DMCA Madness
I tried to resist writing this. Really, I did. But the ramifications are just too great. Most of you will know the amount of time and effort that goes into building and sustaining a website- especially a blog, and the thought that it can all be taken away by some random absurdity is too much to bear. Welcome to DMCA Madness.
This all started when we purchased JOAB from David Krug last July. There was a running dispute between him and Dan Zarrella about the site’s ownership- and, more relevant to us, the content on the blog we had just purchased. The upshot was that Dan Zarrella threatened us with a DMCA if we didn’t remove all content written by him and we did a post “What’s the deal with a DMCA?” exploring the consequences as far such a threat was concerned.
One upside to that episode was gaining valuable insights from an expert in this area- Jonathan Bailey from Plagiarism Today. Apart from leaving a lot of useful comments, emailing me thorough explanations (& advising that we did indeed take need to take down Dan Zarrella’s content), he also authorized us to use his content on some new anti-plagiarism software coming onto the market called Blogwerx. These included posts like “The Need For Sentinel” and were posted under Jonathan’s own username “copyspy”, which was a link back to Plagiarism Today.
All well and good. Water under the bridge. And then what? Unbelievably, out of the blue- we get an email from Blogwerx:
There are several blog posts that seem to have the exact same content as other locations. This content has been scraped and I would ask that you take it down in accordance with the DMCA.
Okay…fair enough…you think that they might have been pleased with the plug, but they probably don’t know that we had Jonathan Bailey’s permission- so we’ll just write back to them and let them know. No harm done.
But here is where the madness sets in. We get another email from Blogwerx, minutes later (allowing no time for the “personal request” or “warning” to be responded to)- but this time it’s to our email at imandhost.com -:
All of the content located on www.jackofallblogs.com has been scraped from other locations. This is an infringement of US copyright law and the DMCA. I would ask that this site be removed from hosting or the entire account for this user be removed. If you need further information please feel free to contact me.
Notice the change in language. From “several posts”, we now have “all the content”. And “locations” in the plural…
So let’s just recap. Having received permission from an author to publish his content reviewing a particular product, we receive a request from the developer of this product to take the content down as it is “scraped”. And allowing zero time for a response to clear the matter up, this third party- who is not the owner of the content and has no rights or claim to it, is writing to our server- not only asking that this blog be taken down, but for our whole user account (what- 200 sites?) be removed?
Seriously dangerous stuff as a precedent. As it turned out, the matter was resolved quickly and amicably. Jonathan Bailey confirmed with the people at Blogwerx that he had given his permission for us to publish his content. He also confirmed that he had no knowledge of their threat and that he had not instructed them to act on his behalf in such matters. And kudos to Blogwerx, they came back with a sincere and genuine apology. So no hard feelings there.
Still, it completely freaked me out that, as a precedent, a third party- who does not own or have any rights to the content in question, does not act for or have the permission of the content’s owner- can issue a DMCA threat to a server (which must, by law, be acted upon) and that this be within the boundaries of the current laws governing the internet. Where the hell is the common sense there?
So I’m going to be revisiting this matter in the coming days to clarify exactly where one stands with this DMCA madness- as I’m sure that you, like me, would like to protect yourselves not just from plagiarism, but also baseless claims against your website which can, regardless of the merits, cause you a great deal of trouble.
