Messages

46

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Dan B. Levine from Copyright Defense League

« on: September 20, 2012, 01:16:17 AM »

I love how the author kept Levine's perverse spelling of the word "proverbial" in the quote.

Great exposé on Levine and the other image trolls, and a great public relations score as well. Not to mention good for SEO!

47

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: ELI Factor - Oscar, Robert & Matthew Threesome!

« on: September 19, 2012, 01:22:09 PM »

One more quick tip: Google LOVES +1 votes. They're even more shameless about that than about the YouTube connection. Google Webmaster Tools even keeps track of your +1 stats for free.

The forum has "Like" buttons and those are great for SEO; adding +1 buttons would be a plus in a big way.

48

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: ELI Copyright Extortionists Chart

« on: September 18, 2012, 07:02:40 PM »

Good one, Peeved! We men should try to think outside the cajones more often.

49

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Randy G Taylor and Copyright Defense league

« on: September 18, 2012, 06:57:57 PM »

This must be the CDL Kool-Aid Chamber. It's part of the training program for aspiring trolls.

50

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: ELI Factor - Oscar, Robert & Matthew Threesome!

« on: September 17, 2012, 07:29:14 PM »

That's a good observation, Jerry, and you're absolutely right, Robert. Google's algorithm shamelessly rewards posting content on YouTube and linking to it. They're not ashamed of a little corporate incest.

Maybe The ELI Factor belongs on both Oovoo and YouTube!

51

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: ELI Copyright Extortionists Chart

« on: September 17, 2012, 07:02:06 PM »

Matt, I love the chart. That's a very nice, clean and professional infographic. It will be interesting to watch it grow. Maybe we can have an animation showing how this thing grows tentacles over time.

Oscar, that's a pretty funny concept. It seems that so far the trolls all have "Get out of jail free" cards. For now.

Mulligan, I totally agree with you. Just wanted to mention it's spelled "cojones". "Cajones" is Spanish for "drawers," as in the drawers of a desk. "Cajones" can also mean "boxes" or "crates."

In any case, who cares about the spelling? It's the thought that counts! 

52

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: GODADDY Shut Down By Anonymous

« on: September 17, 2012, 06:51:44 PM »

Apparently, the outage wasn't because of a "hack":

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57510432-83/go-daddy-sorry-about-the-outage-and-no-it-wasnt-a-hack/

S.G.

It's very comforting to hear that the total meltdown was purely the result of GoDaddy's technical incompetence and not the technical competence of an anonymous hacker.

They gave one of my clients a free month of hosting for an afternoon of outage time. That's not a terrible deal for a low-traffic website. I actually do have some respect for the gesture because that's putting their money where their mouth is. However, a month of GoDaddy hosting is less than 10 bucks. I guess it amounts to something if they offer it to millions of people, but some individual businesses could have lost thousands of dollars in an 8-hour outage during business hours.

Have any of you been offered this deal, or heard of the offer from someone? They sent my client an email with a credit they could apply to their account online.

I bet Matt moves this thread to another forum — I'm surprised it survived this many bumps!

53

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Copyright Defense League and Randy Taylor

« on: September 14, 2012, 04:01:44 PM »

Nice, S.G. Goes well with Robert's "Tombstone" motif.

54

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Photoattorney.com Lawyer Earl Richardson sends demand letter on behalf of Corbis

« on: September 14, 2012, 03:48:07 PM »

It always burns me in these letters how they accuse you of manipulating the images to remove copyright information, watermarks or other identifying marks. While in almost every single case a simple search for the image will reveal it on free sites in multiple places. Hopefully people will start filing bar complaints for the language and tone of these letters much as they did to good old Timmy that made him change his ways and produce his new kinder gentler letter.

Greg, you're absolutely right. This is the most annoying part of the rote bluff because THEY CAN'T PROVE IT. They must know this unless they're totally deluded. They just throw that in because it sounds really scary that you could be nailed for a Federal crime, fined huge amounts of money, and thrown in jail.

Of course they fail to mention that the onus is on them to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the infringement was intentional. Proving intent in court is difficult and expensive and probably requires a more experienced IP lawyer than E.R.

55

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Getty Images is Hiring!!

« on: September 12, 2012, 07:41:38 PM »

Robert, do they mention compensation? I'm curious how much it pays to sink your reputation to the bottom.

Also, do they have a tagline at the bottom of the listing that reads "Equal Opportunity Extortionists"?

56

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Copyright Defense League Recruiting Extortionist Lawyers

« on: September 12, 2012, 07:34:21 PM »

Robert, you're a total gumshoe, Man!

S.G., you make a good point. These "extortion letter mills" are starting to get aggressive with their recruiting and marketing and are beginning to oversell the earning potential and undersell the risks involved.

Perhaps they have gotten arrogant and cocky because it's worked to some degree for some companies. We have no way of knowing how much money this scam is earning them from people who settle; we can only imagine it's a lot. HAN claimed it was half of their earnings a couple of years ago.

However, this money was coming from people who settled out of ignorance and/or fear of litigation. I think there's an effect now that more people are competing to troll a demographic that is shrinking because of the efforts of ELI and the other anti-troll websites.

I think ELI in particular is hurting their business because those who choose to use a search engine to research the matter before paying are inevitably finding ELI — and learning how to cope with the trolls without paying them a dime.

Now that the trolls' bluff is being called, they're attempting to go to court to make examples, but even their best attempts are resulting in pyrrhic victories, and in many cases they're setting themselves back.

So now the johnny-come-lately trolls have to spin their trolling more than ever and they are obviously trying to mitigate their own risk at the expense of the copyright owners and even the lawyers who get involved.

What do you expect? They're trolls.

57

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: ELI Factor - Oscar, Robert & Matthew Threesome!

« on: September 11, 2012, 03:42:58 PM »

Nice work. It covered a fair amount of ground on the image trolling. I like how it left the door open for further discussion about the P2P trolling, aka "porn trolling" because it involves pornography a lot of the time.

Those lawsuits are starting to get more media attention. I like the argument that pornography has no artistic or social value, and is therefore not entitled to copyright protection. That could spark some debate at the highest levels because "pornography" is still such a vaguely defined term. I could think of other types of content that one could argue have no artistic or social value, such as "torture porn" — the "Saw" and "Hostel" series, for instance. Are those types of movies ineligible for copyright protection? Who decides?

In any case, I think it's appropriate to refer to ELI's "threesome" as a subliminal teaser for the upcoming episode on Porn Trolls.

58

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Bogus Farolatino YouTube Copyright Complaint Hits ELI Video

« on: September 08, 2012, 09:02:06 PM »

It appears YouTube uses some kind of software to match soundtrack content to copyrighted music. I've had them flag videos of mine. One time they were absolutely correct about the content, but the copyright owners graciously allowed it. I used a short clip of a 50s tune for the credits of a video promoting a folkloric artisan's work.

The other case was a lot like your experience, Matthew. Some outfit claimed the soundtrack to a video I posted with footage of a local junior surf contest. It was my video, meaning I shot it myself with my own camera, and I created all of the soundtrack music using Apple's Garage Band. I only used music loops that came with the software, which Apple expressly allows to be used for creating content even if it's for commercial use. In other words, it was 100% my song. Not that I really care about the stupid soundtrack, but I was offended by the wrongful and grabby claim.

I checked the song that I was supposedly infringing and it was some kind of techno music mix thing by some guy I've never heard of. Maybe he used some Apple loops in his song too? LOL!

I disputed the claim and the outfit dropped the claim. I guess they had to listen to my soundtrack personally to see if wasn't a match at all.

Should I register my crappy Garage Band soundtrack with the copyright office before someone STEALS IT? 

59

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Copyright Attorney Leslie Burns shows her ignorance

« on: September 08, 2012, 08:42:46 PM »

Nice work again, S.G.! Not only are the trolls getting hosed on the social media — they're also getting their ass kicked in the search engine result pages. Most of them get their best rankings from the negative exposure on ELI and the other troll-fighting websites.

60

Getty Images Letter Forum / Re: Copyright Defense League Recruiting Extortionist Lawyers

« on: September 08, 2012, 08:34:49 PM »

Copyright Defense League sounds like a Nickelodeon show.

S.G., that's a good point about the fees. The CDL risks nothing and takes the lion's share if it works. Nice business model: Their hands in everyone's pocket.

Their only expense is PicScout. I wonder if PicScout works on contingency or if they have a flat rate for unlimited use. It's someone else's bandwidth anyway!