007 Magazine wins complaint against MI6 Confidential

This is old news dating back to June, news I've only just discovered through some research following a thread I'd just noticed at MI6 trashing Graham Rye and unsurprisingly mentioning nothing of the fact that MI6 were deemed by the ASA to have used "Misleading Advertising" through bizarrely naive claims that their magazine, MI6 Confidential, was the only Bond magazine available exclusively in print, despite the continued existence of the currently-in-print (and in print for the best part of the last 30 years, at that) 007 Magazine, only the most popular James Bond magazine publication of the last 30 years.

Anyway, here's a copy of both the press release and the ruling of the Advertising Standards Authority:


There's two reasons I'm posting this article on here:

1) I wish to defend 007 Magazine, of which I was a subscriber for many years and have appreciated all of the hard work Graham Rye put into this publication and indeed into the James Bond International Fan Club, painstaking hard work which was by and large done back in the dark days of physical toil and physical mail as opposed to the far more convenient internet age, where most James Bond information is now available at the mere click of a button. Rye was doing a brilliant job at keeping Bond fans informed when most people at MI6 were probably only in diapers if even born at all. Posters at MI6 have completely ignored both the understandable ruling of the ASA and the "ruled as misleading" quote issued by MI6 which could have misled people to believe that Rye's 007 Magazine is no longer available in print, when the guy's been slaving away at the bloody thing for nigh on 30 years. He has every right to have taken issue with this quote.

2) There'd be utterly no point in me making this post at MI6. a) It would possibly be removed immediately, b) I'd likely just get a pile of biased and ignorant responses if the posts on the matter thus far are anything to go by, and c) It's not worth giving them the opportunity to twist it into some kind of justifiable reason for them to ban me from their forums. Over here, things can be discussed fairly and freely, and I can defend Graham Rye and 007 Magazine hopefully safe in the knowledge that my post won't be removed.

Some of the comments I had issues with over in the MI6 thread:

Quote :

Graham, get a life. I always remember him on tv in the 90's , he was the most morose, dull man and did nothing for fans reputation. They rarely honoured subscription obligations, 4 magazines a year was the original annual entitlement...I waited 12 months for just one and then the entitlement wording changed to 4 magazines per subscription, whenever they might come out (???), Real fans don't take the **** out of other fans and certainly don't take advantage of them...at MI6, I feel safe, secure and welcome.

I hear Mr Rye is applying to News International for a job on their relaunch rag!!! lol

The bolded section shows that the guy commenting above must have been on the moon for the last six months, unless he's a new member lulled into a false sense of security that his posts are safe and secure. And I'd consider our treatment at the hands of MI6 earlier this year to have been quite the piss-take if ever there was one. "Real fans" took the piss and all of our hard work in one fell swoop.

Quote :

Integrety is everything here.

So's spelling, by the looks of it, but that's another matter. Integrity? Yeah right, plenty of that was shown towards both the majority of the long-serving and loyal members now rooted here and now towards Mr Rye's quality and established publication. Was telling people who voiced the slightest concern over MI6's new layout to simply "leave" an act of integrity? Unsurprisingly, the above comment came from a moderator.

Quote :

It's true that the feed of information and the respect for the fans are both the best of the best here on MI6. Our hosts take good care of us too and we can't mention that enough.

^ Also from a "mod". Christ, these guys must be on footballer's wages over there. FFS. :roll:

Quote :

In the 90's I was a member of the James Bond International Fan Club. It was, for want of a better word, dire. The feed of news was drip by drip, the obligation of the club to it's members was questionable. MI6 is extremely well respected, it is at the forefront of Bond news and the quality production of a fan magazine. Graham Rye (007 magazine) had the arrogance to attack MI6 with his attempt to discredit the site and it's publication (jealous?)

WTF? Okay, I can understand some slight voices of dissent as 007 Magazine faced tough competition in the 90s due to competition from the internet and scores of other outlets in the wake of Bond becoming immensely popular again, but Rye's publication was nevertheless still the go-to magazine for all things Bond related. And, in the 1980s, not only was the publication far from dire, it was practically all the fans got information-wise, something many fans from that time were extremely grateful for, myself included.

MI6 is extremely well respected? Not any more, mate. Not by many people on other Bond forums, clearly not by 007 Magazine, clearly not enough by EON for them to deem it in any way official or definitive, and clearly not by nearly 100 of it's best members who recently all but left in protest at being treated badly in the wake of the creation of what has been widely deemed as an awful new forum, during which time most of those departed members were treated very poorly with regards to explanations and, in some cases, weren't even afforded plain old good manners or were basically told to bugger off if they didn't like either the new forum or the fact that all of their previous hard-written posts had been nuked.

And this guy calls Rye arrogant? Rye has every right to boast of his achievements with 007 Magazine (hell, he's spent 30 years earning that right, more than can be said for the "arguably redundant in the internet age" latecomer that is MI6 Confidential), and he has every right to defend what could be construed as denial of his magazine's continued existence in print if such comments are naively whacked out by a widely-viewed Bond website.

And this poster accuses Rye of trying to discredit MI6? Is this guy f*cking serious? MI6 were ruled by the ASA to have "misleadingly advertised" to the extent that their comments could have led people to believe that Rye's 007 Magazine was no longer in printed circulation, FFS. If anyone's been potentially "discredited" here it's clearly Rye, as MI6's (amateur? desperate? greedy? ill-researched? or just plain naive?) advertising could have been deemed by people as a denial of Rye's entire f*cking magazine even existing!!!!

And it's hardly Rye who'd be the jealous party here; after all, he's the guy who practically invented James Bond fan-service back in the days when there was barely any to speak of. He's the guy with hundreds of magazines and subscriptions under his belt. He's the guy who gets interviewed on TV and at Bond premieres. He's the guy who's been around as a fan since at least the 70s, slaved away on Bond through the snail-mail age and served his time both as a fan and as a hardworking fan club representative, and continues to do so despite massive competition in the internet age. Even nowadays, he was ahead of the game in his condemnation of Quantum Of Solace, an opinion vilified by some at the time, but now an opinion fairly widely agreed with in Bond circles. Rye is clearly in a completely different league from the scores of netheads who merely created Bond websites after whacking off over Boris in GoldenEye and thinking a half-American clothes horse and an N64 game were what James Bond was all about. This guy has a f*cking legacy compared to pretty much any other Bond site or club out there, so it's hardly Rye who should be jealous.

Anyway, rant over. I just felt this to be a corner worth defending.



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A fair, open-and-shut case of misleading advertising as far as I can tell. I don't see why nuMI6's cheersquad of gullible yoof need to take it so personally. MI6 Confidential won't go bust by altering the offending quote to something accurate.

Most interesting post, Laz. Having given up on both MI6 and Babs Bond some time ago I was unaware of any of this. Thanks for the update.

BTW, does this thread on 007 Magazine's forum refer to you or some other Lazenby?

Lazenby. wrote:

1) I wish to defend 007 Magazine, of which I was a subscriber for many years and have appreciated all of the hard work Graham Rye put into this publication and indeed into the James Bond International Fan Club, painstaking hard work which was by and large done back in the dark days of physical toil and physical mail as opposed to the far more convenient internet age, where most James Bond information is now available at the mere click of a button. Rye was doing a brilliant job at keeping Bond fans informed when most people at MI6 were probably only in diapers if even born at all. Posters at MI6 have completely ignored both the understandable ruling of the ASA and the "ruled as misleading" quote issued by MI6 which could have misled people to believe that Rye's 007 Magazine is no longer available in print, when the guy's been slaving away at the bloody thing for nigh on 30 years. He has every right to have taken issue with this quote.

2) There'd be utterly no point in me making this post at MI6. a) It would possibly be removed immediately, b) I'd likely just get a pile of biased and ignorant responses if the posts on the matter thus far are anything to go by, and c) It's not worth giving them the opportunity to twist it into some kind of justifiable reason for them to ban me from their forums. Over here, things can be discussed fairly and freely, and I can defend Graham Rye and 007 Magazine hopefully safe in the knowledge that my post won't be removed.

Fair points to be sure, however, I also remember Graham Rye, and his reputation was well deserved. The good, the bad, and the ugly...all of it. It will come as no surprise to many that I was outraged at the way he closed down the club back in the late 90's/early 00's (I'm too lazy to try and dig up my old Usenet posts on the matter) and was quite vocal about it. I distinctly remember a message from the club telling all subscribers, and I'm almost quoting here: 'No refunds, so don't waste your time emailing us about it.'

I mean, there was absolutely no sympathy for the people who had invested in his club and who were now going to be out of money because he was closing down the club/magazine. Not even an apology. I understood times were tough and that maybe the magazine had become cost prohibitive, but what I could not accept was the brusque nature with which he treated his club members. It was cold and ruthless. I've never paid any attention to his site or his magazine since (though I do own almost every issue from 1997 backward; I don't think I've bought anything since).

And you have to remember that I ignored a lot of complaints about him at the time simply because I either didn't know enough about the subject matter (someone was constantly complaining about a prop Odd Job bowler hat versus a real one, and that Graham was lying about it....or something) or I suspected professional jealousy. But I got to see firsthand his attitude towards his customer base with that message he put out about the club; I saw it with my own two eyes, unfiltered, and unbiased. I also used to hear from people running other clubs in Europe...people who wouldn't hurt a flea; some of the nicest people you'd ever want to meet, and they couldn't say anything nice about Rye. They'd often try to clam up and say nothing because it was obvious they didn't want to have to go through another battle with Rye about something.

So, while he may have been a dedicated fan and a creative fan club president at one point, like a lot of brilliant minds he was also hard to deal with, lacked social skills, and was basically aloof towards his customer base.

Wasn't benny lead editor of Mi6 Confidential?

The magazine will probably stop publishing without any warning.

See what I did there?

Quote :

Fair points to be sure, however, I also remember James Page, and his reputation was well deserved. The good, the bad, and the ugly...all of it. It will come as no surprise to many that I was outraged at the way he closed down the forum back in 2011 (I'm too lazy to try and dig up my old MI6 Community posts on the matter) and was quite vocal about it. I distinctly remember a message from the mods telling all users, and I'm almost quoting here: 'It's all gone, so don't waste your time emailing us about it.'

I mean, there was absolutely no sympathy for the people who had invested in his forum and who were now going to be out of memories and friends because he was closing down the forum. Not even an apology. I understood times were tough and that maybe the forum had become cost prohibitive, but what I could not accept was the brusque nature with which he treated his users. It was cold and ruthless. I've never paid any attention to MI6 Community since.

And they say history doesn't repeat.

Tubes wrote:

Quote :

Fair points to be sure, however, I also remember James Page, and his reputation was well deserved. The good, the bad, and the ugly...all of it. It will come as no surprise to many that I was outraged at the way he closed down the forum back in 2011 (I'm too lazy to try and dig up my old MI6 Community posts on the matter) and was quite vocal about it. I distinctly remember a message from the mods telling all users, and I'm almost quoting here: 'It's all gone, so don't waste your time emailing us about it.'

I mean, there was absolutely no sympathy for the people who had invested in his forum and who were now going to be out of memories and friends because he was closing down the forum. Not even an apology. I understood times were tough and that maybe the forum had become cost prohibitive, but what I could not accept was the brusque nature with which he treated his users. It was cold and ruthless. I've never paid any attention to MI6 Community since.

And they say history doesn't repeat.

I don't have anything to say about the MI6 implosion because I didn't actually see it happen and had been long gone before it did, but I got the...uh, .thrust of it, from several of the members.

I think it actually raises some interesting questions about what kind of role webmasters, fan club presidents, and forum moderators/administrators have towards fans/members when they have any sort of influence.