Saturday, 9 April 2011

The Times shows its muscle

Some months ago I posted a reprint of an article by Jeremy Clarkson that had appeared in The Times. Not being one who was prepared to pay the 'firewall' charge, I was indebted to a fellow Twitter(ess) who forwarded me a copy. It would appear this upset The Times as two days ago I received the following email from blogger:
"Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog is alleged to infringe upon the copyrights of others. As a result, we have reset the post(s) to "draft" status. (If we did not do so, we would be subject to a claim of copyright infringement, regardless of its merits. The URL(s) of the allegedly infringing post(s) may be found at the end of this message.) This means your post - and any images, links or other content - is not gone. You may edit the post to remove the offending content and republish, at which point the post in question will be visible to your readers again.

A bit of background: the DMCA is a United States copyright law that provides guidelines for online service provider liability in case of copyright infringement. If you believe you have the rights to post the content at issue here, you can file a counter-claim. For more information on our DMCA policy, including how to file a counter-claim, please see xxxxxxxxxxxxx
.

The notice that we received, with any personally identifying information removed, will be posted online by a service called Chilling Effects at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. We do this in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). You can search for the DMCA notice associated with the removal of your content by going to the Chilling Effects search page at
xxxxxxxxxxxxx, and entering in the URL of the blog post that was removed. If it is brought to our attention that you have republished the post without removing the content/link in question, then we will delete your post and count it as a violation on your account. Repeated violations to our Terms of Service may result in further remedial action taken against your Blogger account including deleting your blog and/or terminating your account. If you have legal questions about this notification, you should retain your own legal counsel.
 
I have deleted the 'offending' post in the spirit of 'keeping up with The Times', however whilst admitting that I did not pay for the content I would have thought that The Times would have been grateful for a little added publicity.

5 comments:

William said...

As you are on a 'hosted platform' everything you produce is actually the property of the host so you have probably done the correct thing for your own sanity.

It will be very a good day when all of the MSM retreats behind their paywalls as people will then begin to wake up in sufficient numbers to take the EU and Parliament down PDQ!

Woodsy42 said...

Or indeed shows its stupidity - by banning what is essentially free advertising. As the Times gradually loses its online public presence it will fail anyhow.
And what has the US Digital Millenium act got to do with it? Is Google's blogger server in the USA?

Trooper Thompson said...

You can defend yourself under the principle of 'fair use'.

A K Haart said...

You did the right thing. Most bloggers don't have the resources to take on institutions except via their weak points. Usually their stupidity.

WitteringsfromWitney said...

w: could not agree more!

W42: Yes it is.

TT: True but to be honest I cant be arsed!

AKH: Thanks and yes to the stupidity!