Messages

361

Legal Controversies Forum / Registering blog posts: Individual? Collective? What?

« on: August 14, 2012, 11:44:31 AM »

With some trepidation, I am going to risk the wrath of all those who have received copyright letters from Getty to ask advice on how to copyright my blog in anticipation of sending a DMCA notice that potentially has some teeth in it.  Specifically: If I send a DMCA notice I want to have registration and evidence in place to demonstrate that a violation or violations did occur and to do so in a way that could potentially make filing a suit something other than a costly futile exercise on my part.

As some read on

http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/legal-controversies-forum/google-to-start-devaluing-sites-that-receive-a-large-number-of-valid-copyright-i/30/

I believe my blog content is being copied. I did not authorize this copying.  blah. blah.    But now, I'm contemplating what sort of files etc. I should collect, and what sort of actions I might take in the event that I file a DMCA and the person copying files a counter-notification forcing me to sue if I want my stuff taken down.   (I don't think it will come to that-- but I don't see much good in filing a DMCA if I'm not prepared to deal with a counter-notification.)


Now for the questions:

1. Are my blog posts 'published' as far as copyright law is concerned? I ask because registering 30 posts would be cheaper if they are all considered "unpublished".  Obviously, under the circumstances, I do want to keep my sunk costs low.  But there would be no point in registering as "a collection" if a hypothetical case benefits greatly from having things registered 'individually'.

(I read an online circular describing registering for online content.  It discussed different requirements for "published" vs. "unpublished" works.  Reading it I can't figure out if my blog posts are "published" or "unpublished". (The requirement seemed to suggest that merely "displaying" doens't make it published. Publication happens if I sell it, lease it or offer it for sale or lease.)   I know I've displayed. Last week I added a script to include "google ads" in the sidebar.    I think the script would be the closest thing to offering for sale or lease. (I'm going to take that out as there are no clicks anyway.  )

2.  What sort of information should I log and collect? I plan to collect the following each day:
   * serverlogs to show the bot visited.
   * screenshots of the page as it displays at the business entity.
   * screenshost of my page.
   * html of my page downloaded each day.

Is there other stuff I should try to collect?

Does any one else have advice on what steps would be prudent "just in case"?

362

Legal Controversies Forum / Re: Google to start devaluing sites

« on: August 14, 2012, 08:34:09 AM »

Greg/Troy,
I found it here:

http://www.ofbrooklyn.com/2010/11/3/hacker-news-effect-post-mortem/

363

Legal Controversies Forum / Re: Google to start devaluing sites

« on: August 14, 2012, 12:02:08 AM »

Greg Troy (KeepFighting)

The reason it's possible to redirect is that they are copying my whole page. They are copying the human readable content, the html mark up, the links to my javascript resources, links to my cascade style sheets etc.   Because they copy the javascript which humans would not see when reading the page normally, the redirect works at the new destination!

All day, I have marveled at this company. I found this image:

<a href="http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/HighlightOfNovPriorities.jpg" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/HighlightOfNovPriorities-386x500.jpg" alt="" title="HighlightOfNovPriorities" width="386" height="500" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-20462" /></a>

Note I circled something that reads "Fix Frame Buster Buster".   If so, I may have busted their frame-buster-buster.  )

If so, I wrote a frame-buster-buster-buster!  Though, of course they may eventually escalate to a frame-buster-buster-buster- buster.   

364

Legal Controversies Forum / Re: Google to start devaluing sites

« on: August 13, 2012, 11:19:12 PM »

By the way: I'm perturbed by this situation because this isn't just a garden variety scraper with a blogspot splog making money selling google ads. This appears to be a "hot new thing" with some venture capital funding and which is selling "premium memberships" to people who use the service.  I really think it's important for these "hot new things" to understand that if their "product" is -- essentially-- pulling together content others created and putting a nice bow on it, they should approach the content creators with a monetary offer.  The pretty bow is nice and everything-- and it may well be that the pretty bow makes customers willing to pay for product. But still....  In this particular case there actually is a principle involved. 

365

Legal Controversies Forum / Re: Google to start devaluing sites

« on: August 13, 2012, 06:24:41 PM »

Who'd pay?

366

Legal Controversies Forum / Re: Google to start devaluing sites

« on: August 13, 2012, 05:25:13 PM »

Well... someone using a bot was copying my blog. 
http://www.newsblur.com/site/1100897/

(I should mention, I also blogged about the event.)
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/newsblur-a-modest-proposal/

367

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: An Experiment Against Getty

« on: August 06, 2012, 05:32:55 PM »

Stinger-- Did you get the letter from Kirk? Or Durbin?  I was putting off writing until I heard back from getting again. But I could write one to which ever seems to be moving along on this.

368

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Are Screenshots from the Wayback Machine useful as evidence?

« on: August 02, 2012, 10:10:07 PM »

Ahh! I see why the Wayback machine might not be good evidence.

The thing to remember: Images in a web site appear there through links.  The wayback sometimes changes the links and sometimes does not.  In both cases, there can be issues with using the screen shot as evidence of what happened in the past:

The links on archived Web sites may remain active
but link to different material from that associated with
the Web page at the time that it was archived. The linked
material may be to current sites or to other stored link sites
from a different time. Indeed, links may connect to current
active sites and show current banner advertisements
available at the site, rather than linking to sites as they
existed at the date of capture. ...

... In
short, the process of copying a Web site for archiving may
result in changes to the extent that the archived Web site
may not show accurately the links that existed at the time
shown for the Web site storage date. The Alexa Internet
crawler technology rewrites the original link code in html
to re-direct links to current or stored links.

The fact that the wayback sometimes changes the html of the page -- and in particular the links--would matter in court.  In cases about images, the images only appear through links. So, this can matter.  But how exactly it mattered will depend on what happened--- still.  It's interesting. Wayback machine evidence might not hold up.

369

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: An Experiment Against Getty

« on: August 02, 2012, 07:54:32 PM »

I'm in Lisle. Given how large the districts are I wasn't sure how far you would be. My mom is in Libertyville. My sisters are in Highland Park and New Lenox.

370

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Do I have to prove innocence? Interesting spot with Getty.

« on: July 31, 2012, 10:23:10 PM »

Also, if they do send their demand to a collection agency, you must must write a letter or complaint to the attorney general.  Post a draft here so people can make sure that the fact that they have no right to use a collection agency to intimidate you into paying when there is no debt anywhere except in the mind of Getty.

371

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: An Experiment Against Getty

« on: July 31, 2012, 10:02:02 PM »

My letters went to:
The Honorable
Peter Roskam
The Honorable
Richard Durbin
The Honorable
Mark Kirk

Both Kirk and Roskam? My rep is Judy Biggert.

372

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Multiple Roles on ELI and the bigger copyright extortion fight

« on: July 30, 2012, 10:49:18 PM »

As far as I am concerned, I believe my job is to build up and facilitate a platform for people's "mini-projects".  What that means is whatever your efforts might be, it becomes magnified and communicated large scale to hundreds and thousands of people worldwide.

That's what I see it as too!

Things continue to change and evolve.  I have mixed feelings about going "International".  I get concerned that when you try to serve too many people, no one is well-served.

I think I just expressed a similar thought on another thread.

But I don't think Robert's comment about my site being international was meant to suggest you ought think about providing international support.
What Robert meant by my having an international audience is that I have a blog that's read by people in a lot of countries. In contrast, he mostly creates business oriented web sites whose market is the US. What that means is that we have different options when limiting bot traffic.  For many small businesses (say a Vet marketing services in Iowa) if you blocked IP outside the US, your business would not suffer even a tiny bit. Other businesses could limit to "everyone in the English speaking world".  In contrast, I really truly have visitors from all over on any given day.  So the path of blocking "Israel" is not  attractive to me. But it could be a very good way for someone running a US based very local small business. 

Oddly enough, if ELI were going full bore on bot blocking you would fall in my camp: your audience in international even if you, Matt, are focusing on US advice. So no matter what bot/picscout etc. issues you had, you would not want to block all IPs in particular countries to solve the problem.  But some of our visitors might-- and possibly should do so.

373

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Copyright Extortion Worldwide

« on: July 30, 2012, 10:06:46 PM »

Matt--
In many ways this is a crowd sourcing project. You can only 'support' countries if some people from that country step forward and begin to do some of the work themselves. 

Some information and action is generic.  For example: it's useful for people everywhere to learn they aren't the only one in this boat. It's useful for people to be able to arrive and post a comment. (Australians and The Dash! Who'd a thunk?!)

But we know Oscar cannot provide specific legal guidance about laws outside the US. Moreover, he is busy enough as with US cases that it would be counter productive for him to try to educate himself on nuances of copyright "everywhere". 

So I think your current path is good: If people arrive and want to discuss a country, you can open a thread. Then hope that someone in the other country will be inspired to create a useful forum and support it. That's one of the great strengths of the internet.

374

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Recieved a demand letter today

« on: July 30, 2012, 08:18:03 PM »

Out of curiosity, how do the clouds in the image compare? I suspect that picscout's image search triggered on the three little "puffs" between the two big clouds.   If I were writing an algorithm that might be enough to send a human to look to see if your image might be photoshopped with a portion taken from theirs. But -- at the scale you displayed, the large clouds did not resemble each other in the two images.

375

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Do I have to prove innocence? Interesting spot with Getty.

« on: July 30, 2012, 06:57:09 PM »

You can always repeat you are not a business and tell them that should the time come, you will be able to prove that in court.  Getty is making a claim; they aren't the judge.

In the meantime, ask them information about the copyright registration and evidence they have a license. They won't give you either, but it's to your benefit to have information about those things. So, meanwhile, try to find the copyright registration yourself.