I don’t know why, but apparently some people feel Pod and Video casting are the only ways to avoid copyright infringement and content theft. I hope I am not the only person saying this - uhhh no it is not.

While it is harder to steal a video/audio clip, it is still very possible. I don’t even know a lot about that stuff but even I know how to do it. For videos, cut out sections where the original source is mentioned, and do the same for a podcast. Heck, you could do that in Quicktime Pro. Or just leave it alone and steal it as-is, or worse - they could deep link to it and cost you bandwidth.

If everyone started creating pod and video casts do you know what would happen? Sploggers would start stealing it. It’s that simple.

The music and movie industries have been making some enormous mistakes lately in their quest to rid the world of piracy (which will never happen, by the way). Each and every one of these mistakes can be lessons for everyone:

Don’t Go After Someone Without Multiple Tiers Of Proof

Whenever you are even going to file a DMCA notice (which is a legal document, and you can get in huge trouble for faking it), you should have multiple tiers of evidence against the other party.

At the bottom of the list should be your weak evidence, like a copy of the Google Cache for the page, and at the top should be concrete evidence like a copy of the page itself, with your stolen work still on it. I actually have a folder on my computer called “Legal Issues” where I store copies of the Google Cache (if my work is on it) and a copy of the page as well as a link to the website in their own individual folders, and any other documents like the DMCA itself and maybe a Google Adsense DMCA. Oh, and lets not forget I also take screenshots. It helps me keep everything organized, just in case the worst should ever happen.

The RIAA and MPAA made the mistake of relying on IP addresses alone, which are a very weak form of evidence. They can be faked, go quickly out of date, and multiple people may be using the same IP. Think of the lawsuits they are losing against colleges, it is because they have absolutely no way of proving who stole music, nor do they have any proof they actually stole it (it is pretty easy to securely erase a file off an HD).

Don’t Become Distracted By The Little Things

The RIAA and MPAA are so concerned with going after the Mother who has 5 illegal songs or the Son who downloaded that new album, that they forget who the real threat is - the people uploading the content. It is the people who upload songs and movies who are causing the most damage. Sure, it is illegal to download the stuff, but it is much more illegal to upload the thing 5,000 times.

Let me ask you this question: If two sploggers steal your content and both file counter claims against your DMCA takedown, who would you sue first, the splogger who makes $10,000/month via adsense and such, or the splogger who has no ads on their splog? There is a concept called prioritization. If you can, go after the biggest threat first, then work your way down.

Don’t Lie About Sales

For the past few years music sales have gone down. Do you know why? I sure as heck do - modern music sucks. Plain and simple, it sucks.

It really is no surprise that music sales are going down when 40% of songs are “F this” “Bang my hooker” and “kill that b” and another 40% of songs are purely sexual nonsense (thank you Britney Spears).

The RIAA makes it look like sales are only going down because of piracy. While I agree it can and does affect sales, I think it plays a much smaller role than they make it seem.

Comment policies should cover at least 5 things:

1. What the user can do
2. Copyright/licensing info
3. Whether or not paid commenting should be allowed
4. How you handle bad comments
5. How users will be informed of policy changes

Of course there will be more things that you may have to include depending upon your niche and such, but that list covers the basics. Here is a more detailed look at each topic.

What The User Can Do

One general rule that a lot of programmers use is that you should always assume the user of your product is malicious and will try to do all sorts of nasty stuff. The same is true with legal matters like terms of use and policies, always assume the user is out to get you in trouble.

Three of the main things you should not allow are defamation, spamming, and copyright infringement. If you are not savvy with legal matters usually something along the lines of “Defamation, spamming, and copyright infringement are not allowed. All comments with any of those elements will be removed with or without notice.” will suffice.

Don’t forget that if you remove a comment that is infringing someone’s copyright because of a DMCA notice, you have to notify the commentator as well, that is why it is very important to collect their name, their e-mail, and their URL. If they give you fake info then oh well, you can’t notify them. Also, unless you are registered with the govt. as an ISP and have filed all the proper documentation, you could be held liable because you aren’t covered by the safe harbor provisions that sites like Digg, Google, and your ISP have protecting their butts.

Copyright/License Info

In addition to not allowing copyright infringement, you should also set a basic guideline as to how the licensing with the comment author will work. Some people go all out and use Creative Commons and stuff, but personally I take the simple route and put in “You retain full copyrights of your posted content, however, by posting said content you are licensing out the use of the content to this site for public display.”

Very simple, and when you think about it that would stand should a conflict arise. If they argue that you didn’t tell them the content was licensed, just point them to the policy. The public display bit is important, as they can’t argue “hey, you never told me my copyrighted content was actually going to be visible to the public!”

Whether or not you take the Creative Commons or the custom license route is totally up to you. I’m a simple person, so I always try taking the simple (not necessarily the easiest) route.

Whether Or Not Paid Commenting Should Be Allowed

Paid commenting is a fairly new trend that has become much more common in recent years. Basically a company will pay someone to comment on a popular blog, not spam them, only comment. The comments will usually sound a bit like a TV commercial.

I hate the things, so I don’t allow them here. I will even go as far as banning users forever who I suspect or who I know are getting paid to comment. Luckily I haven’t really had to do that… yet.

How You Handle Bad Comments

Do you want to go all out and remove bad comments, or do you want to simply e-mail the author and tell them to change it or else? The choice is totally up to you.

Simply removing a comment is the easiest route, and if the user bitches at you just let them know why you did it, and end it at that. If you want to you can also define other parts of your policy a bit more at the end of it (like what defamation is… etc), seeing as how common sense is a rarity these days.

And finally, you should always include…

How Users Will Be Informed Of Policy Changes

Usually when I do any major changes to my policies I will do a quick news post to let everyone know, but for smaller things (like defining something a bit more) I just change it and leave it at that. I allow myself to do that by including a clause at the end of my policy that reads, “This policy is subject to change at any time, with or without notice.”

That basically means exactly what it looks like. I can change the policy however I want at any time (even at midnight), and I may or may not tell you.

Note: In a recent decision the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said “No” to changing ToS without notice, and said that you must inform the users of all changes. Please take note that this decision was done by one of the most liberal courts in the entire US, so I suspect it won’t be around for very long. In the meantime, perhaps it would be a good idea to inform people when it changes?

Don’t Forget To Link To Your Policy!

Oh yeah, and don’t forget to inform your readers and visitors about your policy. I include mine on the Terms Of Use page, and I include a link to that page on the comment form (and on the bottom of every page), just so that way some idiot can’t say I didn’t inform them of the policy .

I don’t really like The Pirate Bay at all, but I have to kind of agree with them in regards to this situation:

The Swedish Police may use a child porn filter to knock out The Pirate Bay via DNS redirections performed by the ISPs. According to Brokep’s Blog the police haven’t notified them about any content in question, let alone The Pirate Bay does appear to do some pretty kick ass filtering based on my experience the 2 or 3 times I’ve visited it.

I suppose the fact they might be linking to a torrent which may contain hidden child porn would be enough for the Police to get mad, but since they didn’t even talk to the bay I do have to agree something fishy is going on.

Just a quick thought though, the police hate that site, and The Pirate Bay did recently launch an image sharing site which has been controversial from the get-go due to the fact it is uncensored. In addition, the people behind the bay have been getting a lot of attention because their recent projects may be linked to pedophilia support.

Perhaps this is just a bite in the ass for their “other” projects, or maybe the Swedish police found a nice opportunity to take down The Pirate Bay and are going for it?

What do you think?

In the past month or so I’ve unsubscribed from at least 5 so-called “SEO blogs” because they told people to break the law. Scrapers will traditionally use live content, content that is fresh and new. However, these SEO blogs told people to scrape from dead sites instead of live ones.

The process basically goes like this:

1. Find dead site
2. Go on the Internet Archive
3. Steal content

The content on dead sites is not always uncopyrighted content. When a webmaster marks a site as dead, they still hold the copyright on it, thus you can’t copy it unless they explicitly state “This content is in the public domain” or unless they use some sort of license that allows copying.

In addition, scraping dead content can still cause you issues even if it is uncopyrighted. Think about other scrapers who’ve already stolen it: duplicate content. And chances are if the SEs find the other scraper’s version of it before yours then they are viewing that copy as the “original”, which will not harm them but could harm you.

Let’s not forget the fact is is completely unethical. Ethics on the Internet has been going downhill for some time (it’s become much more noticeable since the social networking boom). I tend to compare people without ethics to monkeys who throw their own poo. They are both stupid and lame. Set yourself some good rules and stick with them for the rest of your life.

Personally I think any form of content theft is wrong, even if it is as simple as using a press release (which can also be copyrighted, by the way). How often do you see the really popular bloggers do that? Do you think using someone else’s text and claiming it as your own makes you look like a better blogger? It doesn’t.

Write your own content!

And if you are really out of ideas, why not try guest blogging?