Thanks for replying, Doug. At least I managed to have a little fun this morning...

" There's a whole lot of things people are entitled to do - but they're still not right. Farting out loud next to someone on a train is something you're entitled to do....but would you ;)"

I suppose that would depend upon how obnoxious they were. In any case, if you put up a copyright notice, then you could write to Bob or other hosters and have the offending posts or sites removed immediately, among other things.

"Believe me - my best work is nowhere near my forum :)"

Some of your forum's participants have put their best work on it, and I think you should protect them with the copyright notices. I don't meant to nag here, but this is fairly serious.

"There is one paypal donate button (hidden away a bit) which actually - has brought in what I considered to be an astonishing sum in only a few months ( enough to cover hosting and software lic. fees for several years ). Amazingly, the place doesnt need more cash :)"

So imagine how much more you could make by putting a paypal donation sticker on each page and what you could accomplish with the money. As a general rule, more money is better than less. If you'e stuck for ideas on what to do with the money, hosting video requires a lot of bandwidth. You already know that from your black and white Mars videos: now try to estimate the bandwidth and hosting that colored Mars videos will require. Of course, you could always use the money to have someone put together the Shoemaker-Levy impact video :P) Or how about a nice Hyugen's vid? and then there's the lunakhod videos...

"I've never been in a situation of thinking "hmm - where's that image of that thing that guy did..." and not been able to find it inside of 30 seconds."

Of course you can find those images. You run the forum. But your visitors do not have your intimate knowledge of it.

"I agree - the historical work, mainly by Ted and Phil is arguably the most remarkable of the lot" -

I think the same.

"but it's THEIR work, not mine - and it would be out of place and rude to catalogue it."

What I'm talking about here is taking their original posts and moving them to threads by probes- that way anybody interested in the imaging systems and bandwidths and compression used by each probe could find it easily. My guess is that Ted and Phil would very be pleased if you did this, but it's easy enough for you to check with them. More importantly, I am ceetain that Ted and Phil would be delighted if you put copyright notices on each page. There are probably msny others out there who do not post to your site or actively participate in it simply because you do not have those notices in place.

"We might not agree on much EP, but we share some ideas in this field, trust me :)"

Don't believe the ravings of some of the Habitable Zone's rabid Mars Nuts. There are other people who could tell you that indeed we do share some ideas in this field.

"The capactiy of the privateer to generate amazing imagery"

How about using "private sector" instead of "privateer" - no one is engaged in any piracy here.