Welcome to
ESL Printables,
the website where English Language teachers exchange resources:
worksheets, lesson plans, activities, etc.
Our collection is growing every day with the help of many teachers. If
you want to download you have to send your own contributions.
I already added the link to my facebook. Thank you so much V�ctor for everything you do, for this wonderful site, and for creating this amazing community, all my respect and support , Happy Holidays to you and to all my dear colleagues from ESL printables.
We are truly sorry about how the events developed. We do agree with your
comments that it was not ethical to not to ask for permission from the owners
of the worksheets which only comprise a fraction of our newest �Learn English�
books. However due to the facts that;
ESL website is
an open ground for exchanging worksheets and that we also submitted
several sheets (there was a false accusation about the authenticity of our
submitted sheets, they were removed even though they were unique designs),
the sheets
that we have downloaded are largely consisting of well known clipart
images, all of which were already purchased by us and already used in our
various publications,
we witnessed
in many schools in Turkey that numerous worksheets from your website were
reproduced in huge quantities and distributed to students as it is
designed and uploaded by the original designer,
on the
contrary of the situation today, there were no warnings of copyright
infringement and ownership issues on the worksheets,
a few of the downloaded worksheets were proposed by one of our board
members to be used in our newest �Learn English� books. These were the facts
that misled us to the improper way of using the downloaded sheets and we take
full responsibility of this error. Misusage of a property against the will of
its rightful owner is strictly against our beliefs.
We also design and publish many patented products and we encounter
infringement problems quite frequently. However, our correspondents in the
other parties have always acted to solve the issue just after receiving our
notification about the problem.
However, we wish wholeheartedly that someone could
notify us or ask for an explanation before or at the same time of declaring
this infringement problem on the website. We do not find it ethical to be
assaulted by many harsh accusations and disgraceful insults while being denied
the opportunity to further investigate the matter and act on a corrective plan.
If we could be got in touch the first day, you would instantly see the positive
reaction that we maintain today even when confronted by the boycott campaign
and various attempts for hacking our website.
For years, and as of today, we worked with a considerable number of
teachers and education professionals who are all satisfied by the level of our
business ethics. The downloaded worksheets are not related to the main subjects
of the books and comprise only a small fraction of the published book. Revising
these problematic books will be completed in a few days and will be sent anyone
upon request. To further reinforce our point, we invite our Turkish colleagues
who are avid supporters of the campaign to our offices and help them see the
revising process as well as our whole product portfolio.
Speaking of our portfolio, these newest �Learn English� books are just
one of our hundreds of products. Today we exceeded all our competitors in terms
of innovations and number of patents we obtained. It�s a point that should be
emphasized that benefiting from our mistake, there are particular employees
from our competitors who want to escalate this campaign perhaps to a level
equivalent of nuclear bombing!
In what scale this unjust public-execution may proceed, we will remain
here to inform you about the process and will not divert from the path of
common sense. We hope to come back with more news during next week.
Until then we wish all members and colleagues a happy and problem-free
new year. And we especially wish to send our best regards to our Turkish
colleagues who were all too eager to support the campaign against us while they
could have picked up the phone and ask for explanations.
One thing you as a publishing house should know for sure is
that �s an old myth that if it doesn �t have a copyright notice, it �s
free for use. The real fact it �s that EVERYTHING is copyrighted unless
EXPRESSED OTHERWISE. This is the international term, not the opposite.
If
you are a serious company, like you have said, you HAVE TO KNOW about
this, since the company would also not want to see its work somewhere
else, and in fact, it �s only reasonable that before you published
anything you would have searched for information about copyrights and
would know that already.
As a serious publishing company, 25
years in the market, you would know that it �s YOUR JOB to give credits
to ANY WORK that doesn �t belong to the company, you should know that
it �s not PROPER to use work without EXPRESSED PERMISSION (personal
and/or commercial permission) by the author. It doesn �t matter if the
statement was or wasn �t in this website.
Certainly the
authors � lawyers, and yours for that matter, will warn the parts (you
and the eslprintables.com members who have been injured) that what HAD
TO BE EXPLICIT was a notice for free use (both personal and commercial)
for you to be able to use all and any work from the website in your
books. Which is not the case.
There hasn �t been any confusion or baseless accusations, and AFS YAYINCILIK
will certainly have to prove the law courts not only that it didn �t
have bad faith, which alone will be hard, but also that didn �t know
the international copyrights laws, which being a 25 year-old company,
will be almost impossible.
All this community is united and will support all the injured members. With all due respect, don �t expect any kind of sympathy. May justice be done.
At one time they were talking about suing people for false accusations now they are apologising. They are talking about ethics and being reputable yet not denying using someone else �s work in their publications without permission. How can they be trusted and what �s worse, what can prevent other people looking at any one of the Turkish members or a publication company from Turkey without suspicion after such a stir that they have caused which has been going on for weeks and weeks and the banner travelling around the world on many blogs and websites accusing them.
We are all aware also many people are sending emails to the Turkish Consulates in their countries. As far as I am concerned, good and honest members specially the Turkish ones should continue being the avid supporters of this campaign and should do everything within their power to prevent any publications of AFS from getting into the institutions that they work in because they have no right to blacken the name of a nation and hurt our pride for their own financial benefit.
P.S. They should also be sued for depriving us from the good work of Katiana. Happy New Year to EVERYONE.
I do not believe a word you are saying. The only truth is that you took our work without our permission. The rules have always been clear, you can�t use the material in our page for commercial purposes, you can�t publish it as you have done. These rules have been in the site since the beginning. Only the copyright labels were added after we found out about your illegal publication. They were added to make things clearer.
You claim you uploaded worksheets which were unique designs and that they were unfairly removed. Who do you want to kid? You have two fake accounts, I have proof of this, as you wrote me two pms using one of them. With these fake accounts, you stole materials from other members like Vanda and uploaded them as yours, these are the only worksheets you had fairly removed.
You told me in those pms that you had started to withdraw the books from the sale points, another huge lie, as several members found them in different places and were even able to buy them. I�m about to receive the books. Some of them also phoned you to ask for an explanation or went to your office and your explanations were only more lies.
I�m sure you thought we would never find out about your fake publications but we have. You can�t stop this spreading all over the world.
I�m proud of being part of this big family. I�m glad that our work is being used in thousands of schools, that thousands of photocopies are being distributed to students, that is the purpose of the site. Your purpose was just taking advantage of our work to make money. You deserve every harsh accusation you get. What do you think the Turkish Prime Minister of Education will think of your company when he finds out about this? Have you thought about it?
I think the problem here is that you have used somebody else �s creations for your personal profit... Many of us have used the WS from this website, but never to SALE or to GAIN something more than learning. As I don �t think your books are for free, you made a huge mistake trying to cheat these people instead of asking for their permission...
You claim that you have uploaded some WS here... Why on Earth would you do that? You own a book publishing company, unless you were trying to get something in return for your WS???
To VICTOR and other members of our community:
I support you and any actions you take... I �ve posted the mesage on my Facebook, And sent it to as many teachers as I could...
I �d like that all injustice could be fought as in this case...
I think that Katiana and others here should be informed of how many of their materials are part of this published work and they receive royalties for their creations.
, Happy Holidays to you and to all my dear colleagues from ESL printables. 
