I just want to say “thank you” to the many of you who read this here little blog and have either posted here or sent me a private message saying how sorry you were to see/hear about the thievery going on.
This isn’t the only thievery that I’ve had on a major scale. These are just the recent ones I’m mentioning here. And I’m doing it because:
1) people who do this need to know how they’re affecting people like me
2) people who are interested in starting a site need to know the reality of what it takes to keep yourself afloat.
It’s a complete fallacy to think that I get to crochet all day and design my life away. It’s simply not true.
I’ve had my videos reposted in several places online (blogs, domains, video hosting sites like youtube). And ya know how I found’em? Same way. Someone posted a link and there they were. It takes BOAT LOADS OF TIME to contact websites like youtube and the like to have the content removed.
First you have to prove it’s yours. For some, that’s not easy to do. In most cases, you need to show through documentation. Some people use to do this. It’s an archive of websites. You can do a search for a website and see what it looks like at certain intervals. This is done through cached versions of the site. To simplify how it’s done, I’ll just say that Google uses its “spiders” (technotalk for a program that visits websites and reads their pages) to make copies of the site. Then they’re stored in the archives. Simple enough.
In my case, Larry was smart enough to suggest that he “ghost in” my logo into the Quicktime and WMP videos files. And because of that, it’s pretty damn clear who those videos are, and for that, I’m eternally thankful to him.
But that’s not all a site might want. Some want what they term “reasonably sufficient information” of the person doing the thievery. In the case of youtube, I could point to someone’s account and say in essence, “this is someone with an account on your site.”
Just to show you an example of the hoops to be jumped through, here is youtube’s policy for
I know what you’re thinking? What if the posted material is on someone’s personal domain? How do you figure out who they are? Well, I start by running a . Plus, if they’ve clicked to my site, my stat files show me more information like the area where they live, how long they were on my site, what pages they’ve visited, etc. From there I hit Google and just begin searching keywords, email addys, etc to find out if they have a blog, or another site, or partcipate in online forums. My goal is to find out who they are.
If it’s someone with a domain, or in the process of putting one together, I file a DMCA complaint with their hosting company. These companies often don’t want to be sued in turn over the content and usually don’t ask questions, at least the US, Canadian, and UK sites don’t. It gets a little dicey dealing with hosts from all over the world. But generally, hosting companies don’t want to be bothered sorting through the details. They ask for the proof that the content is yours and then they, in turn, tell the website in question to remove the content or risk losing their hosting (bascially).
At the same time, if I’ve obtained any email addresses for the site owner(s), I’ll send out a C&D (Cease and Desist) letter outlining when and how the infringement was discovered, what I’m disputing (with links to what content on my site was stolen and where it shows up on their site). I know the specific links because I’ve already hand read their site code and have obtained the exact link(s). The letter also addresses what we want to happen, and yes, what will happen if they don’t remove it.
I know I’m glossing over a lot of this, but it’s a nutshell version of just one small aspect of having a website with content that’s subject to thievery. And if you’re someone who likes to download videos, mp3’s, movies, softare, etc from other sites, I just ask that you take a moment to realize that what you’re taking is someone’s livelihood. Have some respect for the work that’s put into what you’re taking and have the decency to purchase the pattern, video, song, software or what have you instead of stealing it.
Rant over.
