Early Afternoon Thoughts ~ Things That Go Bump In The Night, Or Show Up In My Inbox ….

I consider myself pretty computer savvy … I don’t fall for the Nigerian wealth scams (although I do sigh at all the money I’d missed out on) or phishing scams.  Today, however, was almost the exception.  This delightful missive showed up in my email, and I’m not going to redact much except the links …..

Nick H. – WordPress.com
Hi there,

We have received a DMCA Takedown Notice (http://automattic.com/dmca/) for the following material published on your WordPress.com site:
[redacted]
[redacted]

As such, we were legally required to remove the material from our servers.

If you wish to challenge this notice we will be happy to provide you with all of the appropriate details.

Thank you

Nick H.

WordPress.com | Automattic

First of all the two issues were posted in 2007 – I guess in June.  I frankly couldn’t find where they were….I’m assuming the when I moved from Blogger to WordPress there might have been some missed pictures – but more likely videos as the two sites have different methods of embedding videos.

Then (foolish me, I know) I tried to find a link to contact someone at WordPress about all this … there doesn’t seem to be one.

This is why I’ve decided to turn to you folks here in ‘bloggerville” – have any of you gotten something such as this? According to the sight Atuomattic – someone is supposed to contact the blogger directly to request that the blogger remove the material.  While I’ve not had a DMCA notification before, I have gotten requests to re-do my attribution on photos I’ve used.  There is no way I’m going to reply the email, as I have no way to ascertain that this is valid …. Any suggestions?

unknown source

And The Bleet Goes On ~ Early Afternoon Thoughts

This was posted on one of my absolutely favorite morning blogs –> Daily Kos<- -, which if you have not bookmarked, you should. It is updated during the day, and for American politics, culture with amazing commentary could not be any better (sorry, Huffington Post!)

At first I thought I might make a few “comments” about the mess in Albany, NY ~ but they’re doing just fine holding THAT circus without any further comments from me!!

I had written about RIAA and MPAA –> once before here <– an ezine called Zeropaid. This was the section that was posted at Kos and really caught my attention … These might be the reasons they lost the PR battles and probably the "war" ~ (Republicans, are you listening???)

We figured a short list might be in order:

-destroying Napster and Audio Galaxy and not creating an alternative for the get-go,
raiding people’s homes because they uploaded Star Wars (not necessarily leaking it in the first place),
-hacking the URN hash and polluting FastTrack,
-hacking The Pirate Bay,
-having Viacom serve DMCA notices to people posting video’s of people eating in a restaurant on YouTube,
-suing tens of thousands of average American’s including fining one individual $222,000 for sharing a couple songs,
-saying that files in a shared directory is copyright infringement in court,
-saying that evidence is too hard to get and that the industry shouldn’t be burdened to prove their cases in court,
-suggesting that iPods are little more than little pirate ships,
-saying in court that even making one back-up copy of a DVD is illegal,
-lobbying to put in the DMCA, demanding that laws should be in place to prevent any tinkering with DRM including for research purposes,
-installing rootkits on people’s computers,
-installing spyware on people’s computers via the MediaMax technology,
-being outed for being hypocrites for pirating a documentary movie and claiming that it’ll only be in a safe place,
-tried to bring people a broadcast flag and telling people you can’t record TV shows if the broadcaster doesn’t like it,
-trying to bi-pass the backfiring of WIPO and the FCC to bring in the broadcast flag anyway, -tried to get ISPs to do all the copyright industry’s dirty work,
-pressured and bullied other countries to implement laws the industry saw fit and using shady lobbying tactics to accomplish this,
-tried to sell us music that cannot be copied through the internet and on discs,
-tried to bi-pass the will of the European Union and get countries to pass “three strikes” laws even if artists disagree with it,
-attempted to price fix music albums,
-secretly hold negotiations to pass draconian copyright laws that would see people’s physical property effectively stolen on the mere suspicion of copyright infringement through ACTA, -demanding that laws be passed that mandates the promotion of legal alternatives,
then not providing the kind of deals that would allow legitimate services to flourish with internet groups and businesses like ISPs,
-alienate an entire generation by labeling their own customers as pirates,
-likened downloading music on the internet to terrorism,
-likened internet users who download music online to “biker gangs”,
-spread blatantly false information about file-sharing,
-forcing people to watch anti-piracy ads on movies,
-suing people who had a recently deceased family member,
-argue that the industry is for artists, then going to court and demanding that royalty rates should be lower for artists – thus having to pay them less and keeping more money from album revenues,
-forcing radio broadcasters to pay royalties even if they don’t play music from the copyright industry,
-suing a lawyer for blogging about court cases related to copyright,
-and possibly the whole issue of listing countries that hold 70% of the world’s population and labeling some as rogue nations that need to update their copyright laws via the USTR Special 301 report – thus alienating many countries in the first place.

Again, a short list of probably simple misunderstandings in the world of PR that have been taken out of context by the “enemies of copyright”.

Just so it’s clear, the copy is from the articles, the pictures I added …