Write Speed:
Setting the Record Straight
Editorial by Dave Phillips
December 8, 1999

===BEGIN INTERVIEW QUOTE===

Sam Wiley: David, can you give us a little of the history of Echostation, and how it was founded?

Dave Phillips: Back on CompuServe, the Science Fiction/Fantasy Forum was home to a fairly well-traveled Star Wars message board section. Five members of that group eventually decided to put together a "newsletter" of sorts, and upload it into the forum's library for other folks to download, read, and enjoy. It started off as a Windows .WRI file...you may or may not be familiar with the term "Tower of Icons"...basically, the main "page" of the document would open, and there were icons that you could click to open up each individual article or feature in another instance of Wordpad. Sounds extremely primitive by today's standards with everyone so familiar with the internet...but you've got to remember that this was back in 1993 and 1994...the "web" as it is today was still in its infancy, and this was pretty much the best option they had. I've still got the original version sitting on my hard drive...and every once in a while I open it up just to remember exactly how far Echo's come over the years. <g> But that's how the first two editions of Echo Station went out.

As this little newsletter got to be more popular, one of those original folks (who happened to be a computer professional by trade and had a good bit of skill in this area) named Matt Hart whipped up what became known as "the JAG Engine", and another step in the evolution of Echo Station took place. This new version wasn't just text any more...it was now an executable that was downloaded and installed on your (Microsoft Windows based) system, and then you would run it just like any other executable. This brought Echo into a more multimedia-enabled stage of life, as it could now contain things like larger graphics, embedded sound files, and enhanced interior navigation which acted much like the hyperlinks that everyone's familiar with on the web - click on the title of an article, and it would load in the program's operating window. You could use the "back", "next", and "contents" buttons to navigate around through the entire "issue" as they were now called. Issues came out whenever enough content got put together to release one, but the aim was to get them out the door on a quarterly basis. It was during this phase of things that both Loren and I got involved with EchoStation...Loren in July of 1995 and myself in December of 1995. Loren did a few book reviews and contributed to the "Diversions" aspect of Echo...things like "Top 10 Lists", etc., while I got involved doing interviews of authors as well as some work on those same "Diversions" pieces. Echo continued to grow, ultimately becoming the only Star Wars fan-based effort to make it onto all three of the "big" online services - AOL, MSN, and multiple forums on Compuserve.

The next stage of Echo's evolution came as we made the move to the internet. Initially, we found a home (as many sites have) on Simplenet at the domain http://echo.simplenet.com It was there that I began to get more involved, doing things like coding up a CGI/Perl message board system for the fledgling site, as well as getting more involved in the day-to-day running of the overall efforts. Unfortunately, our transition to the web didn't result in quite the splash that we expected...we were lucky if we got a few hundred hits per month, and much of Echo's staff drifted away during this time. There still wasn't all that much going on in the Star Wars Universe...certainly nothing like the insanity that's taken place over this past year...and so unfortunately we just weren't drawing in as many people to the site as we thought we would. We were stagnating...and as with anything else that starts to grow stale, you ultimately have to decide if it's even something that you want to continue doing or if you're willing to put in the effort to make it what you want it to be.

In August of 1997, after a few discussions with the remaining staff on the topic, I went ahead and registered www.echostation.com and got us up and running at the URL that everyone knows us as these days. This being a fan-based effort, we didn't have any sponsors or anything, so I went ahead and paid for the domain fees as well as the hosting for the site since I was in the best position to do so. We still weren't doing a remarkable number of hits or anything, but we were at least back on track and growing like we should have been. It was that growth that really triggered the next move - expansion. We found a few websites that were great sites in and of themselves but were looking for a new home, and we elected to add them to Echo as one of the third level domains (like collectibles.echostation.com mentioned earlier) off of our site. As we continued to grow and expand, we started having to deal with things like added web space, more IP addresses needed, and ultimately bandwidth fees as our traffic increased beyond the levels supported by the whatever plans we could negotiate with the hosting companies we dealt with...and we dealt with a number of them. We must have switched hosting providers no less than 4 times within 6 months trying to find a "home" for the site with little success. The cost of running echostation.com grew to the point where it was just easier for me to get a dedicated server rather than deal with the mounting charges from hosting companies...so that's what I did. In early 1998, Echo Station moved to it's own dedicated server for the first time...and that's when things really started taking off.

With an entire server to play with, I could add the things I'd always wanted for the site - better message boards, chat rooms, database enabled applications, our own mail server...all the features that you never really know you need until you get to where you want to use them but you don't have access to do so. We moved up to a robust, "real" message board system (which is still in use on our site...and our hosted sites as well...today) with integrated chat capability, and started really getting serious about expanding the site. More sites wanted to join up with Echo...but some wanted to just be hosted on our servers and maintain their own identities and websites. They had heard we had our own server and capabilities, and they were tired of dealing with other web hosting companies - the same things we'd felt. So that's when the next stage came in Echo Station's development...we became a web hosting provider for other Star Wars websites.

I put a page with hosting rates and fees out on echostation.com, and about a dozen sites ultimately wound up living with us on that server. We branched out a bit and tried creating a website at www.echostation.net to handle the web hosting and design aspects of what we were doing...but after about the fifth business showed up in my inbox asking the same question - "Do you HAVE to be a Star Wars website to use your hosting services?" - it was time to go even further than that. This wasn't just a little side project any more...it was turning into a business, and that's not what it was meant to be. Echo Station is about Star Wars, pure and simple...to try and maintain that image while also creating a business presence under the same name just didn't make sense. It lacked the professionalism that would be required of any serious efforts that were made into developing a company, and so a separation of the two entities - the Star Wars fansite and the emerging web hosting and design company - had to take place.

So, the split was made, and that's how NovaTech Web Services at http://www.novatech.net got born in mid-1998. It was actually Loren that came up with the name for the new entity. It was kind of catchy, "NovaTech" had a nice ring to it, and so we went with it. Echo Station continued as it always has as a Star Wars entity, without the headaches and hassles of having to become a company with official standing, etc., like you have to deal with when you start entering into business relationships with people. There are still a number of the best Star Wars websites hosted on our servers (oh yes, there's more than one these days <g>), but they're all "officially" handled as NovaTech clients...and NovaTech has grown into a fairly respectable company in it's own right, hosting hundreds of domains from clients as far away as Pakistan, Asia, and Europe as well as all over North America. As we've grown, we've helped our Star Wars sites as much as we could each step of the way...after all, if it weren't for them, none of this would have been possible...so I try and do things for them like making sure they're registered in the bigger search engines, and just generally keep a closer tab on how they're doing. Not that our business clients suffer from lack of attention mind you.<g>

===END INTERVIEW QUOTE===

So, as you can see, I've never "taken" echostation.com away from anyone...it's been mine all along. I give credit where credit is due where "Echo Station" is concerned...but echostation.com is most definitely mine. I registered it, I paid for it, and I've dedicated an enormous amount of time, effort, and energy (and money, mind you) to get it (and keep it) up and running. However, there are those who would still have you believe that I "stole" something from them...and that's just simply not the case. What we're dealing with in that particular instance is a rather sad individual who doesn't have much to do in life except, apparently, whine and complain about me to other people around the internet in an attempt to generate sympathy for himself while also attempting to turn people against Echo Station and all that it does. For the sake of argument, let's call this person "Bob" while I'm furthering answering the question of Echo Station's ownership.

"Bob", at one time, was deeply and heavily involved with Echo Station...nobody in their right mind would dispute that fact. He did a great job in doing what he was good at - getting articles in from people on time, proof reading and editing them (though he did tend to be a bit too heavy handed on with the editorial sword for a few people's tastes...but that's neither here nor there), and generally working in an administrative role for Echo Station.

The problems came when Echo Station started growing. As I mentioned in the inteview with Sam, Echo Station, on it's Simplenet subdomain, was completely and utterly stagnant and dying. There's no question about that...nor do I believe anyone who was actually involved at the time would disagree with me, either. So, after a few discussions over the phone and via email (oh yes, "Bob" and I used to chat quite a bit on a daily basis...I don't think you could have ever called us friends, but we were at least friendly coworkers if nothing else) it was decided that we'd move the site to a new domain at www.echostation.com, and hope that things would start jumping for us with a "branded" domain name. Unfortunately nobody else involved with Echo Station, and certainly not "Bob", had the cash for even the $70 domain registration fees let alone for anything like paying for a real web hosting account...so, I bit the bullet and paid the $70 to get us up and running. I also signed the contracts for the web hosting agreements all to be billed to my credit card since, again, nobody else had the funds to do so...and besides, Echo was something I was involved with, so why wouldn't I be willing to do this (relatively) small thing to help it?

As time went by, and we actually did start growing, then the problems magnified even more. Now we weren't just dealing with simple, single domain hosting fees...we started needing additional IP addresses for other domains, which in turn led to using more bandwidth and getting hit with over-utilization charges for the site(s), and Echo Station became an easy $200 to $300 per month (and more) expense in my life on a regular basis. Loren and I started bickering about it amongst ourselves...she wanted Echo Station cut loose from our pursestrings and for someone like "Bob" to start paying for it since, after all, he was "Editor In Chief" of this endeavor and should bear the responsibility along with the happiness he was enjoying from Echo Station's success. But...time's were tight around the "Bob" household, and such was not to be the case. So, I dug in my heels and Loren and I went round and round like you wouldn't believe about the future of Echo Station. Her wanting to kill it off without mercy since she was tired of my agreements to pay for things ever-blossoming into more expenses (such as message board software, still more IP addresses, still higher bandwidth charges...) every time another statement showed up with Echo related charges on it, clashing with my steadfast refusal to compromise on helping Echo Station grow and prosper.

Please don't let me understate this in any manner...Echo Station, in and of itself, went through somewhere in the neighborhood of about $15,000 when all the bills are totalled before we finally took steps to help offset some of the costs by creating NovaTech...but more on that in a moment.

As time went by and echostation.com continued to grow, "Bob's" involvement with the domain became even more sporadic. Articles that had previously gone to him were now showing up in my inbox to get taken care of for editing, coding, and publication on the website. I stayed up for hours on end, usually into the wee hours of the morning, making sure that all was running well on our newly leased dedicated server (yet another attempt to cap our ever-growing expenses...I mean, surely we'd never need more than what an entire server gave to us...right?) and that the message boards, chat server, and other new tools that had been purchased for our continued growth and expansion were running smoothly. Now, "Bob" loves to tell people that he offered to help out with the technical side of things...but well, he's just not a technical kind of guy, at least not at the level we were operating at. So I wound up hanging on the computer until after midnight each night making sure things were working, while he hung out on our chat server talking up all the great things he was doing for Echo Station.

Yes, you read that right...all the great things he was doing. My name hardly, if ever, came up in conversation. This is particularly exemplified by a conversation I had with one of "Bob's" previous employers after he had been removed from Echo Station's staff. They were utterly confused as to why one of their clients (it's a web design company that also removed him from their staff) that was living in an echostation.com subdirectory had disappeared. I explained that after "Bob's" removal from our staff, he was to make sure that everything that was his was gone from our servers, and that's exactly what had happened. "Oh", this person said in an uncertain voice, "he always told us that he owned the servers he was using." We laughed, and later in the conversation came the line "Yes, he tells lots of people lots of things." Pretty accurate statement.

A related topic that, again, never gets mentioned is the favors I did for "Bob". After his aforementioned removal from the staff of the web design company, he had a couple of clients that needed web hosting. Sure, no problem...I set them up on our servers with the understanding that they'd start paying us ("us" being "Loren and I") for their web hosting services which would be great, since it would help offset at least a small part of what running Echo Station was costing us each month. That was part of our friendly agreement about Echo Station - I would keep funding everything and handling all of the technical issues that came up, and he would bring in hosting clients (paying hosting clients, mind you...not the Star Wars websites we'd taken under our wing for free). Months went by and no payments were ever received...although I later found out that "Bob" was indeed getting paid by these people himself for their web hosting, and he just never found a convenient time to forward those funds along to the people that were actually providing the web hosting services...namely, me. Eventually, some time right before the ultimate rift between he and I took place, he did indeed manage to forward along a check for $60. He got a really great deal from me though...more than six months of hosting for 3 domains for $60. Around $3 per month for full domain hosting...yes, I'd say he got a really great deal...and he never did manage to bring in a single paying client to help offset the costs at all. But you'll never hear that part of the story, I'm sure.

The "rift" that I mentioned above took place when Echo Station started getting confusing. "Echo Station", in and of itself, has always been simply a Star Wars domain. When we started the web hosting idea, it was to offset the costs of running echostation.com by hosting other Star Wars websites. Unfortunately, it didn't limit itself to Star Wars websites. As more and more business websites showed up for hosting, we had to make a break and startup NovaTech to keep things clearly separated. NovaTech would be a real business, with real clients, a real invoicing and payment system for its clients...all the usual things a business has.

Now, here's the kicker..."Bob" demanded to be named "President" of this new web hosting company.

No, you're not misreading that at all...the person who had slowly but surely distanced himself from everything we were doing, took credit for my work at every opportunity, failed to hold up his end of our agreement by never bringing a single paying client to help out now wanted to have his name at the head of the table for something he most certainly would have even less involvement with. Needless to say, this wasn't something that either I or Loren were willing to tolerate, and things came to a head. NovaTech would have *nothing* to do with Echo Station's operations..."Bob" was still more than welcome to continue working on the EMag section of Echo Station...but his involvement with NovaTech would be minimal. Our proposal, and it seemed rational, was that "Bob" would in essence be in a "sales" type position for NovaTech. Even though he had failed to bring in any paying clients under the Echo Station umbrella...perhaps he would do so with the NovaTech endeavors, especially since we were offering him a healthy kickback/commission on any clients that he did manage to bring in. However, all clients would be handled as NovaTech clients, and would be invoiced on standard business terms with their fees coming to us (as they should be...) and our payments made to "Bob" on receipt of payment from "his" clients.

Sounds fairly reasonable even now to me...but not to "Bob". His response?

"I'm not a salesman."

In addition, the invoice thing just didn't work for him. He wanted to be able to just show up at his client's offices and demand payment immediately whenever it suited him since he'd been "released" from that previous job, still wasn't working, and essentially wanted to use us for our web hosting so that he could in turn use clients like an ATM whenever he needed cash. Now, first off, nobody does anything resembling a real business initiative like that. You don't just show up at a client and demand payment immediately for things...anyone involved with a real business understands the terms "Net 30 days", and that's how they expect things to take place. Secondly, during my conversation with his previous employer, I caught wind of a little tirade that had been thrown in their front office...and well, that's most definitely not a picture I wanted our fledgling company associated with.

This left us in an ugly position. "Bob" had proven himself to lack technical skills, distanced himself from all the editorial work associated with even keeping Echo Station EMag flowing (which was the entire extent of his involvement with echostation.com), and now just announced he's unwilling to help out in any manner whatsoever...but again, he sure still wanted his name at the head of the table.

If you're not going to be part of the solution, you're part of the problem. So we threw him out the door.

There's really no nice way to say it...but that's what happened. EchoStation.com was ours, both by the fact that we'd fully funded the domain for over a year by that time, and the fact that were it not for that funding and the effort I poured into it over that year, it most definitely would have never gotten to where it was. Besides, as I mentioned, his involvement had been steadily decreasing as time went by, so it was really no loss to what we were trying to do. A couple of new editors came on board (big public thanks again to Gini and Toryn for stepping in, by the way) and handled things incredibly well. Our writers were happier since things were getting published quicker and with fewer headaches...in fact, several folks who'd previously fallen away from contributing to Echo Station due to the problems they'd had came back into the fold after everything took place. I received a number of emails from people saying as much, and we welcomed them back with open arms.

You might get a different version of events if you ask "Bob"...but well, there are still a number of folks that were around Echo at the time that this all happened, and any one of them can tell you the same story I just did. We told "Bob" to pack his bags, have his three domains moved to other servers (where he'd actually have to start paying for them...) within a two week period after which point they'd be removed from our servers completely.

And, actually, that leads me into the second question now that (I think) I've answered this one to death...

2. I heard you tried to steal his news site too...

Long before his domain was even registered, www.starwarsnews.com was registered (and yet again paid for) by me, and we underwent the intitial processes of creating a (duh <g>) Star Wars news based website. Check the registration dates if you're interested... www.starwarsnews.com was registered on May 3rd of 1998. His new domain didn't get rolling until the middle of the following month...when, oddly enough, I was the one that pointed out that maybe we should use another URL. LFL had recently cracked down on a few websites, and we decided it would be in our best interests to not use that domain name. "Bob" said he was able to pay for the registration of a new domain on his own...even though he still wasn't able to pay for those few sites on my servers that he was taking in money from himself, mind you.

Again though, there was never any attempt to "steal" anything at all...in fact, his new domain lived on our servers for a time...until the rift occurred and it moved as well. Quite honestly, I don't know why "Bob" continues to have such an ulcer about things even though we're well more than a year past all these events...he's off doing his thing with his domain, and he's doing what he does best - working in an administrative capacity while other folks do the coding and give him things to work with. He's in his element, we're in ours...and we obviously had (and have) different goals for what we want to accomplish. The split was inevitable, and obviously for the best. He still likes to do things like stealing our meta tags, listing "Echo Station" in the meta tags for his website that has no affiliation with us whatsoever, and trying to use echostation.com as something to point at as something he built and developed ...so I guess that's really the highest compliment he could be paying what we've built Echo Station into - his desperate need to cling to any affiliation with us that he can. Though it does make me wonder how serious he can be about that note on his page about being against internet theft when he's responsible for doing it all the time...

3. Speaking of sites...what's up with dunesea.com anyway?

The events posted on the www.dunesea.com index page speak for themselves, and they are uncontested by any of the actually involved parties. Anyone saying anything different is either deliberately lying, passing on rumors that they've heard, or simply speaking with an agenda of their own.  I'm sorry to see that Rob Beasley has decided to begin recanting this, even though he's admitted over and over again the truth of the events stated on dunesea.com...but I'm really not surprised.   However, here's an email, from his father, which plainly admits the validity of all the events in question, as well as the payment for it:

Robert E. Beasley, Sr.

...too bad his son doesn't have half the honor and integrity he does.

Luckily, a mistake was made in the registration process for that domain that ultimately let me take the steps that would assure the situation would be rectified...which, again, leads me to my next question...

4. Why do some of the WHOIS records for domains hosted on your servers show you as the owner instead of the person running the site?

It's quite simple, really...in some cases, I just messed up. I freely and openly admit that I'm human and occassionally make mistakes from time to time. Like I said, this was very much an "on-the-fly" operation when things first started up and we were really flying by the seat of our pants. Who was I to know that it took a notarized and witnessed Act of God to get a domain's registrant information changed to someone else's name? I just added things in for people as fast as I possibly could, thinking that everything else could be changed later once we got everything up and running smoothly. I'd get the emails to create the domain, I'd get the bills for the InterNIC fees (which is what they wanted to happen), and we could worry about anything else later on.

shrug

Like I said, who knew? However, there are domains that we (regrettably) did this with that are up and running around the internet on different servers with different companies...a good case in point is www.swdatabase.com. Ryan moved his site successfully to new servers...even though the registrant information still lists our contact data, it wasn't an issue in the least...in fact, I personally made tons of long distance phone calls back and forth with both Ryan and Network Solutions to make sure that his shift took place when it ran into a few hiccups along the way. I never batted an eye about the long distance charges either...after all, it was my mistake to correct, and so that's what needed doing.

There's also one other way that this might have happened as well...if someone approached us and wanted a domain created immediately, but just didn't have the money for it at the moment...I would go ahead and create the domain for them. For our own safety however, I'd list us as the owners of the domain...that way, in case the person backed out, or never sent the money, or any other number of things happened...we'd at least have something. This problem doesn't exist any more though...we require up-front payment for domain fees at all times from new clients.

One other thing to keep in mind...people don't need me to register their domain names for them. It's not exactly brain surgery to register a domain, and you can even fill out the forms on your own, and pay for it right then and there, to make sure that everything is done the way you want it done. However, we setup domains for new clients every day, and none of them have this sort of problem any more...in fact, many of our clients prefer that we register their domains for them since they don't understand the process and also because as a "business partner" of a domain registry, our domains can still be billed rather than requiring immediate payment, which means we can handle the domain creation for them, and let them receive an invoice from the domain registry directly. Everyone wins.

Oh, and by the way...the only Contact information that really matters with a domain registration are the Registrant related fields. The email addresses listed for Admin, Technical, Billing, Zone, etc., on a domain WHOIS lookup are all instantly changeable via fax from the organization listed in the Registrant fields. Some 12 year old who was kicked out of one of our affiliate sites at some point along the line mentioned the fact that I show up as the Technical Contact for one of our affiliate sites, autographcentral.com, and used that as an example of what a terrible person I was and how I was trying to "steal" that domain. Well, to him (and all the rest of the clueless people talking about things they don't understand) I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that I am the Technical Contact for domains living on our servers, and I have to be. If Network Solutions or any of the other domain registries has a DNS problem or some other technically related issue with one of the domains on our servers, they need to know who to contact (that's what the "Technical" in "Technical Contact" is for, people...) at the hosting company to get things straightened out. Now, Gary (the owner of autographcentral.com) is a great guy and everything...but he doesn't know the first thing about our DNS boxes or anything else regarding our internal operations, so what good would it do for a domain registry to contact him? None whatsoever...which, again, is what the Technical Contact field is for...but perhaps I'm expecting too much of the person who used that as an example. After all, he's only 12 and couldn't possibly understand what he's talking about...but that's that "power of the internet" I mentioned earlier - he doesn't need to understand what he's talking about in order to spout off about me.

As a final note on the matter...the Bill of Rights and the guarantee of Freedom of Speech were never setup to protect libelous and/or slanderous materials. This would be the reason why tabloids routinely lose lawsuits to celebrities about whom they print untrue stories that fall into the realm of "character defamation". Disclaimers are only as meaningful and binding as the intelligence of the person writing them...and I think we've already established that. Besides, if you're going to have the nerve to actually put half truths and rumors into print, at least have the courage to stand behind them, and also to admit it when you're wrong to have done so in the first place.

5. Is your chat server logged?

Yes, for the protection of both our clients and ourselves, anything taking place in a "registered" room is logged on a continual basis. This tool has proved invaluable for dispute resolution, as well as tracking down problems. As a note, private windows do not qualify as "registered" rooms, and are therefore not logged. Private conversations are always just that - private - but the things that take place in our public rooms, especially those of Echo Station and our paying clients, are monitored and logged in order to ensure that if something does go wrong, we'll know where, when, and how it happened. Besides...things that happen in our public chat rooms don't need to be hidden, right? If there's something that shouldn't be commonly viewed by others, odds are good it belongs in a private chat to begin with...because in case you weren't aware, it's entirely possible for someone to be in "listen" mode and view the entire ongoing contents of a chat room without ever actually being in the room, so you'd never know they were there watching you. People are also more than welcome to use any number of other IRC servers around the web that don't worry about their clients and the other people on their servers like we do...that's their prerogative. It's not like any of us have the time to go reading through log files every day anyways...they're only referred to if and when a problem comes up, and even then it's best if we have a specific date and time of the events to help us track things down quickly.

6. Wow...this is nothing like the stories I've been hearing...

I'm not surprised...and welcome to the largest game of "telephone" ever played. It's called "the internet" :-)

In summary...always feel free to ask the source before playing telephone, folks. I've never had a problem discussing things with folks one on one before, and my inbox at dave@echostation.com is always open. I've also been known to make a phone call or two to discuss things with people, so you can always feel free to drop me a note requesting a phone call as well, and I'll be more than happy to get in touch with you as time allows. Hear gossip? Point 'em to this editorial...or hand out my email address freely. Oh, and ask if they've ever talked with or dealt with me directly about it...odds are good you'll get a "no" every time if they're honest :-) Also make sure to ask yourself one simple question: "What is this person really trying to accomplish by telling me this?" If they spent 1/10th of the time working on improving their websites as they do trying to badmouth me, there might actually be a lot more high quality Star Wars websites on the 'net than there are now...but it's easier for them to rant and rave and carry on about things they don't understand than actually trying to develop something on their own and add something positive to the internet. Take that graphical talent and whip up some original artwork that actually benefits your site or the online community in general. Take the intensity you spend finding out half of a story and actually do some research. Everyone's entitled to an opinion though...even the people that don't have a clue that the opinion in their minds has been carefully spoon fed to them by others and that they're being used. So, they can badmouth me all they want...and I just laugh all the harder when they come to our chat servers, or use our free email system, or build a free homepage on the Outposts, or generally make use of any of the other things we've put together to give to the Star Wars community. That's the foundation of Echo Station really...community. We're always adding something new or working on things in the background to make more cool things available to you, our visitors. Even the people that are the loudest in the shouting against us are welcome to use our offerings...well, so long as they're not disruptive to others. We always reserve the right to issue a server ban now and again when the kids act up in a chat room :-)

I've worked too hard and too long to let idle chatter and slanderous rumors chip away at what Echo Station has become without responding any longer...I've dedicated our efforts to providing more free stuff and capabilities for Star Wars fans than anywhere else on the web...and I'm not going to let some disgruntled children playing games affect that in the least.

(Dave Phillips is lead webmaster for this website, has always been, and will always be.   He believes it's your perrogative to believe whom you wish, but is absolutely sick to death of discussing total falsehoods and outright lies.  However, if you've got some free time, love STAR WARS, and want to be a part of a still rapidly growing and evolving site, he'd love it if you'd drop him a note.)

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