Han har tidligere bedt om å få se eksempler på feil, basert på Rockfax sin app som har eksistert i flere år, men ikke fått noen eksempler på dette. Og det er ikke bare Rockfax som har mottatt anklager om kopiering, mener James.
– Han har også tidligere sagt det samme til Steve Golley, utgiveren av guideappen The Send, som hittil har donert alt overskudd til rebolting på øya – rundt 6000 pund så langt tror jeg. For det første bestrider Steve anklagene om kopiering fullstendig og har som jeg bedt om bevis, men ikke fått det. Det reiser også spørsmålet om hvorfor Aris er så plaget av en appversjon som genererer mye penger til bolting? Jeg tror grunnen er at guideboken er et verktøy for de som ønsker å kontrollere klatring på øya, og de to alternative publikasjonene truer dette.
Aris på sin side hevder altså at Rockfax er en «pirate guidebook».
– Vi er redde for at folk kommer til å kjøpe denne piratguideboken, selv om den ikke har samme kvalitet og inneholder mye ferre ruter enn vår kommende guidebok. Dette fordi den er så tilgjengelig i England og Europa, og folk ikke vet detaljene i saken.
Han mener også han har nok av bevis for kopieringen, og vil publisere en sak om dette på climbkalymnos.com om kort tid.
– Vi kommer til å publisere en sak der vi løfter frem 15 feil i vår guidebok, noen av dem tilsiktet, som er kopiert.
Fra Alan James har vi fått følgende mail på hvilke utfordringer det er i å lage guidebøker.
– Vi møter alltid motstand, sier han.
«Well please let me honestly assure you that we don’t copy information other than route names from local guidebooks. In Kalymnos we didn’t even do that since the route names are always uploaded onto UKC logbooks before they appear in any guidebook. Of course we do use local guidebooks on occasions to find the crags and the routes. I think some climbers think that doing this qualifies as copying. I am not sure how else you would go about it though.
I have a saying that everywhere we produce a guidebook, someone objects. This is almost universally true, including the areas local to us where we have been climbing ourselves for 30+ years. This is for many reasons. In the UK it is because there was an established guidebook system made from old members of old clubs and they had produced books for ever. These books weren’t guidebooks so much as records of who had climbed the routes. I came along with my modern approach that actually guided people to routes and upset their system. They tried twice in the UK to take me to court but it never got that far thankfully. This is the UK where there are few bolts and the dispute is about historical records. This all took place 20 years ago and people don’t tend to object in the UK any more.
Obviously in Spain and France we have produced guidebooks that bring together huge areas covered by sometimes more than 10 local guidebooks. These are useful for travelling climbers but they are resented by the locals. The reasons for this are claimed to be because our books deprive the area of bolt funds but I have seen no quatifiable evidence of this in 20 years since our first Spain book, and 11 years since our first France book. I really don’t know what effect they have on local guidebook sales. Places like the Costa Blanca are busy with international climbers because of our books. Areas in Spain without Rockfax books don’t have this international attention so it is likely that there aren’t lost sales to travelling climbers, in fact in the areas covered by Rockfax climbers might buy the local guidebooks since our books are by necessity, selective. I haven’t got any figures to prove this but there is no doubt that a Rockfax guidebook does benefit the local economy in general.
As I may have previously mentioned, I don’t think it ever really is about funding bolts. Local guidebooks in Spain and France really don’t contribute much to bolting. Most of them make no mention of it in their pages, they are always incredibly difficult to get hold of for travelling climbers, and there are never any local funds that climbers can easily contribute to. In the UK every area has a PayPal page for its bolt fund and we set up this page to bring them all together - https://ukboltfund.org/. In France and Spain this is never the case. If you want money from a guidebook, why hide it in a tiny Tabac that is only open for a few hours a day?
In reality I think some of the resentment is because we are successful, and some is because we produce guidebooks in areas we aren’t local to. I am sure we could have gone about it better in the past and we are trying nowadays to be more communicative and respectful to local guidebooks and climbers. People often say that we should work with local climbers when we produce guidebooks and this obviously is a good idea. The problem is that when we try it, it doesn’t work and we end up doing the work ourselves. Writing guidebooks is a skill and not everyone can do it but we have learnt techniques that make us efficient and produce great results. It is a shame that the downside of our productivity is that we sometimes alienate local climbers. I would love to do it differently but when ever I look at the bigger picture of what we do, I think we end up with many more good things than bad things so I am happy with that.»
