Originally Posted by BritCanuck
That's an unfair hissy fit if ever I heard one.
He should have worked out that someone else posted that link.
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I agree. To be honest, his argument didn't make much sense to me. He came down on me for "linking to an illegal download of his album," yet I had nothing to do with it. I wrote him back and told him that, to which he responded that I "knew full well it was there" (which is untrue and he cannot possibly corroborate) and then brought up the fact that I had suggested in another thread that I was going to download his soundtrack. Now that much
is true, and I did hint that I would download the soundtrack in another thread (which was rather dumb of me in hindsight considering I bought the damned thing anyway). The truth is I download almost everything off the internet right when it comes out, then buy it as soon as I can afford it. In this particular case, I downloaded his soundtrack only to tide me over until my order came in (which had already been placed).
But Murray's argument was very incoherent -- he first blamed me for linking to his soundtrack, and then when I said that I posted no such link, he came back and said "so? you still did this completely different thing which I made no reference to in my original email!"
It was a very surreal experience that day, and it sucks to have lost what little correspondence I had with him over something so inconsequential that (for the most part) I didn't even have any control over (and more importantly I didn't do anything wrong!). I would try writing to him again if I thought it would make any difference, but I don't. As my brother so aptly pointed out, he likely already has his version of events (whatever that may be) locked in his mind. You all can clearly see what he thinks of me according to that email he wrote, so I very much doubt at this point that anything I say could make any difference.
Since I am writing here anyway, I will post something that I started writing several weeks ago with the intention of posting it here, but I never finished it or posted it as I had planned to. Since the truth has now come to light anyway, I will post this draft message for all to read, hopefully to make my feelings about this situation a bit clearer. I had planned to write a conclusion, but I haven't yet gotten around to it. Hopefully this situation stands well enough on its own and my feelings have already been made clear enough to the point where it doesn't need one.
Anyway, here goes.
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I feel I should post a bit of an explanation here as to what happened between myself and Murray Gold last week. In case any of you were wondering, Murray has decided that he would not like to hear from me ever again. I received the following email from him last Tuesday:
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Originally Posted by Murray Gold
You have linked to an illegal download of my album on your website. We are through. You are a mean, two-faced, rude and inconsiderate young man.
Don't contact me again. And I mean ever.
Murray
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Just to set the record straight, I did not post any such link here. The link was posted by James (Dalek104), who has already paid for this more than he deserved by being reported to Silva Screen by Murray. (Sorry about that, James. If Murray hadn't been spying on me they never would have known.) Silva Screen wrote to him not only demanding the removal of the material, but also any server stats he had available so that they could find out who downloaded the material. Luckily for all involved, the server stats were pretty unhelpful, so no one will be able to trace who downloaded the material.
For those of you that remember, there was an incident here on the forums several months ago, in which Murray Gold's "IT guy" joined my site, seemingly for the express purpose of monitoring what I wrote about Murray so that he could report back to his boss if I said anything "off-color," to use Murray's own terminology. Unfortunately for me, I had made a post in which I called Murray a liar for telling me there would be a new theme for series 3 when there wasn't one. Word of this post got back to Murray, and (in what I still believe to be a strong overreaction), he became very upset with me. Naturally, I was very apologetic at the time, but now that I'm able to use hindsight and speak more freely, I don't really regret what I posted. Murray told me, in no uncertain terms, that there would be a new theme. There wasn't one. When I asked why, he says he just didn't get around to it. I realize that lying involves intentional deceit, which I have no reason to believe was the case here, but he still gave me false information and made no effort to correct it when the circumstances changed. So no, I don't regret my post. Maybe I should have chosen my wording more carefully, but the meaning remains the same. I was bothered by his lack of regard for sharing information like that with me, and I reacted accordingly. I do not believe that I did anything wrong. (Feels good to finally say that now.)
Anyway, I tracked down the user account that was being used by Murray's IT guy and banned him permanently. Unfortunately, what I did not realize was that Murray had also registered on the site at the same time under a different name, which I did not catch. He's been here the whole time, continuing to snoop around for ways to get me in trouble, and it looks like he finally found one good enough to start spewing venom. (He has since been removed from the site.)
There are a few things that I would like to say here, mostly just to get them off my chest. First, I am really not tremendously bothered about breaking off contact with Murray. To be perfectly honest, he's been quite a disappointing contact from the start. Whenever he wrote to me, he would usually be helpful or encouraging, but the thing is, he would almost never write to me. One day, out of boredom, I went through and counted the number of emails that I sent to Murray Gold which warranted a response, and then counted the emails out of those that he actually responded to. You know what I ended up with? Three out of eight. He responded to three out of every eight emails that I sent to him that had a specific question or other comment that directly requested a response from him. He responded to my emails less than 40% of the time. He was unreliable at best, and it was very clear that I was just not important enough to take up his valuable time.
On that note, I also wanted to add that seemingly Murray's biggest problem with me was a lack of respect. Well consider this: respect goes in both directions. Based on how often he responded to my emails (sometimes going for a period of months without answering any of the many emails I had sent to him), not to mention how quickly and easily he looks to find fault with me, it was very clear to me from early on that I had never really held Murray's respect. After coming to this realization, he naturally began to lose the respect that I had once held for him. Don't get me wrong. I once thought very highly of Murray Gold, as a person and a musician. Lately, however (and especially after these events), I hold him in very low regard. To phrase it delicately, I find him to be disrespectful, immature, insecure, and arrogant.
Murray has frequently said, both directly to me and to others in interviews, that he doesn't care what the fans think of him, and he never listens to anyone's comments about him or his work. If that is indeed the case, then perhaps someone could explain to me why he has hired a lackey who serves to scour the internet for him, using underhanded tactics to gather information about those very fans and their comments about him. And indeed, even with his lackey gathering reconnaissance for him and his own overwhelmingly busy schedule, he still sees the need to come to my site himself, posting under an alias and pretending to be someone who doesn't exist, reading and looking for all the things that people say about him, just waiting for an opportunity to pounce. That's not exactly the kind of behavior I would expect from someone who supposedly doesn't care about the opinions of fans.
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I realize it ends suddenly, but it's 4:45 in the morning and I've already tried to think of a better way to end it and I just can't. Still, hopefully my thoughts and feelings have been made a bit clearer now.
EDIT: RV points out that it's silly to say that I'm not bothered by losing touch with Murray in the middle of an extremely long post on the subject. I don't think that's true, though. I'm not terribly bothered by not being able to talk to Murray anymore because I haven't lost very much. However I do feel that I was wronged by how Murray treated me, and I have the desire to get the word out so that I can explain myself and my actions and let others know what happened and how Murray has treated me.