Look at what some russian loser did

[Chris]

http://www.classical-literature.com/


Grrr....... this is worse than Incka. I've started adding copyright statements right in the newer bios and he even left those in....

[demosfen]

More like a belarusian loser (unless you also consider Canadians to be Americans :p )
What did Incka do?

[fatnewt]

I've started adding copyright statements right in the newer bios and he even left those in....

Well of course! Who is going to bother going through all of those pages. :rolleyes:

That sucks, Chris. :(

[The New Guy]

You should be able to copyright collections, even if they are collections of public domain content.

[KLB]

You should be able to copyright collections, even if they are collections of public domain content.

This is actually a very sticky area of copyright law.

[fatnewt]

The biographies should still be his, either way.

[KLB]

If original articles, yes they would be his. I'd love the offenders website pulled down. I was just saying that copyrighting collections of public domain material is difficult.

[Chris]

The bios & summaries are what I'm mad about (I've paid writers to do those), there are hundreds of sites who copy the text (though not always so obviously just from my sites).

[KLB]

Chris, I really feel for you. I fight the same battle against copyright violations on a regular basis. For me the latest twist has been zero day article theft. Two of the last three articles I published on my environmental chemistry site appeared on other sites within a day or two of my publishing them. It really ticked me off because I'm so blatent about my copyrights and the fact that each of those articles cost me $300+ each.

I've now filed a copyright application with the U.S. Copyright office and plan to update my copyright filing every three months as is required. This way if I ever need to take really agressive legal actions I can recoup my legal expenses. I also require my writers to sign printed copyright releases and printed copies of their articles. This way I have as close to a air tight copyright paper trail as possible.

[Cutter]

Look at the bright side, you never have to worry about the sites ranking on Google because you can just send a DMCA. Registering the copyright is definately the way to go.. you can basically tell the person who did it to fork over a few grand, and take the content down, presuming they live in the US. Scratch that, you can tell them to give you their entire site or you'll sue them. I heard a story about one guy who basically dominated over 50% of the websites in his niche because they were stealing his content and he threatened to sue them.

[KLB]

Look at the bright side, you never have to worry about the sites ranking on Google because you can just send a DMCA. Registering the copyright is definately the way to go.. you can basically tell the person who did it to fork over a few grand, and take the content down, presuming they live in the US. Scratch that, you can tell them to give you their entire site or you'll sue them. I heard a story about one guy who basically dominated over 50% of the websites in his niche because they were stealing his content and he threatened to sue them.

A few grand? Try up to $150,000 plus legal expenses. :smash: The key is that once you register your copyrights you get to charge the defendant for your legal expenses if you succeed with your copyright infringement claim.

[John]

I'd keep in mind the actual person that is stealing your content, it would be pretty pointless trying to get thousands of dollars plus legal expenses out of some 18 year old website publisher.

[KLB]

Rarely are the violators of my copyrights 18 year olds. They tend to be non-profit trade type organizations, entities within city/state governments or the operators of forums (like this). The last violation was a commercial fishing association and the one before that was by the forum admin for a logging association's online forum.

Back in the late 90's one of my pages stolen lock stock and barrel by an entity inside the Turkish government. It took me a couple years to get that one taken down. I've also had to go after Wikipedia on a couple of occasions.

In the past people would cry innocent mistake, but now I have a COPYSCAPE not copy notices at the top of every page along with a do not copy notice and link to copyright.gov at the bottom of every page.

When it is an association that has stolen my content, I've gotten in the habit of sending DMCA take down notices to the member's of the association's board of directors. Nothing generates a faster response than a non-profit's board of directors and president being scared of the expense of legal action. Mid to upper level administrators in city/state government have also turned out to be lawsuit adverse and very quick to respond to DMCA take down notices.

The copying by associations/local government website is usually the result of some lackey, who was put in charge of the website, trying to put together their "online newsletter" and simply following their old offline practices of copying articles (without permission) to printed newsletters. They don't seem to grasp the concept of linking to the original article and simply providing a brief description.

Once I started experiencing zero day violations, I decided enough was enough and want to be able to use the "nuclear" option on really outrageous offenders. Nothing I enjoy more than seeing websites that are built upon stolen content get shut down and taken to the cleaners. One website I'd relish to see taken down would be Wikipedia, their editorial controls are so bad that they are a copyright violation lawsuit waiting to happen. I'd love to know how much of their content was appropriated from other website by volunteer editors.

[Cutter]

A few grand? Try up to $150,000 plus legal expenses. :smash: The key is that once you register your copyrights you get to charge the defendant for your legal expenses if you succeed with your copyright infringement claim.

Oh I know, the point was because of $150,000 number you don't even have to go to court. This is exactly what the RIAA does, just send letters.

Thats very interesting what you are saying about Wikipedia. Have you ever tracked which editors are adding your content?

[KLB]

I haven't had an article stolen recently that I am aware of. A while back some editor at Wikipedia got pissed off because all kinds of chemistry resources over there (especially their periodic table of elements) linked to my pages as a primary reference source. I block users who block my ads and as a result of his blocking of ads he kept getting blocked from my site. In retribution he edited out all of the links to my site he could find.

Shortly after the links got removed I stopped finding my articles copied by other Wikipedia editors. Basically I think my stuff was getting copied by lazy editors who were trying to build up their rep or something, but they were too lazy to dig very far beyond the links they found on Wikipedia's site.

At one point in time there must have been between 100 - 200 links from Wikipedia to my site. It is kind of funny but getting links to my site from Wikipedia may have been a blessing. Some people over there have no respect for intellectual property rights and the less they know about my site the better.

[KLB]

Oh I know, the point was because of $150,000 number you don't even have to go to court. This is exactly what the RIAA does, just send letters.

In my case and the case of small web publishers this ability is very important because we can't afford to do much more. If it weren't for this very big stick, bigger entities could steal my stuff and then ignore me when I complained. In a way the DMCA has leveled the playing field between big and small players.

[Chris]

I just love the DMCA because even if you can't get ahead of the person doing it, you can get the site taken down if its on a US host.

Although I've had trouble lately.

[KLB]

I find hitting the site and hosting provider from multiple fronts (email, fax, & sometimes phone) can really get things done quickly. Making sure that the correspondence uses the proper legal framework, looks like it was drafted by lawyers and is on company letterhead really helps. I use a templates based on forms I purchased from http://findlegalforms.com.

[moonshield]

Look at the bright side, you never have to worry about the sites ranking on Google because you can just send a DMCA. Registering the copyright is definately the way to go.. you can basically tell the person who did it to fork over a few grand, and take the content down, presuming they live in the US. Scratch that, you can tell them to give you their entire site or you'll sue them. I heard a story about one guy who basically dominated over 50% of the websites in his niche because they were stealing his content and he threatened to sue them.

Blackmail is illegal too. He could get his self landed in prison or fined.

[KLB]

Blackmail is illegal too. He could get his self landed in prison or fined.
What that guy was doing is not blackmail in the eyes of the law. The offender would have ended up paying him via a court of law anyways, he was just giving them a way to have an out of court settlement. It allowed the offender an opportunity to save money in legal judgements and avoid lawyer fees. This is done all the time. The legal system actually wants this to happen to keep as many matters out of court as possible. If the two parties can come to an out of court settlement (e.g. signing over the offending website) and the matter does not need to go to a judge then it saves taxpayers money.

[moonshield]

Yea, you're right. I read that improperly.

[AmbulanceBlues]

I don't get it... What's the problem with Wiki linking to your page? Links are good, right? If they're directly stealing content I can see the problem. But if they're quoting and citing your page with links isn't that beneficial, especially from a site with as much traffic and cred as Wiki?

[snowboarder]

Sorry, posted in wrong forum. Please disregard.