Technobabbles » copyright infringement

How Should I Respond to Copied Photos?

dgw / voyagerfan5761 — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 14:24:00 +0000

Update (2009-11-02): I had the content removed this summer. Pretty fast, too; Facebook's DMCA team had both offending albums deleted within about 24 hours.

All right, it's time to get this issue out there. I tweeted it a few times before, many months ago, but last night I was just reminded of the issue by an entire Facebook album of photos uploaded by someone I went canoeing with last summer -- but represented as original works. No credit, no acknowledgment, not even anything about the fact that someone else took the photos!

Fine, I did upload the photos to Picasa Web Albums and set them as public, and I did send everyone on the trip the URL of the gallery page... But still, those are my pictures that have been taken without any attribution and uploaded to a social website that claims a ton of rights to user-submitted content in the fine print of its user agreements:

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

In short:

[...] this means you’re giving up copyright control of your material. If you upload a photo to Facebook, they can sell copies of it without paying you a cent. If you write lengthy notes (or import your blog posts!), Facebook can turn them into a book, sell a million copies, and pay you nothing. This deserves careful consideration!

Both of the above quotes were copied from a great post at Legal Andrew on the subject of Facebook. (See? Attribution is so easy to give, and yet it's so often left out.)

So there are issues with Facebook's terms of service. There are also issues with the emotional connection I feel with my own photos, and my desire to be credited for my work, and my wish to be recognized by others for what I've done. Oh, and let's not forget the horrible feeling that comes from knowing other people think someone else created your work.

I'm not going to mention who copied my photos, not by name. That doesn't matter; I can handle that person's abuse easily enough, once I decide what course of action to take. Which brings me to the point of this post.

Using a question as a post title isn't something I do often (despite it being advised). That means I really want reader feedback on the post, even more than normal. So, it's a simple question:

How should I handle this unauthorized, unattributed uploading of my content to Facebook?

Should I contact the person through the messaging system (or email)? Or just send Facebook a DMCA notice for the images and be done with it?

I look forward to any and all opinions on this matter.

Originally published at Technobabbles
Content copyright © 2006-2012 by dgw / voyagerfan5761

mzwriter DMCA Successful!

dgw / voyagerfan5761 — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 17:39:00 +0000

Looks like my DMCA complaint to The Planet.com was successful. As of yesterday morning, I checked several of the links I submitted to them as violating my copyrights and found that they had been removed from the offending site, tutorials.mzwriter.com. I was kind of expecting some sort of response from them, but it looks like the content was simply taken down. Either way, I've won that battle.

(Ce-le-bra-tion!) Let's celebrate...

OK, I won't finish that.

Originally published at Technobabbles
Content copyright © 2006-2012 by dgw / voyagerfan5761

First DMCA Notice Sent

dgw / voyagerfan5761 — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 18:34:00 +0000

I've just hit the Send button on my first DMCA notice, which I've been composing for the last several days. It being Thanksgiving, perhaps my note will have an aura of elevated importance, since people aren't usually working today. I definitely don't expect a response until tomorrow at the earliest.

So, we'll see how it goes. If I get a takedown, that's obviously the best. If (Larry and Sergey forbid) I should get a denial, then woe to me; but let's not talk about that. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts... I am in my happy place...

Keep watching here for more updates, of course.

Originally published at Technobabbles
Content copyright © 2006-2012 by dgw / voyagerfan5761

DMCA About to be Sent

dgw / voyagerfan5761 — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 14:04:00 +0000

Alrighty, having finished up my draft DMCA notice, I'm about ready to send it, as soon as I check with my parents—last-minute checks are always good. I copied the URLs from Blogger's dashboard in a fraction of the time it took to pull them off the plagiarizing site, and even threw in the original MSN/Windows Live Spaces addresses of some of my older posts for good measure.

Having completed my first letter, I will now bask in the satisfaction that comes from preparing one's first legal document, and shall shudder with fear, once I send it, until I receive a response. As always, stay tuned for more details. This particular topic should remain quite interesting, especially since I found another site that has copied an excerpt.

I really won't worry too much about the excerpt sites, I don't think. As far as I know, they're providing perfectly legal content extracts with links back to the original source, and I have no case for an infringement claim. If nothing else, they contribute (very little) to my Google PageRank.

Big DMCA Claim, All In My Drafts Folder

dgw / voyagerfan5761 — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 02:24:00 +0000

Yep, that's right; this copyright infringement fiasco has me drafting a DMCA notice in Gmail. I just completed going through an entire site that has copied all of my blog posts from the beginning of my pre-Blogger history through October 30. Talk about rude! I didn't even get any links back, nor do the posts have attribution attached. Even if I were licensing under Creative Commons, I wouldn't allow this. And the site is plastered with AdSense ads.

Did I mention I had to find over 200 of my posts? And list them all with their titles in an email? Now I have to grab all the links from this blog to prove I published the items, and include the publishing date for each item. I've already spent three hours on my list here; I think it'll be another few before it's done. And this is just one site. Argh! I hate plagiarism!!!

For reference, the site I'm reporting is tutorials [dot] mzwriter [dot] com. You'll have to open a new tab or window and type that in yourself, decoding the bot blocks as you go; I'm not risking a rel="nofollow" or even clear text on this one...

I get the feeling they update with new, illegally mirrored content every month or so, which gives me around two weeks to tidy up this DMCA crap and make sure this doesn't happen again.

Meanwhile, I've gotten some good advice at the Performancing Forums.

Beginning Copyright Enforcement Research

dgw / voyagerfan5761 — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:15:00 +0000

I'm not sure whether I should be excited or maddened that my site is garnering enough attention to be picked up by sploggers. Using a couple of my free monthly searches at Copyscape, and using Google Webmaster Tools' External Links feature, I found a couple of sites that are either copying my content verbatim or are excerpting it for nefarious purposes. (OK, the offending excerpt is on a porn site, if you must know.) I've spent the last day or two researching my options in this case, including WHOIS queries on the two domains I've found so far and asking questions at places like the Performancing forums and the Wikipedia Reference Desk.*

Now, what I've gotten so far is to just send letters to each of the webmasters (or whoever is listed as domain registrant) first, to see if I can have my content taken down in an amicable manner. Should those fail, I can contact the hosting providers under the terms of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) with removal requests, provided (once again) that the WHOIS data can be trusted. And if neither option works... I guess I ask my parents for a favor and talk to their lawyer. I might be young, but that doesn't mean I won't fight for my content rights. I'll be keeping you all posted right here.

* - Link refers to an archive I made.