work of "British sea captain Dave Williams." I was grateful for the credit so I captured this webpage and stored it up on my own hard drive just in case RDF MEDIA RIGHTS changed it later. I knew REAL LIFE was acting in bad faith so I wanted to make sure I had proof of the original credit being offered. I also spread the word around to maybe 500 folks on several internet groups and many went to the page and witness that I was indeed being given credit for the work. However, several weeks later, RDF MEDIA took down the first website and put up a newly remodeled site (Link to the latest Mary Celeste Site) saying that "new scientific research" had solved the mystery, taking all reference to British sea captain Dave Williams down. In other words, RDF MEDIA RIGHTS joined in with REAL LIFE MEDIA is the conspiracy to steal my work.
It will also be shown in one of the emails below where Channel Five Television also joined in the conspiracy since their attorney offered to explain the law to me and my attorneys on how they could get away with stealing my work.
THE ACTUAL NEGOTIATIONS
In August 2004, Matthew Medd from REAL LIFE MEDIA contacted me and expressed interest in making a documentary film of my work. (see first email contact by Matthew Medd)
Then, in April 2005, Simon Schofield of REAL LIFE MEDIA phoned and expressed interest in doing a one-hour documentary based on my work and sent a follow email: (see first email from Simon Schofield)
I had been working on a fiction book called SEAQUAKE for 25 years and had posted the copyrighted Mary Celeste solution on the web in hopes that someone might want to film it and bring attention to my novel.
Then, in June 2005, the emails exchanged with Simon Schofield got into details about the Mary Celeste incident and the validity of my work. I questioned Simon Schofield about why he was asking for the names of scientists and for all the scientific research and Schofield said, "PLease don't be alarmed by this request - we certainly aren't seeking to find your replacement. The treatment sees you as absolutely central to the programme. We simply need to establish that there is real scientific credibility attached to the idea that a sea-quake led to the abandonment of the vessel. This is to help persuade the funders that this is a serious treatment of a serious subject." He repeatedly assured me in several phone calls and in the email that the film would be all about my work. In fact, in his email dated Tue 6/14/2005 5:47 PM, Simon Schofield clearly said, "The treatment we envisage is you leading the programme and conducting a perosnal investigation of the idea that the sea-quake caused the abandonment."
I gave Schofield all my inside information and furnished him with research he could never have accomplished on his own. He even gave him special contacts who also had inside information. Schofield convince me through telephone calls and emails that if he could get the funding then I would be part of the film and could plug my novel. At this point, I assumed that Real Life Media was acting as my agent and partner. I would furnish them with everything I had been able to accumulate over 30 years and Real Life Media would get the financing for the film and the two of us would set down at the table as gentlemen and work out my final fee.
Simon Schofield told me repeatedly on the phone that if I did not agree to the final contract to use my material, then there would be no film. I also told Simon Schofield repeatedly that he was only looking for a plug for his book and nothing more. (see email June 2005)
In July, Simon Schofield emailed me that he had the green light on the project. (see email July 2005)
The emails in August were mostly about travel arrangement and getting visa for my wife to travel with me during the filming. (see email August 2005)
Then on 31 August 2005, REAL LIFE MEDIA furnished me with a notarized letter of intent to be used to help secure the travel visa for my wife. Notice in paragraph #2 that the film is based on my research.
I brought up the topic of money in an email dated Sat 9/24/2005 10:54 AM. I said, "We have not talked about money yet but will need to get to this stage soon x x x I told you I would do this film for expenses and a small salary if I will be allowed to promote my novel. You agreed." I closed this email by asking for some feedback. (email September 2005)
Schofield finally got back to me on Wed 10/12/2005 10:25 PM and said, "I am also happy to confirm that we'll meet your wife's reasonable expenses to accompany you on the filming trip. The next thing we need to do is to organise a contract with you. I wonder if you would forgive me if we postpone the detail on this until November? From this Friday I am in the States for two weeks on holiday so it's obviously going to be a bit difficult to do it before then."
Then on Fri 10/14/2005 3:52 PM, I replied, "I'm not looking to make money on the film as long as I get publicity for the novel."
Simon Schofield replied on Fri 10/14/2005 5:36 PM: That's all good news. (email October 2005)
Then in an email dated 11/21/2005 5:20 AM, Simon Schofield informs me that: "On the book : I would very strongly recommend that you try to approach publishers with the TV programme as part of the package. They will find this much more attractive and it will distinguish it from the literally thousands of unsolicited manuscripts which they receive every year."
I then replied (Mon 11/21/2005 12:22 PM) and said: "Below is a copy of the emails I am sending out to potential publishers and agents. As you see, I mention Real Life and the TV program. I would like you to read this so you know what I am saying and can answer and email in case one of these folks wanted to verify that Real Life is indeed doing a film." In other words, there is no way that Simon Schofield can deny that he agreed from the beginning to plug my novel. Simon knew absolutely that he promised to give the novel publicity. He knew this was what I wanted and was the key to me giving him all my research and inside knowledge accumulated over a span of 30 years of hard work. (email November 2005)
The email exchange for December talked mostly about other problems (email December 2005).
Then on 13 January 2006 Simon Schofield drafted a letter and gave it to Diana Muir, the newly appointed director of the Mary Celeste project, who hand-delivered the letter to my house in Dumaguete City, Philippines. Diana came to visit me in her official capacity as the director of the Mary Celeste film to interview me about my research, do a "screen test, and pick my brain for any filming ideas I had not so far revealed.
Notice in the middle of page #2 where Simon Schofield says: "I would like also to re-iterate the outlines of the deal we have been talking about over the last few months: "We have agreed: To pay for the visa expenses for your wife so that she may accompany you on the filming trip. To pay reasonable expenses associated with the filming trip. This includes, hotel, travel, subsistence, and an allowance to cover your reasonable expenses for clothing suitable for the climates where we are planning to film. You have requested a fee for your participation in the programme. We have agreed to negotiate in good faith a suitable fee. I would like to propose that we negotiate the fee with you once we have assessed the results of Diana's research trip this week."
Diana Muir spent five days with me in the Philippines asking a million questions about how seaquakes work and about what caused the crew to panic and abandon the Mary Celeste. She also made a two-hour long screen test in which she filmed me pretending to present my work to a live audience.
On Tuesday, January 24, 2006 6:29 PM, after Diana Muir had returned to the UK, Simon Schofield sent email in which he said, "as we are now in production with the Mystery of the Mary Celeste it’s perhaps time that we brought our long-running discussions to a firm conclusion."
In other words, to hell with his promise in his letter to negotiate a cash fee in good faith, he had already begun production so now it was time to bring everything to a firm conclusion. In other words, there is no more negotiations as promised in the letter since we have all the information needed from you and we now take a different attitude all together. There will be no give and take negotiations as we promised in our letter--you must take whatever we offered or we proceed without you.
Notice in the email that the offer is £10,000 firm and, in order to arrive at this amount, the fantastic travel and expense and clothing allowances that he had earlier agreed to provide for me and my wife were now canceled. Thus, REAL LIFE now says that I must take the £10,000 since "this is not a figure on which we can negotiate" and the money we are offering you must come from his travel expenses. If I insist on the travel as promised, then the money goes away.
It seems reasonable that the travel for two to the UK and to the US, plus the clothing and other expenses might easily exceed £20,000 on its own. Thus, REAL LIFE did not negotiate a fee for my research and all my hard work for 30 years--they simple chopped the travel expenses to zero and offered me £10,000 of the £20,000 they saved and forget all about any kind of "give and take" negotiations promised in the letter.
It appears that they purposefully tried to shove the latest trick down my throat just so I would refuse to go on with the filming so that they didn't even have to pay the £10,000. In other words, the five media giants already had everything I knew and didn't need him anymore.
Bottom line here is that REAL LIFE MEDIA got all the research from me they needed and then renege on their written commitment to negotiate a research fee. This seems more like a breach of contract than it does a media company stealing copyrighted material. The film was to center around all my research and I was contacted to furnish inside information about how a seaquake caused the crew of the Mary Celeste to abandon their ship. I provided this information in good faith and then, once they had what they needed, REAL LIFE failed to live up to its bargain to negotiate a research fee.
Special Notes (under construction):
As the evidence will show--only £10,000 separated me and the five giant media companies from reaching an agreement. I wanted £20,000 and they refused offering him only £10,000--take it of leave it. I refused because the negotiations were not in good faith as promised. Bottom line is that these five media giants then stole 30 years of my hard work to save a stinking 10,000 quid. They put a gun to my head and said take the £10,000 we offer or we film without you! Of course, this "take it or leave it offer" did not come until they had pick my brain clean and had every bit of information they needed to do a great film. Their measly offer even seemed purposefully designed to insult me and force me to hang on to my pride and walk away.
The complex legal question seems to be whether or not copyright laws protected my work? This work was developed by me over a period of 30 years of research. This "creative intelligence" required great genius plus the development of new scientific theories to describe certain actions in the seafloor not available anywhere. This work was not an accumulation of readily available facts since the work was developed long before the facts became available.
The idea that an earthquake at sea might have been responsible was bounced around by many folks 75 years ago and ruled out because there was no record of an earthquake anywhere in the area during the time of the incident. Nor was there any record of a earthquake being felt by the citizens of Santa Maria Island, near where the incident occurred. In other words, there was no evidence of an earthquake!
However, the creative challenge faced by me in developing my Seaquake Theory was to be able to show that there was indeed solid evidence for an earthquake in the seabed and to show why such an event occurred and yet was not felt by the locals. In other words, the evidence for the seaquake has always been there but no one was able to understand it until I came along and, after 30 years was finally able to explained everything in detail. Now that my work is revealed, understanding the truth about why the crew abandoned the Mary Celeste becomes obvious.
The legal questions seem to involve whether or not the five media companies are guilty of conspiring to steal copyrighted material and/or guilty of conspiring to violate contractual laws.
The finer questions are:
(a) Did REAL LIFE MEDIA, working under directions and instructions of her four partners, promised me that I would have central participation and control over the filming of 30 years of my intellectual creation? Did they promise that I was central to filming my solution to the Mary Celeste Mystery and then mislead me in bad faith into furnishing them all my research and creative genius and personal knowledge and then, once they had everything they needed, refuse to negotiate with me fairly? Did Real Life Media violate any contractual laws by misleading me into believing that they would respect the copyright I put on my material? Did the letters and emails of REAL LIFE MEDIA form a contract to furnish research material for the filming of the solution to the Mary Celeste Mystery?
(b) Does the international copyright law exclude work that required 30 years to develop and involves the solution to the world's greatest sea mystery? Is there nothing special about the creative intelligence required to solve a famous 132-year-old sea mystery that sets it apart and allows if to fall under copyright protection? Can five large British media companies simple steal the life work of someone and get away with it?
(c) Do the emails and letters from REAL LIFE MEDIA form a legal contract with me whereby REAL LIFE MEDIA is legally obligated to negotiate and sign a final written agreement before they proceeded to use my material?
(d) Did the advice offered by Channel Five's attorney in one of the emails show that they were supporting REAL LIFE MEDIA'S position to steal the "work?"
(e) RDF MEDIA RIGHTS first listed on their web site that the seaquake solution belonged to Captain Dave and then in February 2006 they changed their web site to say the solution belonged to "scientists." Does this implicate them in the conspiracy to steal the material from Captain Dave?
(f) SCREEN YORKSHIRE is funded by the British Government. This group contributed 25% of the funds to film my work. Should a government agency be using government money to finance media companies who con and steal their ideas from struggling writers?
(g) Does the television public want to watch material stolen from a struggling writer?
In early January 2006, one of REAL LIFE'S partners, RDF MEDIA RIGHTS, started promoting the film on their website. In their first version, that stated clearing the the film was based on my research. I was grateful for the credit so I captured this webpage and put it up on my own server just in case RDF MEDIA RIGHTS changed it later. I knew REAL LIFE was acting in bad faith so I wanted to make sure I had proof of the original credit being offered.
I also notified several hundred people on different newsgroups about the site and many opened the site and witness that I was indeed being given the proper credits. It's good I copied the original version since RDF MEDIA RIGHTS did indeed change the credits and now claims that unnamed "scientists" did all the research and spent all these years developing the solution to the Mary Celeste.
(see the latest version of how the webpage now reads)
THE CURSE OF THE MARY CELESTE
The Mary Celeste carried 1700 barrels of alcohol and a terrible curse!
The brigantine was first launched in 1860 as the Amazon. Shortly thereafter her crew began to report ghost-like experience as if the ship was haunted by evil spirits. The rumor soon spread that the timber from which the boat's keel had been made came from a local hanging tree where many witches had been put to their death in the 16th century.
Maybe she was haunted since seven years after her launch, she went ashore on the rugged coast of Cape Breton Island near Port Morien. Refloated and repaired she sailed again only to meet a similar fate a few years later on the coast of Maine.
An American syndicate, ignoring the ghost reports, purchased the grounded ship, made her seaworthy and changed her name to the “Mary Celeste." They loaded her with alcohol and sent her off to Genoa Italy on November 7th, 1872. But the curse apparently attached itself to the new owners since she was found in December of the same year drifting abandoned in the North Atlantic off the coast of Spain--her crew had vanished into thin air never to be seen again.
Many folks blamed the ghost of the hanged witches. Folks everywhere were saying, "there has been an evil curse on the Amazon since the day they first laid her keel." Most seamen thereafter refused to sail on her and for the succeeding twelve years she was idle for want of cargo. Then, in 1885, she sailed from Boston, Massachusetts, for Port au Prince, Haiti, where she was purposefully wrecked and burnt off the coast in a $30,000 insurance fraud. Her owners and captain were arrested and jailed.
The curse appears now as if it is still alive since even today the final solution to what really happened to the vanished crew of this vessel falls into bitter controversy. Will the curse finally die in court, or has it attached itself to companies who now try to steal the final solution to the mystery of what happened to the crew? Can one ever kill a curse? Or, do curses, like ghosts, live on forever? Will the truth ever come out in the film? Or will the court issue an injunction and prevent the film from being shown to the public?
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