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1081

Legal Controversies Forum / Why Disney might want to 'Escape From Tomorrow'

« on: January 24, 2013, 08:43:53 PM »

Will Disney sue or let this slide???

discussion? thoughts? opinions?

Princesses transformed into ghouls. Psychedelic teacup rides. Simulated suicide. The world's most famous theme park turned into a vomitorium.

In an audacious act of filmmaking, he shot it almost entirely at Disney World and Disneyland -- all without Disney's knowledge or permission.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/24/showbiz/movies/escape-tomorrow-sundance-disney/index.html?hpt=hp_t4

1082

Getty Images Letter Forum / Google announces changes to its' Image Search

« on: January 24, 2013, 05:18:15 PM »

This will likely piss of some artists and photogs...or at the very least make it a topic of discussion once again..

Artists and photographers tend to have mixed feelings about Google Image Search. Though Google’s use of thumbnails of images was ruled to be a fair use in 2007, many feel that Google doesn’t do enough to prevent misuse of their images and that the service caters to individuals who are looking to infringe (knowingly or unknowingly) on copyright.
As such, every time that Google announces an update to Google Image Search, there’s bound to be some controversy and concern and Google announced one such update yesterday.

Since the changes haven’t rolled out yet, it’s impossible to know for certain how they will impact artists but it’s clear looking at the screenshots and changes that there’s going to be some good and some bad with them.

http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2013/01/24/google-updates-image-search-artists-to-see-changes/

People looking for images on Google often want to browse through many images, looking both at the images and their metadata (detailed information about the images). Based on feedback from both users and webmasters, we redesigned Google Images to provide a better search experience. In the next few days, you’ll see image results displayed in an inline panel so it’s faster, more beautiful, and more reliable. You will be able to quickly flip through a set of images by using the keyboard. If you want to go back to browsing other search results, just scroll down and pick up right where you left off.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2013/01/faster-image-search.html

1083

UK Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: ipprotection.net letter

« on: January 24, 2013, 12:21:45 PM »

I have named them!? - ipprotection.net

Perhaps I was not being clear in my communication...naming, shaming and sharing information, meaning, name the a-hole who signed the letter, name the law firm, consider sharing the actual letter(s) with us to post to our scribd library...drag them into the public eye for who they are and what they do.. with all of this info we can "report" on them..they don't like this exposure, and ultimately it helps others...help us to help you... I'll se what other dirt i can dig up on these guys first chance I get..

1084

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Received a Letter from Masterfile

« on: January 24, 2013, 10:45:32 AM »

Dear stinger, lucia, Mr. Troy, SoylentGreen, and Mr. Krausankas,

First, my sincere thanks for your input - this forum has indeed aided in the return to a calmer frame of mind.

Secondly, because I was embarrassed to do so, I left part of the story unsaid - I had only shared it with Mr. Krausankas because he came on-line while I was in my initial state of panic which quickly turned to anger at the realization of the outrageous nature of Masterfile. Not only have I been without income for an entire year; I have lost my home and am living with a friend. I have run out of savings and have no health insurance. I have an outstanding medical bill for which I am paying $10 per month. I am at the worst financial place that one could possible be. I have no assets and there is nothing more I can do to produce any cash that Masterfile could lay claim to.

Receiving the demand letter from Masterfile initially cased me to become seriously depressed and I wanted to give up - fact is, I almost did. But you people became the light at the end of the tunnel and I am so very sincere when I tell you that you have my heartfelt thanks for all you do - not just for me, but for all those who find themselves caught in this type of legalized extortion. This forum helped me to get past the self-pity and move to outrage over this type of scare tactic and bullying.

Again, you have my thanks - and my respect.

"This to shall pass" hang tough..I'm a firm believer things happen for a reason, a positive reason..we may not "see" that reason now or in a month, but somewhere down the road, you'll be able to look back and see it...

1085

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: off topic thread for the tech geeks (Lucia)

« on: January 24, 2013, 08:45:59 AM »

There are lots of twitterbots too; I think their goal is advertizing/seo for their customers (not the site visited).  If you post a link to twitter, a swarm comes and it comes instantaneously.   Because my site is only a blog  I ban most of those too.  Eli probably should too (though I don't think anyone is tweeting ELI's address much. But if it does, most twitter bots are useless.  A few might be useful-- someone could let them in and block the others.)

No ELI's address is not getting tweeted often, I would like to change that however, and have been concentrating some effort into getting a bit more exposure via twitter... I'm not going to go nuts blocking bots , as I don't have the time to invest, but I will make the time if server resources are effected enough in a negative way.. This could easily be a full time job...I lalready have 2 or 3 of those..

1086

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: off topic thread for the tech geeks (Lucia)

« on: January 24, 2013, 08:41:55 AM »

We don't use php, but IIS7.5 uses htaccess and webconfig, so a lot of items that can be written for those types of files, I can use.  Was just hoping for some software that will help automate it a bit and make it easier.  From some more research last nite, it looks like URL rewrite will do what I am wanting to do, just that it is time consuming and I have an entire company network to manage along with being a webmaster and the network security specialist.

You know I was so curious to why our website that I had not worked on much all of sudden last year had almost doubled the traffic hits and bandwidth, only to realize later that it is scanning and trolling bots making my life a living hell.  Our site is static, but when we started posting more on on our twitter and FB pages with links back to our website, it seems the "trolls" got interested in us.  I suppose popularity comes at a price 

ahhhhh, there are a number of bots that come running when things are posted on twitter, it's known as a twitter swarm, most of them seem to come from amazonaws.com IPs...

1087

UK Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: ipprotection.net letter

« on: January 24, 2013, 08:05:16 AM »

and you folks are keeping names and whatnot hidden why??? The 2 main purposes of ELI are to "share" information to better inform those that get letters, and to also expose these sleezebags... Not naming and shaming them, just allows them to continue with no ill effects... It's completely your choice to continue to stand in the shadows, but ELI as a whole will only be able to help so much with limited info and resources.

1088

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: off topic thread for the tech geeks (Lucia)

« on: January 23, 2013, 12:32:23 PM »

Carnac predicts: They will violate robots.txt.

 i totally agree, but see when they do I can call them out on it, and slam Brandwatch for being shifty in their practices and liars!!

1089

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: off topic thread for the tech geeks (Lucia)

« on: January 23, 2013, 12:22:13 PM »

make no mistake, they are blocked...albeit at this time thur robots.txt...i'll be watching in case i need to be more proactive..I'll also be looking at zblock.

1090

Getty Images Letter Forum / off topic thread for the tech geeks (Lucia)

« on: January 23, 2013, 10:58:03 AM »

Since moving the ELI site to new servers and working on bugs, glitches and other items, I had the opportunity to have a look at the log files and made a couple of discoveries of interest..

Something somewhere was triggering mod-security to block IP's, the last issue I looked into led to the discovery of 46 alerts triggered! yes 46 different alert strings! I immediately suspected some sort of bot, crawler or scraper. As it turns out a crawler named "magpie crawler" was hammering the server relentlessly.

some quick research told me that magpie crawler is owned and operated by a company named "Brandwatch" and there are plenty of google entries slamming them for being "bad bots" and sucking away bandwidth like crazy..

Who are Brandwatch?

"We are a social media monitoring company, helping our customers find useful and relevant comments and discussion on the web. We crawl blogs, forums, news sites, and all kinds of social media content. The content is indexed, much like a search engine, allowing our users to find the pages that mention the words they are interested in."

Brandwatch is apparantly involved in "Online Reputation Management and Brand Tracking in Social Media". They have a crawler that will just swamp a reasonably small site. No pacing, no maximum number of requests per second, just blast away at the fastest possible rate they can.

They perform no useful function for ELI or our users / readers. They sell information to their clients on who is talking about them. That's right, they are trawling ELI in order to sell information to someone who is worried we might be saying something negative.

Don't be surprised is someone from Brandwatch appears in this thread, apologizing and justifying their bots behavior, it is their typical MO. At this time they "claim" they adhere to robots.txt, I have my doubts, they will be monitored closely, and worst case they will get their IP range blocked from ELI.

1091

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Got the letter ....A question and my plan....

« on: January 22, 2013, 06:08:11 PM »

replying has it's merits, IF if were to go in front of a judge, the judge would see you at least acknowledged it, ignoring it could put you in a bad light...they would have to file where you are, which in your case they would have to follow canadian law, hire a canadian lawyer, etc...eventually the whole thing will go away..3 years to be exact...you just have to tough it out for a while..

1092

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Received a Letter from Masterfile

« on: January 22, 2013, 05:48:15 PM »

This is why it's important to post these thing in the public..it was me that suggested possibly dissolving the LLC, and apparently that was a bad suggestion! But hey i'm not perfect by any means....Masterfile hasn't filed anything lately because they just had their asses handed to them with help from Oscar, and they are in the middle of figuring out how to appeal this case...

1093

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Got the letter ....A question and my plan....

« on: January 22, 2013, 05:44:53 PM »

tell them this is a claim not a debt, they are required to send it back to Getty, tell them if they contact you again you will report them for misbehaving and not following the laws regarding the fair debt collection act ( or whatever it is called), they have no standing...then prepare to get a letter from ass hat seattle attorney Timothy B. McCormack....easy peasy..

In their letter they did say it was "the settlement of an image infringement claim."   So do you mean because they are a debt collection agency they have no business getting involved?

I looked up Timothy B. McCormack the lawyer.  Just wondering why that part would be easy peasy.

Thanks for the input.

"collection agencies" can only collect debts...this is clearly not a debt...so yes you are correct, they have no business being involved...this was/is the easy/peasy part...they have to abide by federal guidelines or risk being reported and fined...

Timmy is just a collection attorney...he can't sue you unless they allow him to, and they have never filed suit over 1 image and in the very few cases they have filed Timothy B McCormack was NEVER the attorney...says alot of Timmy right there...he's a friggin clerk, drinking from the kool-aid keg...

1094

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Ongoing List of Copyright Trolling Firms and those associated with them

« on: January 22, 2013, 05:35:41 PM »

Lets all give Darlene Connor / Recovery Specialist from NCS IP Solutions LLC a nice warm and fuzzy welcome to the list of copyright trolls....she may not be a troll herself, but she's certainly guilty by association!

1095

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Got the letter ....A question and my plan....

« on: January 22, 2013, 05:32:07 PM »

in the meantime I'll be adding Darlene Connor / Recovery Specialist to the ever growing list of scumbag copyright trolls....