To catch a thief

Posted on May 14, 2009 by dragonmage

I noticed today that someone has been republishing ALL of my blog posts on their own page by way of my RSS feed. While I don’t mind my writing being read by others, I feel that to completely republish entire posts from someone else’s blog is theft.

I did some digging to find out what was going on as the page ( http://planetgor.thedigitaldragonslair.net/ ) has no contact information.  What I found seems to have indicated that the page is hosted by Dreamhost.com (let me be clear – I am NOT saying that dreamhost is responsible, only that this page seems to be hosted through their service).

I sent an email to the dreamhost abuse account (abuse@dreamhost.com) and got a reply that said I needed to sumbit a “formal notification of claimed infringement as described in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (512(c)(3)(A)(i-vi)). Please be sure to provide detailed and specific URLs/links to the content in question, not including any non-infringing material.”

I checked to see what was needed in such a formal notification, and wrote up an email to send back to them.  I had a friend that works in website design look over it (thanks, vanillaimpaired!) and sent it off to abuse@dreamhost.com.

Since this page has fourty-five (yes, that’s right, 45) blogs being republished in this way, I thought I would post the letter here (minus my contact info, of course) so if any others that are being stolen from wish to, they can use it as well.

Edit: After receiving a reply from Dreamhost that my email lacked some things, I checked a bit further and modified a DMCA letter template. (template was found at http://www.mcanerin.com/EN/articles/copyright-03.asp ) I’ve posted the modified template here.

DMCA notification
copyright infringment report

May 15, 2009

Recipient information
Dreamhost.com
email: abuse@dreamnost.com

Sender Information:
your name
your address
email: your email address
your phone number

Sent via: email

The following information is presented for the purposes of removing web content that allegedly infringes on my copyright per the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. I appreciate your enforcement of copyright law and support of my rights in this matter.

Identification of Copyrighted Work

The copyrighted work at issue is the text that appears on (your blog URL here) and its related pages. The pages in question are the intellectual property of the complainant.

The URL of the specific posts that are currently being infringed is (URLs here)

Identification of Infringed Material

Website: http://planetgor.thedigitaldragonslair.net/

Original post:
(Your original here)
(Specific URL of original post here)

Copyright violation:
(stolen copy here)

http://planetgor.thedigitaldragonslair.net/

Copyright Owner Contact Information
your name
your address
email: your email address

your phone number

Copyright Infringers WhoIs Information
Domain Name: thedigitaldragonslair.net

Registrant Contact:
thedigitaldragonslair.net Private Registrant
thedigitaldragonslair.net@proxy.dreamhost.com
A Happy DreamHost Customer
417 Associated Rd #324
Brea, CA 92821
US
+1.2139471032

Administrative Contact:
thedigitaldragonslair.net Private Registrant
thedigitaldragonslair.net@proxy.dreamhost.com
A Happy DreamHost Customer
417 Associated Rd #324
Brea, CA 92821
US
+1.2139471032

Technical Contact:
thedigitaldragonslair.net Private Registrant
thedigitaldragonslair.net@proxy.dreamhost.com
A Happy DreamHost Customer
417 Associated Rd #324
Brea, CA 92821
US
+1.2139471032

Copyright Owners Statement

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above on the allegedly infringing web pages is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Signed on this day, the 15 day of May, 2009,

your name as signature

Dragon Mage

Filed under: Miscellaneous, community | Tagged:

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11 Responses

  1. Theiving Swines :: vanillaimpaired, on May 14th, 2009 at 10:48 pm Said:

    [...] a blogger in the sex blog community please check this site and if your blog posts are on it then Dragonmage has a wee story and advice on what to do to stop content theft like this. It’s downright [...]

  2. Avi, on May 16th, 2009 at 7:20 pm Said:

    whats up? its only up for an hour then it gets deleted. the dude simply rss feed blog posts for people in that life style. are you aware there are sexually oriented people who live like that? did you have a blog post up there? if so then you have a right to bitch but ya know why bitch if its not your shit? are you a night time “batman” kind of person and you correct the Internet? I bet the picture up there isn’t yours and was copyrighted by someone online? dude you are a fucking duche.

  3. Thursday's Child, on May 16th, 2009 at 7:36 pm Said:

    Sigh. There are some incredibly fucking stupid people out there. Do they even read the damn post before they post a reply?! Sigh. And this is why I did not miss the internet in the week I spent without power.

  4. thekittenpup, on May 16th, 2009 at 7:39 pm Said:

    i had thought of making some long winded reply…but really, it all speaks for itself..*chuckles*

  5. The Beautiful Kind, on May 16th, 2009 at 7:39 pm Said:

    Ha! Justice has been served. Kudos to you for taking the extra step, “Batman.” ;)

  6. Diva, on May 16th, 2009 at 7:41 pm Said:

    Is it me or is anyone else having trouble not only reading Avi’s comment but also making sense of it?

    Or is my brain just too tired tonight.

  7. Diva, on May 17th, 2009 at 5:56 am Said:

    John,

    Wow. I have to say your comments shocked me. Do you realize that you not only come across as harsh but quite rude here and I’m a little baffled as to why you would do that.

    Did you actually see the site in question? I did and I am also familiar with Google reader. Your comparison is completely wrong in my opinion. The site in question was a website/blog that was using full posts of bloggers listed on their blog roll. There was no original content of the site owner there at all.

    Goggle reader is a what the name says. A reader which also allows you to share links with your friends. My reader is not a public site and feeds are only shared with those I choose. Can you explain to me how those two are the same thing?

    I don’t know what your intentions were in these comments but as I said your tone was quite rude and your Google reader example was incorrect. Personally I think you owe an apology. But that is just my opinion.

    Diva

  8. JohnBaku, on May 17th, 2009 at 6:58 am Said:

    For the record, the JohnBaku that posted the initial comment was NOT ME… it was someone else pretending to be me to stir up problems. I would of never ever made a comment like this in public. I would of emailed you directly if I had a problem with your avatar.

    Can I ask you to please remove the comment the FAKE JohnBaku made?

    I am really sorry about this.

    • dragonmage, on May 17th, 2009 at 7:41 am Said:

      John,

      Thank you for posting this. I should have realized that you would not make comments like that (and the IP address showed up as an ISP based in Indiana – duh).
      The comments posted by the fake have been removed, and I intend to lock down the comments on this post (assuming I can figure out how to do it. lol)

Comments are closed.