Response to Censorship on this news group

I am afraid I will have to disagree with all you guys and give reason to Volker. After all, if he wants to express his opinion (that Bergger film is made by Forte, which is probably true) on this forum, he should be free to do it, otherwise we shouldn't consider it an open disussion forum. If Bergger people complained to the moderator about this comment being shown and he obediently deleted it from his server, this is - I believe - quite undemocratic and can be called censorship. As for the propability of a manufacturer making some kind of material for another firm, this is very usual in our days, and I don't believe it being something the companies shoud keep secret. I know very well that Ilford, for instance has been making B+W paper for another BIG photo manufacturer (I will not mention the name, in order not to be censored) and Agfa was talking with another BIG manufacturer in order to agree that he starts making the Multicontrast paper for them (I don't know if they came to an agreement, finally) a few years ago. I have also heard about Tetenal and Forte making stuff for other companies and so the hypothesis that Forte is making the Bergger film seems to me quite plausible. It seems that Forte has a fine setup for making classic, old tech B+W stuff and I would very much appreciate any kind of classic B+W product that would be offered to me as a consumer. As for the fact that Volker assumed that this hypothesis is true just because he found the two films being similar, I don't think it is a sin, we all came sometime before some kind of doubt of this kind (for example, "is TMax P3200 different that the 400, or are they the same film in different packages") and we sometimes drew some conclusion that we kept on believing aftewards as if we had seen proof about it. I think it is the result of the past experience that we all have of cheating from the big companies (not only those in the photographic industry) that has taken place so many times in the past. We have to defend ourselves in some way, otherwise we will all be used any way they like and not even be aware of it. I am certainly not talking here about small companies like Bergger, that I like very much, but about much bigger ones, like Mc Kodak's for instance. Finito.

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