DISQUS

I waited another week and then sent them a note asking what was going on. They've taken care of it now. I think it just got lost in the shuffle.

Anyone else able to document the turnaround on this? I've been waiting more than a week and it's a pretty clear cut case since it's a blog with only two posts and one of them is a full reprint of one of my posts including hotlinked photos but stripped copyright info.

I would say that as a Flickr user and reader of the help forums there, I've observed wide misunderstandings about the "blog this" button. Users who see it on other people's photos think that it means that the photo is free for use without any recognition of the copyright or CC license.

I'm not at all surprised that people misunderstand sharing/clipping tools.

I'd really like to see information about how DMCA's filings are stored & shared by hosts. The plain fact is that a lot of us are sharing our personal info in an attempt to protect our intellectual property. Are these filings covered under the privacy policy of these webhosts & services? Perhaps a case study of a couple of these large sites would be in order.

I understand when filing legal papers that involve folks saying that they're correct under the penalty of perjury they need something that distinguishes one Sam Smith from anther Sam Smith (like the address - which doubles as fantastic contact information).

What I'm saying is that these go betweens that we file these papers with don't necessarily protect this information. Now there's an interesting article - how is that info stored and what do they do with it? Let's face it, when I'm dealing with some spammers/scammers/scrapers, these are overseas folks who might have far more nefarious plans in mind than just taking some of my text for use in the SEO building.

Honestly I'm a bit relieved by the "contact info" part. I have to include that for eBay takedown notices, and they pass that along to the eBay seller ... and sometimes they get very nasty with me. I feel a bit adrift - they have my address, email and phone number but even if eBay agrees that they are in violation and removes the material, I never know who they really are.

I'll try filing one of these later today to see how it goes. I have a huge list of blogger blogs with my material on them and I haven't felt like printing & faxing.

I can see the benefit from this in that it might drive the conversation back to the source website, instead of on digg's pages. I think it's fun to get a stumbleupon or digg swarm, but the frustrating part as the originator of the content, is not being included in the conversation. The users will leave comments on Digg or Stumbleupon.

That said, I don't like framing. And digg doesn't like me (or digg users, I guess) so it's not much of an issue for me.

It just reminds me of a scene in Clueless, where Cher's father calls her into his office and shows her a "second notice" for a ticket she got. She counters with "Second notice? I never got a first notice!"

Her father says, "The ticket was the first notice."

I think AP probably knew what was going on here, and looking for sympathy because someone wasn't being "polite" when they've been so hardnose about even being quoted is rather amusing. Fairey is probably wise to pursue a definitive judgment at this point.

"Instead, he chose to file on Monday morning, without any notice to AP.”

Isn't the filing itself notice to the AP?

Jeeze, I sound crabby. (I'm not really. Just giving some strongly held opinions.)

Hey, it's your website. I find when things on blogs change too much or ask for too much from me when I thought I was the one contributing to the conversation that I'm less likely to engage. (Consumerist did this a few times with their commenting system - now I not only don't comment, I also don't read the comments.)

I also dislike things that make pages load slowly, especially when they're calling to another site that may have trouble from time to time.

I consider "commenters" to be the users. Maybe that's where I've gone awry.

Not to belittle this response, but I've had much worse. One that I've had going on for 16 months (that I think has been resolved) involved a principal at a webhost threatening me with a defamation suit for saying that their inaction and non-functioning published email addresses for DMCA notifications made them complicit with infringers & splogs.

From a user standpoint, I don't like disqus or intense debate. They do nothing for me.

I don't care much for assigning a number to my reviews (but I do it anyway) and consider anything from 6-10 to be on the positive side ... as 5 would mean neutral and anything less would fall into the negative end. I give out a lot of 6s and 7s.

I generally regard other reviews similarly - if it's in the middle range, I regard it as "mostly harmless."

I recently got an angry note from a manufacturer about an "unfair" review for a product I ultimately gave a 6 out of 10 ... which I pretty much said was a decent product but simply not to my liking.

I think for sites that have oodles of reviews (like mine), the ability to sort the reviews by this system is rather helpful. But then again, I'm talking about low-risk & low-cost products. I'm a bit more picky about what I put in my computer than what I put in my mouth.

I've gone round and round with some sites that like to republish a digest feed of my blog (especially with photos). I get there's a fair use argument for commentary ... but without editorial oversight it's completely lost.

I mention this because I found this site not long ago: thefindbuzz.com which seems to be "digesting" my site with photos. Sure it's attributed, no it's not the whole post and it does link back. But it also gets tagged up with lots of shopping links and basically, it's not theirs.

I can't even get into my feedburner account. Luckily it continues to deliver the feed to my readers ... but there's no way to file an actual trackable help ticket with google like you can with Yahoo.

I was also very annoyed that Google Adsense started showing political ads even though I'd selected topic filtered ads by keyword for my blog. I deleted my ads two days before the election and haven't put them back on the blog. (Yeah, I could use the money, but I like my readers more.)

I use Twitter exclusively via the web interface. No add ons, I don't use chat programs, no auto feeds. I'd say I use it less to communicate than to just find out what's going on.

Back in the early days of individuals posting my blog stuff on their own sites, they usually hotlinked the images.

So I'd swap out the images. Sometimes a roiling ball of maggots on an open wound with text that says "Only Maggots Steal" or a picture of The Golden Girls DVD Set with the text that said "When You Hotlink You're No Longer In Control." (But I stopped doing the latter because I realized I didn't have rights to the image but the maggots were public domain from the US gov.)

Now I block hotlinking so it's not so easy to do that.

I argue sometimes with photo stealers who insist that they took the pictures, but pointing them to my Flickr page for the photo with the full EXIF data usually shuts them up.

The one I mentioned above is hosted at gnax.net. I've been trying for about 14 months. (Three separate DMCA submissions starting in October 2007.) I've tried their abuse address, guessing at other email addresses such as copyright@, legal@, info@, dmca@ but the only one that doesn't bounce is abuse. I sent several notes to their sales addresses. So yesterday I just called them on the phone. Again I was directed to abuse.

They don't even publish anything on their site about DMCA filings.

I'll give it a couple more days, but at this point I'm wondering what else I can do.

For the most part I have stopped direct contact with infringers. As you mention, it's very hard to get contact info for them and the results are lackluster at best.

For some bloggers I'll just leave a comment, but that's about it. In some cases I've had later lengthy conversations via email with blogs about using my photos only to have them just not get it. (They say they do, but then, a couple of weeks later, there are my photos illustrating their posts - I don't know how to be "nice" any longer so now I'm just stewing in my own juices.)

I used to contact eBay sellers directly and request that they not use my photos (and in some cases, text as well). In a small minority of cases they will remove it with an apology (usually, oddly enough, blaming their daughter). In other cases they tell me I'm lying and I send them a link to my flickr page with the full EXIF data, which is pretty incontravertable. In other cases they send foul abusive notes. So now I just file directly with eBay. Yes, I was probably successful in gently educating a few eBayers, but the majority of them are just out to make the most money they can with the least amount of work and use any tool they can find, including IP theft. Though eBay says that they will ban users that continually violate their Terms, I've filed dozens of claims against some of them, and they're still doing business there.

I am constantly frustrated by networks that don't allow me to contact the abusing users directly (livejournal, myspace, forums, blogher) without an account. Instead I have to either create an account just to post a message or use their private messaging system. Or, as you say, go over their head to the host because I can't be bothered to navigate their systems.

Question (kind of unrelated): are all hosts obligated to post DMCA information in some form or another?

I'd say about 20% of my attempts fail because the hosts' published email address for DMCA claims bounces.

And about 20% do go completely unanswered. Sometimes the site fades away anyway, probably through someone else's efforts but there are still some that I am completely unable to get rid of such as chocolateall dot com.

I agree that if it's going to be handled, it's usually within five days. Longer than that and I make another attempt and then abandon it. (Or at least that avenue.)

Thanks for the mention, Baylen!

cynic said, "Look. If the Hershey’s products still used cocoa butter but tasted worse, that would be cause for complaint. If they substituted vegetable oil and consequently tasted better, that’d be cause for celebration. This is only cause for indifference."

I'm saying they do taste worse and I don't think that the Watchamacallit is the best demonstration of that. Try a Mr. Goodbar or Krackel ... get a bag of Miniatures and compare the quasi-chocolate in the Krackel to the Hershey's Milk Chocolate. (Whether you like it or not is another matter, but it's noticeable.)

There is nutritional value in a Mr. Goodbar, in fact during the depression it was sold as "a tasty lunch" and contained protein, calcium, fiber and sugar. Not really a great lunch, but for a nickel in hard times it was better than other things you could get for a five cents. But I agree, if you're eating for pleasure, it should be pleasurable.

Seriously, come back here after you've had a Mr. Goodbar and let me know how that went. Hershey's says that customers prefer it made with palm oil.

ylem - Hershey's didn't move their manufacturing from PA to Mexico. They moved their manufacturing from CA & Canada to Mexico. The PA plant is still chugging away.

I've not found much that's actionable via TinEye so far. I'd love a batch feature, or some sort of synergy with Flickr that it could give me alerts when photos in my public stream have matches.

Well, and I'd like them to spider Flickr, Photobucket and Blogger as those are huge image reservoirs.

I do like the firefox extension that allows me to right click on any image to search.