Author: TechyDad

Content Thieves and Malicious DMCA Takedowns

Blogging, Copyright, DMCA

burglarPretty much anyone who has put content online has encountered it.  Someone takes your content and puts it on their own website.  They might be generating ad revenue from your content or they might just be trying to gather good content (as opposed to generating good content) to that their site looks good.

Whatever their reasons, their theft of your content has serious repercussions.  Beyond simple copyright theft, search engines can knock sites down if it sees the same content on multiple websites.  If a content thief takes your content, it could mean that you actually get dinged in the search engine rankings.

Thankfully, content owners have a recourse via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).  The DMCA says that copyright owners who find their content online without permission can send a letter (DMCA takedown notice) to the person or company hosting the material.  The person/company then must take down the material.  Once they do, the person who put the content online can then either accept that the material was taken down or contest this takedown.

Once they contest it, it is a matter between the poster and the copyright owner.  The hosting company is off the hook and isn’t involved.  This is a good thing.  Were this not the case, the mere act of letting users put any content online would be too much of a lawsuit risk.  The Internet as a whole would grind to a halt.

Sadly, however, DMCA requests can be abused.  Recently, Retraction Watch, a blog run by Ivan Oransky and hosted on WordPress.com, found many of their postings gone.  After doing some investigating, it turned out that one of the subjects of his postings, a cancer researcher who was being investigated for fraud in his research and inaccuracies on his resume wanted to improve his online reputation.

To improve his online reputation, the cancer researcher hired a company.  The company copies Retraction Watch’s content.  Then, they filed DMCA takedown notices with WordPress, claiming the content was their own.  WordPress complied and the content was deleted.  Now, Retraction Watch is trying to recover their lost content.

This is, understandably, very worrying.  Theoretically, false DMCA takedown requests constitute perjury.  Practically, though, there is no penalty for filing a false request.  How many more people will find their content gone via DMCA takedown because some person or company doesn’t like what they posted?  How many content thieves will steal content and then try to take the originals down to bolster their claim over the stolen content?

How can you protect yourself?  The best way is to always back everything up locally.  This way, even if you are struck with a malicious DMCA takedown notice, you won’t actually lose any content.  If you are running a self-hosted WordPress blog, there are many plugins that you can use to back up your database.  (I prefer WordPress Database Backup.)  If you are on WordPress.com or Blogger.com, this site has some recommendations.

Even if you think you can trust your host, it is a good idea to back up.  You never know when a malicious DMCA request will come your way and it is the best method of protecting yourself.

NOTE: The burglar image above is by tzunghaor and is available from OpenClipArt.org.

Test Track Car Commercials

Disney, Videos

When you go on the new Test Track ride, you get to design your own car.  However, when you get off the ride, the run doesn’t stop.  There are many activities to pursue, including designing your own car commercial starring the car that you put together, in scenes of your choosing, with announcers of your choosing, and spotlighting features of your car.  Here are three commercials that I made.

Disclosure: I was invited to the New Fantasyland media event December 5th through 7th. Disney paid for my travel, our park tickets, room, and a few other items. I was able to take B along as my guest, but we paid for her own travel as well as an extra night in the resort. The opinions expressed above are my own.

Umbridge Teacher Trouble

Books, Harry Potter, NHL

As I wrote before, I’ve been reading the Harry Potter series with NHL.  As we’ve progressed, his enthusiasm seems to have waned.  He still enjoys it when we read and wants to know what happens to Harry and his friends, but it seems as though his anxieties are being triggered.

In Prisoner of Azkaban, he didn’t like the werewolves and cringed upon seeing them in film form.  In the Order of the Phoenix, his problem is with a certain new teacher at Hogwarts and spy for the Ministry of Magic: Dolores Umbridge.

Without giving out any spoilers (in case you haven’t read the book or seen the movie), Umbridge is a big supporter of the Minister of Magic.  (Think of the magical world’s equivalent of a President.)  He is of the opinion that the headmaster of Hogwarts, Dumbledore, and Harry Potter are lying about a big threat to everyone.  He dispatches Umbridge there to spy on them and keep the situation in hand.

Dolores Umbridge quickly reveals that she is not interested in debate about subjects.  Things are to be done her way and, if she is crossed, she will make life hard for the people responsible.

In the movie, Umbridge is played by Imelda Staunton and looks like a sweet aunt (at least until she acts or speaks).  In the book, however, she is described as looking like a toad stuffed into a pink cardigan.

Whether it is due to the description of Umbridge’s looks or her cruelty (especially to Harry), it has NHL spooked.  Until he feels comfortable enough to move on, our reading of Harry Potter has stalled.  I, however, am going to forge ahead alone.  I’ve already finished Order of the Phoenix and plan on starting Half-Blood Prince soon.

Calling All Beta Testers

FollowerHQ, Twitter

logoYou might know that I made a little Twitter application called FollowerHQ.  It was born out of frustration of being unable to keep up with the people following me.  I’d try to evaluate each person to see whether I wanted to follow them back, but I couldn’t keep up.  So I made an application to help me decide who I wanted to follow back.

Of course, like any developer, I wasn’t fully satisfied with my final product.  It was nice, but it had a big flaw.  If you loaded the site, you needed to wait for a long loading screen to complete.  Part of this was due to the Twitter API.  Thanks to how it was structured, I needed to break my requests up into multiple smaller requests.  (In their defense, Twitter has a good reason to do this.  It likely keeps their server load down.)

Depending on how many records I needed to pull, this back-and-forth would take awhile.  It might not be so bad for someone with a thousand followers, but ten thousand or more would get painful.  Furthermore, you needed to keep the browser open at all times or you would need to start again.  Finally, if you came back to the site the next day, you would need to pull down all of these records again.

My solution was to restructure FollowerHQ into a "request and report" system.  In FollowerHQ Version 2, You submit a request to see the followers you haven’t followed back (including your e-mail address as a contact method).  In the background, FollowerHQ will queue your request up, retrieve all of the information, and store it in its database.  When it is done, it will e-mail you notification.  Then, you simply come back to the site and view the results.

Have a hundred thousand followers?  No problem.  Your report might take some time to generate, but you don’t need to wait by the browser.  Go do something else and FollowerHQ will let you know when it’s done.  Too tired to get through the whole list or computer crashed? No problem. Coming back to the site gives you the ability to open the report again and pick up where you left off.

Of course, I’m sure there will be bugs that I haven’t picked up on, cool features that I didn’t think of implementing, or refinements that I didn’t think of making.  That’s why I need some beta testers.  So who’s in?  Who would like to try out FollowerHQ Version 2 and let me know what they think?

If you’re in, please comment below and then visit http://www.followerhq.com/version2/.  Happy beta testing!

If Spam Were Useful

Email, Spam

envelope_smallLike many people, I get a lot of spam.  Everything from deceased Nigerian princes whose fortunes I can have, international lotteries I won despite never entering, casinos asking me to gamble with them, and herbal supplements to increase anatomical measurements.

Most times, this spam just gets grabbed by my spam filter and tosses in the virtual trash.  I do look through my spam folder, from time to time.  Mostly it is to find any real e-mails that may have been dumped there.  (I’ve lost giveaway wins because the “you won” e-mail went to my spam folder and I didn’t check it soon enough.  Lesson learned.)  Sometimes, though, I just look at the things I’m being sent and laugh.

A few days ago, SelfishMom tweeted: “I keep getting emails for cheap Canadian pills. Send me emails for cheap Canadian Twirl bars and we’ll talk. They’re $2.50 in my ‘hood.”

This got me thinking.  What if could spammers were to send us offers that actually tempted us?  What would those e-mails be?

In my case, the International Lottery “winnings” would vanish to be replaced by “You’ve been one million Unlimited DVC points.  You may use these to stay at the Disney resort of your choice.”  The dead Nigerian princes would disappear and, in their place would be a (very much alive) maid/child sitting service that would offer to watch our children and clean our house for free while my wife and I went out on a date night.  Those herbal supplement e-mails would go away and, instead, I’d get offers for a wonder gadget that could cook a healthy dinner that my whole family would love – and clean up from it as well.

If spammers begin sending these message, I’ll find myself very tempted to click on them, even though I’ll still know I shouldn’t.

What topics would make spam nearly irresistible to you?

1 … 76 77 78 79 80 … 300