DISQUS

First off, thank you for posting about this. I noticed a problem with my WordPress statistics but was unsure what caused it. Thank you for clearing it up.

That being said, here is what I am noticing as of right now:

1) The referrers on my site in WordPress Stats (though not Google Analtyics) are screwed up. They are showing facebook.com referrers from almost everything and the API key matches the one I used for Disqus.

2) I have seen a spike in traffic. I can't tell if this is because of the API issue or because I fixed a bug on IE about the same time that fixed a long loading time for users of that browser. GA reports a similar spike.

The question I have is in what way are the analytics being skewed? The referrer issue seems to be Disqus but what about the traffic? Is it causing both WordPress Stats and GA to count significantly more page views?

If you could give us a great idea how the stats are skewed, I'd be appreciative. Also, an ETA on repair would be much appreciated.

Thank you.

At least it is one right step, they're doing more for their free customers do than most hosts... I'll take my breaks as I can get them.

Chris took leave of the show beginning with Episode 84, episode 83 was his last show. He wanted to spend more time with his family and sleep in more on Sundays :)

I've taken over the editing of the show and Patrick O'keefe has been brought on as the new co-host. We're still working on our rhythm in places but, much like with Chris and I, we're good friends so it works out well.

As for Chris, he'll probably be back for episode 100 in a few weeks.

We also do the show live each week, you might want to check us out on Talkshoe:

http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/22590

Recording time is now on Saturdays...

First off, to defend myself a bit, I was writing this from the perspective of someone solely interested in user's rights. They are the ones that typically do the most lamenting about how flawed our system is and my goal was to show that users have more rights in the U.S. than they do in other countries.

With that being said, I want to add a few thoughts to your article.

First, regarding copyright extensions. I am the first to agree that rightsholders should have the right to benefit from their work (would be kind of silly to run this site without that belief). I admit on many issue I do lean to the copyleft side, but I do support lengthy copyright terms within reason.

The problem is that, when our nation was founded, we started with a 14-year term renewable for another 14 years. Now it is up to life plus seventy (as you pointed out that is well over a century in most cases) for works of personal authorship and 95 years for corporate authorship. Though it is great that photographers and writers can will their rights to their great grandchildren, this creates a slew of problems.

First, we now have copyright terms that long outlast the material it is printed on. This has created an orphan works problem that is now being legislated. This has more potential for harm to copyright holders than a reasonable copyright term.

Second, the term is not being extended for the greater good of encouraging artistic and scientific works, the reason given for copyright law in the Constitution, but toi protect the interests of a small number of largely wealthy copyright holders. The debates in the EU over copyright extensions have largely reflected this.

A healthy public domain does a great deal to support creativity and science. Intellectual property is indeed property, but it is not property, as you say, like a physical object. Otherwise we would be using the term "copyright theft" in the literal, not figurative sense.

Copyright is a government-granted monopoly and, I feel, a very good and important one. However, without limitations, this monopoly can consume everything, making it so that hardly anything, no matter how seemingly unique, is not an infringement.

Second, regarding the RIAA lawsuits. Though I don't doubt that, legally, they have the right to do as they have and I support them having that right, the problem is that these suits have been a PR disaster and other rightsholders have been feeling the pinch.

These lawsuits have done nothing to slow down or stop file sharing but have exposed a series of legal flaws with the RIAAs arguments and turned a great deal of public opinion against the record industry. These lawsuits were a classic Pyrrhic victory, they won the suits but have lost the war. Seeing the RIAA sue tens of thousands of people including grandparents and children did not help them or the rest of us.

If you read through Twitter or other services, you'll see that copyright might was well be a four-letter word. Many people despise copyright law and the RIAA is part of the reason. Protecting copyright, even against plagiarists and commercial use, is seen as a negative thing in many circles.

Sure, every generation had its group that wondered if copyright law should exist at all, but this generation has been emboldened, has rallying cries and has a decent argument (at least on paper) for a full-scale assault against copyright.

Finally, regarding anti-circumvention, yes I am expressing an opinion on the law. But it is also one that is widely held. Since it wasn't the point of this article to start a debate on this topic, I didn't cite any sources, though I likely should have linked out to this report by the EFF.

http://www.eff.org/wp/unintended-consequences-t...

Though the law says that it does not impede upon existing rights, by blocking access to material (save within rare exemptions) it creates a slew of problems. Though I grant that the EFF is not an unbiased source in this matter, its list of unintended problems caused by anti-circumvention is long and painful to read.

In the end, I think it's fair to say, as you mentioned in your article, that we agree on the overall conclusion of this piece, but there are a lot of problems with U.S. copyright law, especially if one views copyright as an attempt to balance the rights and interests of copyright holders vs users, which is what the law should be about...

Thank you very much for your comment.

It's a real interesting problem. With text an aggregator can limit the number of words they display and, at the very least, make a strong fair use argument. Sure, they aren't adding any serious commentary, but they can argue that their use of the content is so slight and the harm so small that they should be allowed.

With photos, it is different. They can't take the first fifty pixels of an image and get anything useful (do I smell a new art project?). So, by taking the whole of the image they really are throwing any potential fair use argument out the window and, if the image is hotlinked, they're adding some computer misuse issues in as well.

Honestly, if an aggregator is repurposing your images, I'd ask them nicely to stop and, if they fail, start firing DMCA notices. It's a bit crude but it is both your bandwidth and your work.

Just my two cents!

It is worth noting that the GateHouse case did NOT deal with RSS scraping. All the NYT sites were doing was looking at the RSS feed, pulling the headline and linking it to the original article in a widget on the side. The company was not taking any actual content from GateHouse, save perhaps a 12-word snippet in some cases.

I agree wholesale that you should not allow spammers scrapers others to use your content without attribution, that is what the whole site is about. Furthermore, I don't think others should do it even with attribution unless the content has been licensed correctly.

This wasn't a case of content theft in the traditional sense, just aggregated linking. Though GateHouse was likely within their rights, it is questionable that they would sue someone who is driving them traffic...

Since the site appears to be hosted within the U.S. you'll likely need to file a DMCA notice before the work is removed. If you need a template for that, you can find one on my site.

Let me know if there is anything that I can do to help!

Thanks for the hint! I'll have to take a look at it.

If it is your school doing it, it isn't an IP block but filtering taking place. That is a very different challenge...

The rules about when you need to register a work are even more muddled on the Web. According to the USCO, putting a work on the Web does not necessarily constitute publication, meaning that you need to register before the infringement, not three months before publication. That is, unless you did something else with it that you feel constitutes publication.

This is why copyright lawyers make so much money...

I remember that and have always gotten a chuckle out of that. I can't tell if the government has a sense of humor or if they get some really strange questions there...

Though I did mention something similar to that when I was dispelling it in my old articles, I do agree that there isn't enough talk about how it could be abused and exactly why it is not accepted.

That being said, in recent years, the idea of poor man's copyright has been taking a more electronic twist. Though some companies onilne work to provide legitimate non-repudiation, others are pushing it as a replacement, outright scamming customers...

Not really a stupid question. If the infringer is so motivated, they can file what is known as a counter-notice and have the work put back. You would have to file a suit within 10-14 days in order to prevent the counter-notice from taking effect. The good news is that such notices are VERY rare, I've sent hundreds of notices and never seen one, and if one were to file a false counter-notice, the law makes it really easy to file such a lawsuit and justify it. I wouldn't worry too much about this though. Still, definitely be aware.

There are several ways. The best is to file a DMCA notice with the host and have the host remove the work. If you can email me a link to the infringing page, I can have a look at it for you...

Thanks!

I think these tools are not just targeted at content theft issues, but also at general tracking and understanding. That being said though, where are you running into the greatest trouble reporting such cases? If you can give me an idea of any specific issues you're having that are eating up your time, I might be able to help. I'll gladly consider it for a future article even.

Ok, that is priceless. I have to admit, that one is good. As I see it, that is stupid on at least two different levels. First, he either didn't know who he was interviewing with or didn't know who actually wrote the ads in question (something you should probably look up when plagiarizing) and second he thought he could get away with plagiarism in the advertising world. I suppose it is possible, but in my experience advertisers usually know at least which company produced which ads, or can trivially look it up. It would have been easy to disprove even without him having the misfortune of running into the original author.

Thank you for the story and congrats on running at least one plagiarist out the door!

I'm glad that you found it useful, if you think it might help, I'll gladly do a follow-up post about some free software-based solutions...

This is true, but it is important to remember that, t hanks to VARA in the U.S. and moral rights elsewhere, attribution is still always supposed to come with it. Moral rights are supposed to be inalienable, meaning that they can't be given up. Still, a valid point about the rights one does often surrender...

I guess that's the other moral of the story. Keep your lenses clean people. Even if it is your cell phone camera. You never know when you might see something the world needs to know about!

If MSNBC hadn't made such a good effort on TV to attribute the image correctly, I would probably not be as forgiving as I am right now. I think it shows that they tried to do right but something broke down between the TV people and the Web people. This happens sadly. I agree that it is fairly easy to determine attribution in most cases, but when you're rushing to get stuff out there as fast as the information comes in, it's the easy stuff that gets dropped.

I agree with your thoughts on how users should deal with content they are posting on the Web, but one has to remember that, in this case, the people posting the content were not the ones that were deciding what goes up and where. MSNBC creates an incredible amount of content every day and it is easy to see why, if attribution were omitted, how the Web team could have operated under a false assumption. Sloppy work? Yes. But a pardonable offense I think.

I do like the idea of an attribution unknown link, however, I feel certain on a site like MSNBC, you'd get every wingnut and lunatic claiming credit for the work. If the system can be created to filter out such problems, then it could work...

No worries, there's a lot to get through here. If you have any questions or need any help, just ask!

I don't know if it is a blogging "crime" but I would definitely encourage you to use the sticky post feature rather than backdating, it creates a lot of problems and confusion if you aren't clear about when a post was created.

Thank you for the link, I've written about the plugin a few times before on this site. It's a pretty powerful plugin but I feel that Copyfeed has added a lot of new features and capabilities to it, especially for those that don't use FeedBurner.

Sorry to hear that it didn't work fo ryou but I'm not wholly surprised, I knew it was a very limited approach to the issue. If you need any help, send me an email and I'll see what I can suggest.