Affiliate sites sued over copyright infringement

[TheGamblingGuru]

Host Gator took the complaint very seriously not only with the one domain but several. I be thinking all this persons work are mere copies.

Thanks for the help Rick in the end it really does affect us all.

greek39

Greek and Rick, I sincerely appreciate you alls help here and I hope it goes without saying but I'll say it anyway...I'm here if you guys ever need anything at all...just ask. It's peeps like you guys that make this business worthwhile!

Greek, appreciate you getting in touch with Host Gator as well my friend and I will most definitely fill out the DMCA today and FAX it to them to take action. I should have faxed the first time instead of emailing. Apparently they need my signature or my agents signature on the form before they can take action.

Thanks for the PM Rick, really appreciate that buddy...you guys are the best!
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[vinism]

Sorry to hear that Mojo is having to deal with this, please keep us posted!

I just went through all the previous posts but didn't find anything about your liability if a member of your forum reposts an article from another site. Can they come after you if the republished content is on your site but wasn't put there by your company? Or would they have to contact you to remove the content first before making it a legal issue?

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) does protect forum owners from liability if one of their members uses the forum to republish copyrighted material. If the forum owners sued go to court, they will most likely win. The way it's supposed to work when copyrighted material is republished on a forum is the owner of the copyright should file a DMCA request, asking the forum to remove the material. If the forum owner (or YouTube, for example) fails to adequately comply, then the forum could be held liable. In an interesting twist, YouTube just won a huge case because the copyright owners who wanted their material removed didn't do a good job with their DMCA request, making it next to impossible for YouTube to figure out what it needed to remove.

[Betpartners]

Oh come on. HTF is a link a copyright infringement? That's staggering bullshit.

Of course, if someone copies a whole article and DOESN'T even provide a link, that's out of order. It'd be out of order, though bizarre, to quote a bit without a link. If they copy the whole article but do provide a link, maybe that's marginal - I've done that myself on just one occasion. But the internet is built, in large part, on quoting and linking. INTER-NET: the clue's in the word. Hello??

Do these people not understand the value to their websites of links?

Is it the lack of the link credit that is causing this grossly ill-informed overreaction?

Not sure what caused the over reaction but it smells of money and while it is bullshit that linking to a story and may i add without content, we are talking just the headline here only, it is in fact being treated as copywrite theft.

The first sense that something was going to happen was when Newsnow were informed that they would have to pay to link, yup you heard that right, pay to link lol

Heres the article

http://www.sourcewire.com/releases/r...hp?relid=51516

Here is just a snippet of what was said

Specifically, News International (publisher of The Times, The Sun and the News of the World) is asking NewsNow to cease all linking to content on its sites. In addition, a number of other publishers are threatening to seek a court injunction that would stop NewsNow linking if it doesn’t accept their proposed charges and controls.

Then Newsnow announced they would stop linking to those sites demanding money for their subscription service but continue to put up links on their free service and ignoring the Newspaper Licensing Agency agreement.

That article is here

http://www.sourcewire.com/releases/r...hp?relid=52498

So in response News International then blocked Newsnow from accessing their website

Article on that here

http://newsnow.co.uk/press/releases/...mesonline.html

So basically Newsnow were forced out because they refused to pay for the honour of sticking a link up and sending 10s of thousands of hourly hits to the respective websites, the word short sighted springs to mind with regards to News International.

But heres the beauty

As well as paying Newsnow were expected to hand over personal details of their clients to the licensing authorities, wtf? , heres another snippet

This is not just about the charges they intend to impose on us, but the charges they would also impose on our customers for receiving and circulating links within their own organisations. In addition, it is a perhaps an under-reported fact that the terms dictated by the NLA scheme would oblige us to hand over customer details to the NLA, which seems to be developing a potential rival service itself.

It would be funny if it was not so sad.

So yes Caruso it may be be bullshit mate and it may be well out of order but unfortuantly it is becoming a reality.

For the record Newsnow is a news aggregator service and i believe one of the UK's biggest if not biggest, but whatever they are a huge site with millions in traffic and if the big press barons can go after Newsnow they can go after the small guy and if News International win this, as it appears they are doing, it is just a matter of time before other sectors pick up on this.

Who would have ever thought the day would come when one had to pay to list a link, used to be a case of begging to get links on other websites.

Welcome to the 21st century of ecommerce

[pgaming]

And I think we may have suitable contender IMO reports Las Vegas Sun.

The Democratic Party of Nevada is fighting back against a copyright infringement lawsuit over Las Vegas Review-Journal stories posted on its website, enlisting Washington, D.C., attorneys experienced in representing public officials, candidates and political parties.

source:http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010...opyright-laws/

greek39

[Caruso]

The Armed Citizen is going to fight:

http://www.thearmedcitizen.com/

We are going to fight this outrageous lawsuit and we’re going to need some money to fight. The latest lawsuits filed against other parties involve copyright infringements based on “four paragraphs,” properly attributed and linked back to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Will you be allowed to quote two paragraphs? One paragraph? One sentence?

Please: not only for the gun rights community, but for the future of scholarly research, for the future of the Internet, and to prevent this outrageous abuse of the legal process, click the button above (or on the righthand side of the website) to help us with our legal defense fund.

People should maybe consider a donation to the cause.

[Nandakishore]

This thread is really excellent, not only the contributions from Vin. Since a while I have stopped quoting anything, titles or whatever, from any newspaper or other sources, unless they are from any product I promote with the permission of the producer. However, I do use press releases, not in entirety. After reading this thread, I am not sure if even that can be considered as copyright infringement.

I don't even write something like: The newspaper X (with link to X) reported that ... (then my own translation of one or two sentences of that report). I have stopped because I am not sure if I can be sued for misinterpreting what was reported in my statement.

In other words, I am actually going away from 'reporting' from any public source unless I have some kind of written permission or agreement with the source. This makes the whole communication in the net rather sterile, but safe for me.

[ck8795]

The Armed Citizen is going to fight:

http://www.thearmedcitizen.com/



People should maybe consider a donation to the cause.

Thanks and donated.

A link to another Vegas Sun article worth reading - five more suits filed between yesterday and today.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010...yrights-88-to/

[LiveCasinoPartners]

I was sincerely hoping someone would stand up and fight this abuse.

I donated. I think there is a line and it should certainly be defined. This process will help find that line.

[ck8795]

The Democratic Party is fighting as well - the sun says they've hired a legal team so it should be interesting. I feel for the people who can't afford to pay for their own defense.

[Simmo!]

Here's an article about Righthaven along with a picture of the guy behind it.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...g-for-dollars/

So sad that anyone want to make themselves rich by heaping misery and stress on other people. I blame the **** who sued McDonalds for burning herself on a cup of coffee. That basically bought the worms to the surface IMO.

If he issued a warning first then I wouldn't have a problem with it, but he's clearly got no interest in that. Someone, somewhere will probably show him the error of his ways in time I guess.

[universal4]

Source
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010...yrights-88-to/
What I found most interesting and very glad they made this point was in the 7th paragraph of that story they said that the copyright for the story that MajorWager allegedly copied was acquired after they had reprinted the story.

I think it was also interesting that the Sun went on to actually state what they consider to be fair use of their articles in the 9th paragraph.

Rick
Universal4

[pgaming]

I think it was also interesting that the Sun went on to actually state what they consider to be fair use of their articles in the 9th paragraph.

Time will tell who gets really burnt in the end. Frankly I don't really care much about copyright lawyers arriving on the seen 20 years after the fact. To me I remain convinced this is nothing more than broke lawyers with predator instincts.

greek39

[Anthony]

Time will tell who gets really burnt in the end. Frankly I don't really care much about copyright lawyers arriving on the seen 20 years after the fact. To me I remain convinced this is nothing more than broke lawyers with predator instincts.

greek39

Exactly, they knew it would be easy money. These lawyers are like vultures.

[AussieDave]

Hi all,

For a moment lets cast aside the reason this thread exists. Instead, focus on the use of copyrighted material.

I've lost count of the number of times my content has been scrapped. This is all original content of which copyright is held by myself.

Since blogs have surfaced, its increased the chances of my work being used, especially by sites accessing my feeds to use for commercial interests.

IMHO my RSS feeds are there for public use only.
Not for some webmaster to yank and use to make a buck on or to beat me in the SERPS for my own copyrighted content!

As a general observation people get pretty damn narky about their content being scrapped and used, rightly so.

However in this thread there seems to be a divergent attitude when it comes to using news articles or similar.
It seems that most believe it's ok. Or have I got that wrong?

Personally I don't use jack from anyone, if I don't write my own content, I'll use a copywriter and makes sure I own the copyright when purchasing the aforementioned content.

If this thread is a sign of things to come, I'd be making sure that everything I use on a site is not in breach of someone's copyright. And if I was using someone's material, I'd make sure I had written permission to do so.



Cheers



Dave

[universal4]

No Dave, I think you are missing part of the point.

If I mention a news article, and quote a very small portion and then link back to that article stating it is the source of the quote I mentioned, then that should be ok.

I quoted a small portion of an article so I could make a comment on it, help show a point I was trying tomake whether that be in agreement or dis-agreement....but that should be fair use of that said article.

But it is fairly clear that Stephens Media has a different idea about that.

In fact I mentioned that in a post I made over at the GIA earlier today.
http://www.gamblingindustryassociati...ead.php?t=2808

Rick
Universal4

Edited to add: Dave, don't you like webmaster linking to your content?

[Caruso]

Yeah, all these internet Shakespeares, up in arms about people quoting and linking.

"I'm such a wonderful artist, how dare they even breathe in my presence, let alone QUOTE my work! The horror!"

Puuuuuuuuuurleeeeeeeeease.

Anyone can quote anything of mine they feel quote-worthy. Just give me a link, and it's all yours as far as I'm concerned.

[universal4]

Thanks Caruso, I needed a laugh.....

Can I go back to breathing now?



Rick
Universal4