Quickies January 26, 2007

What Can Be Done About Intellectual & Copyrighted Property Theft?

No, this isn’t going to be a rant against warez, DRM or eBooks on MIRC. It is a question from me about how to handle sites like this (which I hate linking to, but I want you to see what they are doing), that lift and post entire reviews from Gear Diary and other similar sites.

I got a call at midnight from someone who had noticed, and I sent an email – that I am sure went into a blackhole somewhere – to the poster, Elliot Back. This guy has the audacity to have the following legal notice on his site: “All content is the original work of Elliott Back, copyright 2007. You may not use the layout, links, images, or any additional content of this site without explicit written permission of the owner.”

Grrrr!

It’s not the first time that someone has copied all the pictures from a review and posted them on another site – which is why we finally had to start watermarking 95% of our original photos, but this is the first time I am aware of someone stealing an entire review as well as hot-linking to my photos! Urgh!

Any tips on ways to bring him down? Or do I just have to roll with it and curse the internet gods?

Update: Jack Cook made an excellent suggestion, which I enjoyed implementing. Making the images to replace every 4th picture on the lifted review took a little bit of time, but the process was theraputic. Take a look, and thanks Jack!

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About Judie Lipsett Stanford

View all posts by Judie Lipsett Stanford

I have had a fascination with all types of gadgets and gizmos since I was a child, beginning with the toy robot that my grandmother gave my brother - which I promptly "relieved him of" in 1973. I have long been captivated by devices that did anything interesting or served a unique purpose - however silly. I can't tell you how everything works – but I am known world-wide for using a product until I have a full understanding of what it does, what its limitations are, and if it excels in any given area...or not.

fishgal

I just did a quick search and found this site:
https://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/04/10/what-do-you-do-when-someone-steals-your-content/

looks like it has exactly what you may be looking for in terms of info and steps. Also there is another site i came across for my own protection of content:
http://www.digimarc.com/comm/images.asp

Which allows you to track your photos as they are stollen and reposted around the web. Allowing you to find the theves for furthor action.
http://www.geardiary.com Judie Hughes

Thanks fishgal! I will check into both!

And for the�thieves who don’t know (or care) what ALL RIGHTS RESERVED means, I spelled it out a bit more in the copyright notice at the bottom of the page. At least they can’t say they didn’t know. Sheesh.
http://thtech.spaces.live.com Civisi

He’s not “stealing” your pictures. They’re still hosted on geardiary.com. He’s hotlinking them. If you could disable hotlinking, that particular post would not have pictures. He’s not only using your content, but stealing your bandwidth.

The source for those pictures is http://www.geardiary.com/wp-content/photos/*.jpg

I’d start with that.
http://www.geardiary.com Judie Hughes

And so I shall.
Douglas Moran

This is very much a side comment, but: eReader now allows you to copy and past quotes from their books with their latest release. Kudos to eReader for bowing to the obvious!
http://www.geardiary.com Judie Hughes

OMG Doug, that was so random!
http://www.geardiary.com Mitchell Oke

Civisi, its stealing no matter which way you put it. He stole the review and the pictures, and to make things worse he is sapping Judie’s bandwidth to do it!

When you see a story on another site that you think is relevant to your own, you link to it, and post one picture on your site, NOT THE WHOLE REVIEW AND EVERY PICTURE.
Rico3201

Not that it will make you feel any better, but I took a look at this guy’s home page and noticed he didn’t have any comments on any of his article. I wonder if he’s getting any traffic at all to his site.

I don’t know how you bloggers track that sort of thing… comments left to articles at least tells me you have an audience, and one that is participating at your site.

Judy, you do a great job and I’m enjoying your website very much. Keep your head up!
Ellen Beeman

Ah, the joys of IP infringement. That “What do you do” site is very good. I would agree with contacting him and asking him politely to cease and desist and take down the article (and refrain from hotlinking graphics). Explain to him what he can do… he can link to your articles and comment on them, if he really admires your content.

Then if he fails to do so, I’d do a step other than what’s recommended in the article. Contact his ISP and ask them to discontinue his hosting due to copyright infringement.

My husband also had a wicked recommendation… change the urls he’s hotlinking to, to be either ads for which you receive advertiser credit, or simply a graphic directing the user back to come to http://www.geardiary.com.

FYI, I had a really funny (but ultimately more serious) incident with something like this years ago, where a writer for a major metropolitan newspaper simply lifted content wholesale from one of my sites and used it in an article. One of my readers spotted it, and alerted me and the newspaper. That one resulted in a formal apology from the newspaper.

—Ellen
http://thtech.spaces.live.com Civisi

Mitchell,

You said, “Civisi, its stealing no matter which way you put it. He stole the review and the pictures, and to make things worse he is sapping Judie�s bandwidth to do it!”

I agree fully, and I didn’t mean for it to sound otherwise; hence the quotes around stealing as it pertained to the pictures. He put the words on his site, but left the pictures at their original source. He didn’t “take the pictures” and put them on “his servers.” So in a literal sense, he’s not “stealing” the pictures. I still think it’s wrong, and I did point out that he is using GearDiary’s bandwidth for his gain, which I consider equivalent to theft.

But hey, at least he put where this information came from.
http://www.geardiary.com Judie Hughes

@Rico – Well, I was able to track it because they actually credited the source at the bottom and it showed up in the WordPress Technorati links list. Maybe the credit made it “okay” in Elliot Black’s eyes…who knows? There have been other lifted articles that that I stumbled across because of weird links that had nothing to do with Gear Diary content showing up in that link list. I’m telling you – the web is like the wild woolly west of yore.

@Ellen – I sent something to Ewdi (my programmer guru) about doing a hot-linking block on the server end. Hopefully he will come up with something where any hot-link will return a picture like you said. I like the way your Steve thinks.

I did write to Elliot through the comment form on his site, and also left a comment (which has not been and probably won’t be approved) on the my lifted post about the theft, asking him to remove my review and the pictures…but I bet I’ll never hear back from him.

Your story about the newspaper plagiarism…sheesh. (shakes head)

@Civisi – yeah, he did credit me. Wasn’t that nice? I guess it is a lot easier to start a blog by copying people’s original work (never mind hot-linking the pics) and crediting them than it is to bust your butt and come up with original content.
Douglas Moran

Well, not *totally* random. You were talking about DRM software and copyright infringement. Until very recently, eReader was totally fascistic about protecting copyrights, such that you couldn’t even copy *text* from an ebook when you displayed it on your PC. So if you wanted to quote a book, you had to type the whole thing in.

So see, when you talked about DRM and people stealing your stuff, and then trying to claim it for their own (talk about theft!), it reminded me that the eReader folks had gotten a bit of a clue. That’s all.

See? I’m not as ramdom as you thought.
http://www.geardiary.com Judie Hughes

Ha – there is always a method to your madness, Doug!

Okay everyone – take a look at what I did on the offending site. It’s a little time intensive, but after Jack Cook made the suggestion…I just couldn’t resist.
runningman

Nice Judie. Theraputic, and yet, entertaining as well!

Bill
Ellen Beeman

Judie, you have to describe what you did, the fellow took down the page!

—Ellen
http://www.geardiary.com Judie Hughes

Ellen, I am so bummed – I hoped he leave my artwork on display at least another day or so.

I inserted this every few pictures.