Disqus - Friends of Niclas

Re: Stashy.com Closes Down

plagiarismtoday — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:24:02 -0000

I'm sorry for the delayed reply but I wanted to make sure that this got the proper attention and I was on hiatus for most of the month of October (and the first week of November) running a haunted house. So this is the first good chance I've had to respond.

The site that Stashy has become is a link farm site. There are, quite literally, many thousands of them on the Web, many with that exact design.

This is what happens when a domain is allowed to expire, which happens every day to thousands of URLs, and they are scooped up by spammers hoping to cash in on the residual traffic.

This can happen with ANY domain that is shut down for ANY reason. Forget to renew? This can happen. Business close? This can happen. Get taken down by the FBI? This can happen. Anything can cause this. It's not a result of my activities or anyone else's. It, sadly, is the normal result of letting a domain expire.

Sad, but true.

Re: Myows: Simple, Fast, Free Ownership Verficiation

plagiarismtoday — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:17:20 -0000

Thanks for the clarifications. They should be fixed now in the article. Let me know if you see anything else!

Re: Video: Working with Myows

plagiarismtoday — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:14:04 -0000

Glad you liked the video! I'll have to do an update to it soon to indicate that the bug is fixed.

Re: Why DRM Alone Can Not Save Second Life

plagiarismtoday — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:24:37 -0000

First off, I am very sorry for the time it has taken me to write back. As you may know, I run a haunted house every October and that has pulled me away from my email for much of the month. I'm struggling to get caught back up now but am very sorry for the delay!

On that note though, I just want to re-emphasize that, even if SecureVend works perfectly, it is only part of the solution. New business models, cooperation with LL and legal avenues are all part of the solution.

I'm just trying to discourage everyone from looking for a single silvery bullet. I know it is so tempting to see something like this and see it as a savior. But it's only part of the answer, though potentially a big part...

Hope this helps!

Re: Classic Post: Analysis on The Lane Hartwell “Bubble” Controversy

plagiarismtoday — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:09:02 -0000

While I agree that Lane stepping up was a good thing, I think she overplayed her hand by ignoring a fair use issue in the work and filing for a takedown of the video even as she was supposedly working with the group. Granted, we the public don't know the full details, but it seems, especially in hindsight, that both sides made some poor judgments.

Re: How to Email a DMCA to Google

plagiarismtoday — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:52:57 -0000

Thanks for the update, I must have missed this article when I updated it elsewhere on the site.

Re: The Firebowl Controversy

plagiarismtoday — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:40:06 -0000

I dont' think it is quite that simple. The similarities in the design go beyond what would lead me to believe he was just going after every single firebowl maker. Otherwise, every hibachi maker in the world would be in trouble (at least theoretically).

There are similarities in the designs that go well beyond the fact they are both firebowls nor do I think he could achieve that. The definition for substantially similar would prevent that as it is important to note, as mentioned above, the copyright only applies to the decorative elements of the bowl not needed for its function.

In short, one would be free, even with a victory by Unger, to create firebowls with very different decorations. For example, I don't think Unger would ever have a case if you decorated your bowl with Christmas trees.

It's also not true that copyrights never expires. They expires 70 years after the death of the author or 95 years after creation in case of works of corporate authorship. Yes, that is much longer than patents and, yes, recent copyright extensions have kept works out of the public domain that would have fallen into it, but copyrights do expire and there are many works in the public domain currently.

The real question in this case is how similar are the new bowls to Unger's and was the intent to mimic his designs. Those are things we will have to learn later.

Re: Bypassing the region "protection" on Steam - Julian Møller

jmoeller — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:26:01 -0000

I don't know. I haven't heard of anyone getting their accounts closed.

The safest is probably to use a dummy account and gift the game to your own main account.

Re: Templates and Stock Photos: A Dangerous Combo

plagiarismtoday — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:23:01 -0000

Yes, I do believe that is the height of copyright fail. Sadly though, I can imagine it is very common...

Re: Rise of the Twitter Scrapers

plagiarismtoday — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:56:28 -0000

You may be able to also report copyright violations to Twitter separately:

http://help.twitter.com/forums/26257/entries/15795

Re: 5 Stupid Copyright Questions That Aren’t

plagiarismtoday — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:49:44 -0000

The truth is that it depends. The big question is whether your use is "transformative", meaning that you are creating a new work, or if it is meant to replace the original. Without knowing the specific situation it is impossible for anyone to tell and, even then, it would only be guesswork as it would be up to a judge and/or jury to make decisions about the actual application of fair use in that specific case.

Long story short. I don't know and can't know.

Re: 3 Count: ASCAPped

plagiarismtoday — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:42:54 -0000

This IS the organization that tried to sue girl scouts for singing songs around a campfire. So I'm forced to answer "Maybe". This is also the kind of organization, though it was the one is Spain I believe, that crashed weddings to bust wedding singers who didn't pay.

So, don't put anything beneath them.

I'm glad they lost this one too, the slippery slope here really is dangerous as you pointed out.

I did ask a lawyer for comment when I first heard about it, unfortunately, her comments where too short and completely unprintable (at least on this site).

Re: Analysis on The Lane Hartwell “Bubble” Controversy

plagiarismtoday — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:43:23 -0000

Thank you. I'm glad you liked the article. Now that I've had some time away from it what strikes me is how avoidable all of this was. If the Richter Scales had attributed properly or Hartwell had not reacted so strongly so quickly, it could have been resolved to everyone's benefit very easily.

It was something of a perfect storm in that regard. A viral video that was completely unattributed and a very aggressive photographer. It's a rare combination that, fortunately, we haven't seen sense.

I'd like to think though that some of it is because that lessons have been learned and everyone is a little bit smarter today than they were in 2007... Somehow I doubt that.

Re: Limited Posting Through October

plagiarismtoday — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:34:31 -0000

Holly, this is a sad confession, but I've never actually carved a pumpkin in all of my life. Ever. I build haunted houses and can make elaborate costumes, but I've never carved a pumpkin.

However, I will have to pass this on to my wife, she is the artist and the one that has done it before.

Re: My Response to Mark Helprin

plagiarismtoday — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:32:21 -0000

If you didn't read the book or my original review, I'm really hard pressed to offer anything of substance.

I actually agreed with some of his points about the way technology has affected society and, though I think he took it to an extreme in his book, I found myself agreeing with at least the broad strokes.

I also agree with you that people need to be lectured sometimes but there is a stark difference between speaking truth and name calling. Helprin engaged in the last and undercut the validity of some of his points. He further undercut them by taking things to extremes.

Helprin's worse crime though is just writing a bad book. But without having you read my original review or the book itself, it's hard to explain why that's the case.

I'd like to ask you to go back and at least read my original review and, if you are interested in the book, picking up a copy.

Re: Battling Copyright Ignorance

plagiarismtoday — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:50:52 -0000

I checked up on it a few weeks ago, the case was still going back and forth. It had survived an initial jurisdictional challenge and was still being fought.

The latest major development was that Bob Burge, one of the defendants had, for a time, stopped responding to all court activity and nearly had a judgment declared against him but found new counsel to take up the case and is fighting on.

At least that was the latest as of a few weeks ago.

Re: Google Accepts Online DMCAs for Blogger

plagiarismtoday — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:45:53 -0000

That's interesting. I never had an issue filing a DMCA via the form, if you could forward me the replies you got back, I'd be interested in taking a closer look.

Regarding the image hosting, I think I know what the problem may be. Blogger doesn't actually host the images (not many at least). The images are actually on their Picasa service. You may want to contact their DMCA team and see if they can be of more help:

http://www.google.com/picasa_web_dmca.html

Stupid? You bet. This is a big part of why Google needs a centralized DMCA process to handle all LOBs. They don't do that and, as a result, it can be difficult to tell which product you should contact.

Think about it, you could reach out to Picasa, Blogspot and Google Search all for the same case. Big headache.

Regarding Disqus, I've forwarded the issue to their team. I'll let you know what they tell me. Thanks for the heads up!

Re: Using Gmail’s Canned Responses to Send a DMCA

plagiarismtoday — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:29:21 -0000

I don't think there is a way to but there shouldn't be a need to send an attachment in most cases when sending out a DMCA notice, unless you are wanting to forward a PDF copy.

Re: Emailing a DMCA Notice to Linden Lab

plagiarismtoday — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:01:21 -0000

A gracious resident gave me a brief tour some time ago. I still never got to do more than about 5% of what you can do, largely because of the learning curve and time restraints. We only had about an hour.

I would love to talk about some of your specific concerns and I may well take you up on that tour sometime. Just send me an email: jonathan at plagiarismtoday.com

Re: Templates and Stock Photos: A Dangerous Combo

plagiarismtoday — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:46:02 -0000

You made a good point that I overlooked, and that is many designers feel pressure from the clients to use images from dubious sources to save money.

Though CC-licensed images aren't bad, and might actually be smart so long as the license is followed, the use of Google Images is very troubling but not surprising.

It confuses me how a client will pay hundreds of dollars for a new layout but don't want to spend a few dollars for stock photos for it. Considering how cheap stock photos can be found these days, it's a relatively small part of the budget unless you need a huge number.

Anyway, I'm glad that you liked the article and definitely let me know if I can help. Though I'm sorry it hit home so hard, I hope it draws some attention to this issue...

Re: 3 Count: Oh Bother

plagiarismtoday — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:09:55 -0000

I don't know. Without having read all the contracts, seen the evidence and so forth, it is hard for me to say anything one way or another.

I will say though that Disney has a reputation of playing hardball with artists, creators and others. I know several who have worked for Disney and hated it because of Disney's copyright demands. They are very rights-savvy and can be seen as taking advantage of those who are less so.

So I don't know much about this specific case but I know that Disney is far from my favorite company in this area...

Re: 5 Free Copyright-Related Steps Every Blogger Should Take Today

plagiarismtoday — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 13:59:31 -0000

Which one do you want information on? The first two are just edits to your theme, the third and fourth simply requires a registration and the last you can read how to do here:

http://obscuredclarity.blogspot.com/2009/02/add...

You can do it, but you have to add the text to every post on the site as well. Hope this helps!

Re: 3 Count: Switching Sides

plagiarismtoday — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 03:15:29 -0000

Reading up on this now. Thank you for the heads up!

Re: Book Review: Digital Barbarism

plagiarismtoday — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:59:32 -0000

Thanks, glad you liked it. I try to be as thorough as I can with my book reviews. If no other reason than to prove I read it, the only thing I learned from doing book reports in middle school.

Re: My Response to Mark Helprin

plagiarismtoday — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:34:05 -0000

On the copyright issues he could probably argue fair use. The trademark ones on the other hand might be more difficult. Still, I doubt he had anything to do with the book cover and probably thinks as highly of it as he does the video game.