Posted by Radovan on August 29, 19101 at 10:33:48:
In Reply to: Re: Roscinco posted by Brendon Baillod on August 29, 19101 at 09:25:22:
: I think a short reminder is in order to avoid personal attacks and flames on this forum. Personal feelings aside, the "crawl back into his hole" comment is inflammatory and I'd like to avoid such rhetoric on the newsgroup. While this newsgroup is certainly an appropriate place to comment on the Ehorn case, I think it can be discussed without insulting the parties involved.
: : I haven't heard anything, but I have to say that it was pretty creepy of Paul to go to a well known shipwreck, found many years ago by others and then try to legally claim it solely to avoid prosecution. If I get caught stealing from the wreck of the Wisconsin off Kenosha, can I claim that I found it to avoid prosecution and force the taxpayers to prove that I don't own it?
: : All Paul did was make himself a pariah in the Great Lakes dive community and cost Wisconsin taxpayers a lot of money.
: : I simply can't understand why Paul would try to set such a selfish and destructive precedent. If he is able, through some loophole, to secure ownership of the Rosinco, the results would be catastrophic for historic Great Lakes wrecks and for the Great Lakes wreckdiving industry. His assertion is much worse than the old finders/keepers ethic. He is actually raiding a wreck found by someone else that was already protected by State law.
: : Just because Paul may be able to wriggle through loopholes in the law, it still doesn't make it right or good public policy. Paul's pursuance of the Rosinco boils down to plain selfishness on his part. He should have simply paid the fines when he got caught stealing and crawled back into his hole. He would have saved the taxpayers a lot of money and there would have been one less challenge to the already tenuous protection that our Great Lakes shipwreck have from souvenir hunters.
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: : : I just heard that there may have been a resolution in the court case over the ownership of the Roscinco. Has anyone heard about this and do you know what the outcome was?
: : : Thanks,
: : : Ed
In response to Joe Diver;
I think some good will come out of Paul testing the law. It will establish whether this was good law or bad law.Laws should only be established when they can stand up to the challenges thrown at them. If you want to blame someone for wasting taxpayer money, the archiology community pressed for passage of laws regardless of whether the public wanted them or not. I suspect they were counting on no one spending the money to challenge them. In the past , they would just threaten and not press the issue. Hence there would be no test of the law. I don't advocate going back to the way things were before the law, but the legality of the rules should be determined.
As far as Paul going to a well known wreck found by others, Paul was on the wreck long before it was a well known wreck, along with the finder,John Steele, myself, and a few others.