news aggregator

July 26, 2007

17:08
Often times, on this site and elsewhere, we criticize hosts for their poor handling of the DMCA while chiding Webmasters and other laypeople who make mistakes while filing DMCA notices. Though the criticism of hosts is a little more fair since they were one of the parties pushing for the notice and takedown provision, the fact [...]

July 25, 2007

16:43
For most, being plagiarized is an inherently emotional experience. Finding out that someone else copied and claimed something that took hours to produce is bound to produce some negative feelings. This has lead some to wonder if fighting plagiarism is more about revenge than practicality. To some, it is better to simply forget about the plagiarists, [...]

July 24, 2007

19:56
I would like to take an aside and delve into a related topic that has been on my mind for the past few months: Comment spam. Though it doesn’t have much to do with content theft, I have several reasons for wanting to cover this. First many of the RSS scrapers and spam bloggers also use [...]

July 23, 2007

15:30
It’s Monday again and that means it is time for another episode of the Copyright 2.0 Show. This week, we delve into this week’s latest copyright news with our usual mix of humor and sarcasm. This week’s topics include the following: RIAA takes a pair of major blows Harry Potter gets leaked The iPhone gets called a [...]

July 20, 2007

17:32
In December of last year, I wrote about how the adult entertainment industry was using “piracy” to its advantage and, despite adult content making up the bulk of file sharing, was a thriving industry. However, that may change soon. A new organization, The Global Anti-Piracy Agency (GAPA), has been founded by Sureflixx Digital Distribution “with [...]

July 19, 2007

16:23
If reading this site and enduring the onslaught of content theft, plagiarism and scraping is making you think about packing up and shutting down your site, you might want to think again. These days, even death does not put an end to content theft. It merely opens up new avenues for it. As a recent article on [...]

July 17, 2007

17:21
I’ve always felt that there is something to be said for solving a problem face to face. It seems, to me, that it is always best to resolve disagreements directly, when possible, and not involve outside parties. The cease and desist letter is the obvious way to handle plagiarism and content theft matters face to [...]

July 16, 2007

18:05
It’s Monday again and that means it is time for another episode of the Copyright 2.0 Show. As Chris and I stammer our way through another week of copyright news including the following stories: Net radio wins a reprieve against rate hikes Google takes a shot at Viacom Prince angers his label with a CD giveaway The MPAA is accused of [...]

July 15, 2007

03:23
I’ve tried, for the most part, to keep myself out of this site. Outside of my “About the Author” page, which reads more like a resume, I don’t talk much about myself unless it interferes with my site, as with my car accident last year. However, last month, my friend Patrick O’keefe tagged me on my [...]

July 13, 2007

17:35
Following the recent spate of content theft at deviantArt, one of the artists that had her work lifted, Deb Walker, has created a profile and started a group dedicated to tracking down and stopping theft of dA member’s works. The group, entitled the RippedArtTaskForce, opened its doors eariler this week and according to its description, is [...]

July 10, 2007

19:53
As the issue of plagiarism and content theft draws more and more attention on the web, in particular among bloggers, several Webmasters are posting their experiences with content theft and some intrepid writers are producing their own guides for fighting content theft on the Web. Though the attention to this issue is welcome, many of these [...]
16:33
I’ve teamed up with the editors at Performancing to create a Legal Issues Forum on their site. I am serving as an adviser on that forum, answering legal questions that bloggers may face. Though the forum is targeted largely at copyright and content theft issues, any and all legal questions that relate to blogging and the [...]

July 9, 2007

15:30
After having so many problems with the past three episodes, it was nice to have episode 14 go off without a hitch. In fact, the greatest problem we had was a tidal wave of copyright-related stories to make it through and a new means of organizing the order of operations. The end result of this is [...]

July 6, 2007

21:38
In the United States, though copyright protection takes effect the minute that a work is fixated into a tangible medium of expression, enforcing those rights is a much trickier matter. As according to the U.S. Copyright Office, registration with the USCO is a requirement before suing in Federal court. Furthermore, only if a work is registered [...]

July 5, 2007

18:37
Many times, when dealing with plagiarism issues, Webmasters adopt something of a “shotgun” approach to stopping the infringement. In short, they will, almost simultaneously, send out cease and desist letters, DMCA notices (or other host contacts) as well as contacts to advertisers and search engines. Many will further complicate things by posting about the infringement on [...]

July 3, 2007

22:18
In a pair of previous posts I lauded Google’s progress in the war on Spam on its Blogspot service. Though my intuition was confirmed, at least somewhat, by Google itself, it appears I might have spoken too soon. I recently ran across this link on the social news site Reddit. It is a submissions listing for [...]
15:08
It appears that episode 13 truly was unlucky for us. After several attempts to get the episode live, Sunday night, we were again sandbagged by Chris’ now-famous Internet troubles. Still, will and determination prevailed and Episode 13 of the show is now available online. Unlike the previous two shows, this one does have Chris on the [...]

July 2, 2007

17:22
Having control over your own server can be a very powerful thing. It enables you to control who can access your site, how they visit it and what they can see. Generally, however, that power is best left unused. For the most part, restricting people’s access to your site is a bad move. Though you can [...]
17:04
Due to a technical problem, this week’s episode of the Copyright 2.0 Show is being delayed until tomorrow. The next episode, lucky number 13, has been recorded and edited, but Chris is having issues with his host and has been unable to get the full episode online. We hope to have these issues straightened out later [...]

June 28, 2007

18:37
Earlier today, an article centering around an interview I gave late last week appeared in the online marketing newsletter MarketingSherpa. I wanted to take a moment to welcome all of the new visitors to the site and encourage you to contact me if you have any questions or if there is anything that I can [...]