Long post, sorry folks, interesting though.
Here's the deal. I reviewed Petter Hegre's site PetterHegreArchives a while back because I was pretty amazed with the site. I had a seroiusly hard time cutting points out of their rating, I thought it was really well done.
Also a few months back, one of our in-house reviewers gave MET-Art a very high rating of 94, and it was very well deserving now that I've also been inside their members area.
Everything was running smoothly, and one day I get an e-mail from Met-Art saying a bunch of shit, that Petter used to work with them years ago, and that he stole all of their ideas, tried to steal photographers, stole entire portions of text, etc. Now I don't just jump to conclusions, but it was backed up with a few URL references, e-mail quotations from a photographer, things like that. It was clear and apparent that one thing between the sites was undeniably the same - the covers idea. They both use magazine-style covers to introduce new picture sets, they both look really great. The other thing was the content - both are very artistic, erotic photographs.
Due to our error (it was hard for me to tell because I didn't initially review Met-Art) I appologized, made note in our review so that our users could make up their own minds about the situation, and gave Met-art top spot after taking a good look myself. I mean if I loved Hegre's site so much, and Met-art did it first, it seemed clear what was to be done. I also lowered the score for Hegre's site, and made note in that review.
A few weeks pass, and now I'm getting e-mails from Hegre saying in a nutshell, disappointed, not sure why, what's up? So I explained what had happened, and asked for proof on his side. He says that Met-art is lying through their teeth, it's all bullshit, and a scam to help him and fuck over Hegre.
I should have seen this coming perhaps, but now I'm not sure what to do. The first thing that came to mind was to ask the community here if anyone has insight into this situation.
The facts are this. They did work together, MET was around since 1999 while Hegre's site opened in January of 2002. The covers idea was definitely copied, but it's a great idea and it fits on both sites. He doesn't deny borrowing this idea.
MET claims Petter changed his style from sado/fetish/bondage to soft erotica after dealings with each other. Petter says his style has been similar for the past 12 years, and has never done any bondage. Also that some of the work he licensed to MET while they worked together was taken a number of years before they had ever made contact with each other. Whose in the wrong here? It's hard to tell
I just need to know who the fuck is lying to me.
