Will Robin McKinly please step forward ?
Yesterday I was given notice about a site who was using a stolen design and being rather cocky about it. Today, I take issue with another site, or sites. Who believe that its ok. To steal content. And this time its darn right personal. Because they have stolen mine. I stumbled onto a site called JimSeo.com the other day while I was pricing out a site. The site I was pricing out was BlogHerald.com, we all know it has sold for roughly $72k. One of the tools I was using to price out this site was Technorati. I noticed a high amount of cross links to JimSeo.com. Realized it was straight content theft. Made a note of it, pondered my options. Found out today Calacanis had an issue with these guys too not too long ago. So I kept digging. Found these folks were also aggregating ProBlogger’s Comments at a site called RogerCase.com . They seem to be stealing content from a lot of high profile folks including Matt Cutts over at Google. Looks like they run about 7 of these aggregation sites.
I considered all my options in deciding what the proper means of handling this type of issue was. I decided playing nice just wasn’t cutting it for the most of us. There’s just to0 much damn content theft going on. The people who need to be held responsible are ThePlanet.com, because this “client” uses a bunch of fake emails, disconnected phone numbers, and fake addresses. I have no response from you Robin McKinly. You have 5 days to take down my content on RogerCase.com or else you are going to be facing a nice letter from my lawyer. My content is my content. I’m sick and tired of this bullshit. Consider this my email. You will receive a copy of this in your inbox. I also would like to ask that any current ThePlanet.com customers, and partners please help out in resolving this issue. Seems Jason Calacanis, of Weblogs Inc. contacted them also without any resolution to the problem. It’s very irritating. So let me tell you the sequence of events.
See DMCA would be the easy route. The route I would take, and am going to take for a content in good faith. But this host didn’t verify the address, the real names, or anything. Because when I tried to contact Robin McKinly I had no luck.
So tommorow I send the DMCA to ThePlanet. A simple phone conversation was handled so poorly I wonder what the hell kind of people they have working at ThePlanet. I called at 6:13pm MST, and was greeted by a lovely voice who asked me if she could help me. I explained that there was a site who was stealing my intellectual property. She told me to email them. I asked to speak to the abuse department. She transferred me. Now, what abuse didn’t know was I flashed a quick email out when I found this site. With no reply. But it wasn’t my issue. So I had no real cause. And didn’t expect any response back. But now we have a different story. It’s my thoughts they are stealing now. So at 6:34 after being put on hold for 21 minutes I was hung up on. Hmmmm interesting. Great and wonderful service. I called back. Got the same wonderful voice. I explained to her I was hung up on. She continued to try to avoid the issue. She gave me a fax number. I again asked for the manager. This time I got a name. And was soon transferred. While Keith was helpful, and passed on the relative information. He didn’t know anything about anything. He just kept asking for my email address that I sent the original complaint. He also just gave me the fax number and said this wasn’t his issue to contact the legal department. Finally 11 minutes later. We were finished. I thanked him made him aware that my DMCA would be sent in the AM and that I requested a reply upon receipt. He said that’s probably not possible.
So now its sit back and wait time…..
I don’t understand what the point is for these guys. The headlines of the articles point back to blogherald (at least the jimseo one does), there are no ads, and no links I can see that are not standard wordpress. The pagerank of the site is 0.
Someone tell me what benefit these guys get from doing this.
Andy
Andy said this on January 24, 2006 3:40 am
In defense of ThePlanet, The DMCA is written in such a way that one can not do anything about copyright infringement over the phone. Certain elements, such as the signature, can only be submitted either online or via fax
While I grant that their phone service wasn’t that great, I really don’t know what they could have done for you beyond just keep pushing for you to send them a traditional notice.
I’ve had many experiences wit ThePlanet and DMCA notices and have written about some on my site. The end result is that they do work there, but usually result in the entire account being deleted. The only time this is a problem though is when there are multiple sites hosted on the same server.
In the end, if you sent the notice in the proper format, it should work fine. They are notoriously picky about formatting, but that’s more a quirk with the law than them.
Most large hosts/operators are.
Hope that you are doing well, please let me know if there’s any way that I can help you out!
Jonathan said this on January 24, 2006 5:19 am
I just posted about something similar I found the other day.
Having said that, the JimSeo guy’s only publishing excerpts with a direct link back to the original blog. That’s not really much different to seeing your shit on Google News. As for the guy reposting Darren’s comments feed: well that’s just weird.
Personally, I think if you’re going to publish feeds, then you’re going to have to put up with this, or you’re going to be spending all your time (and a lot of cash) with your legal people.
Best to publish excerpts ONLY - and put a short copyright note at the end of each item.
barry said this on January 24, 2006 5:21 am
Yeah, I’m with Andy here – I’ve checked the sites in question and I can’t see the reasoning behind it.
All the links go back to the original source and there are no ads – am I missing something??
Martin said this on January 24, 2006 5:24 am
I meant to add to that last part…
Best to publish excerpts ONLY (say 200 characters), then give free permission to publish those 200 chars but only with a direct link back to the original item, and put a short copyright note AFTER those 200 chars.
Then, if you really do want to publish full feeds, put the rest of the item (or the whole item again) after the copyright notice.
That way, responsible publishers/aggregators will only publish those first 200 chars – so no problem. Anyone publishing the full feed will also be publishing the nasty little copyright notice at that tells everyone they’re breaking the law.
Anyone reading the feed in an aggregator will still get the full feed.
barry said this on January 24, 2006 5:59 am
[...] All these people are wrong. [...]
chartreuse (BETA) » Blog Archive » Why Liv Tyler’s dad is smarter than Darren Rowse said this on January 24, 2006 8:58 am
This hits home.
Google will do nothing about this site:
http://laptop-notebook.blogspot.com/
They’ve stolen reviews from me, from ZDNet, CNET, PC Magazine, other laptop sites, LAPTOP Magazine, etc. While my site is not oriented towards laptops at all, I wrote two reviews of laptops that I and a friend use to blog with, and they lifted it.
This is hosted on a BLOGSPOT account. They have ADSENSE and CHITIKA running on it. I do not fucking get it. Chitika did say they’d look into it.
I contacted a few of the websites mentioned above. One, which I will not name, said they were sorely disappointed with Google over the issue (I get the feeling they have tangled with Google over this site from the tone of their letter) and said they were pulling their AdWords advertising in protest, and going through the legal options they had – they were of the opinion this was the same people that had a similar site in the past. Another site said they were aware of it and that it was being handled by their legal department.
I’ve contacted Google AdSense and the Blogger side of Google, got nothing in response (this was months ago).
How fucking hard is it for the AdSense and Blogger people to do a check Google search on a few sentences from the first half-dozen reviews on the front page? Seriously, how fucking hard can it be? Are they too busy cashing in their stock options?
Billy B. said this on January 24, 2006 10:50 pm
Billy,
Once again, Google can do nothing until they get a properly formatted DMCA notice. Legally, if they take down a site based on a copyright complaint and don’t have one, they could be sued.
There’s a well established procedure for filing DMCA notices with Google, many have done it before successfully, including myself. You just have to jump through a few hoops, but it can be done.
Good luck with it!
Jonathan said this on January 25, 2006 5:15 am