

Protecting My Copyright - peetahb
http://www.baldheretic.com/2012/05/23/protecting-my-copyright

======
nostromo
What I learned from this story: Godaddy will take down your site, without
contacting you first, because they get a copyright infringement claim from
some random dude on the internet.

~~~
13rules
What I learned from reading her blog post
(<http://chicksandpolitics.com/jayleecheapshots/>) -- Candice Schwager is
batsh*t insane!!!

~~~
13rules
This has been posted to Slashdot too
([http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/05/25/1744246/photographer-...](http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/05/25/1744246/photographer-
threatened-with-legal-action-after-asserting-his-copyright)) ... Candice,
welcome to the Streisand effect!!

------
timtadh
As other people have said, the real story here is how badly GoDaddy handles
DMCA requests. Taking down a site for a single image is like using a bazooka
on an ant. Yes it will stop the infringement, however it will probably damage
some surrounding property. While that does not necessarily excuse the personal
attacks the woman in the story may have made I think it offers perspective for
all website operators. "Horror" stories of people sites being taken down (much
like her's) have been on HN in the past with great sympathy shown and in this
case I _do_ feel sympathetic towards her cause (despite her reaction). I guess
the lesson is talk to your registrar and hosting providers about their DCMA
process before it bites you.

~~~
dangrossman
What should GoDaddy be doing instead? If they want the safe harbor protection
from the DMCA so that they're not liable for the infringement, they are
required to remove the content. There need be no direct mapping between the
website URL reported in the complaint and any specific file they can identify
on a server's file system; it might be dynamically generated, served by a CMS
doing URL rewriting, coming from a database, etc.

So their choices are:

1) Invade your privacy, directly access your private source code and
databases, and deduce how to remove the content, potentially destroying your
data in the process over what might be a false claim... all of which is
completely non-scalable to the millions of customers they have.

2) Edit their web server configuration to not serve that URL, and reboot the
service, hundreds of times a day while this server is handling requests for
thousands of websites.

3) Click the suspend site button and your site goes back online as fast as you
can remove the infringing work, or file a counter-notice.

~~~
drostie
As low as my opinions of GoDaddy have fallen, the more I think about it, the
more I think that Candice was probably trying to cut costs and inadvertently
tied GoDaddy's arms behind its back.

The GoDaddy "Deluxe 4GH" plan costs $6/month and could easily hold 14 web
sites, and one feature they offer at this stage is "Multiple Web Sites:
Unlimited".

At first it sounded like GoDaddy had simply rerouted _all of her domain names_
to null addresses, when they could have just rerouted one of them. But no,
they were _providing the hosting service_. If she put fourteen businesses on
one account to amortise the cost among them, then she is responsible for
linking them together, not GoDaddy. Presumably GoDaddy would have just shut
down _one_ hosting account -- the one that held the infringing content -- but
the problem is that she only _had_ the one hosting account.

This is why I try to keep abstraction layers. The people I research with don't
hang out with my Ultimate (as in frisbee) friends or my web development
colleagues; the Ultimate folks are the only ones I'm letting friend me on
Facebook, and I make it a point not to preach my religion to any of the above.

Spolsky is correct that all abstraction layers are leaky, and these are too --
my professor has met my father for example, and the folks at work know that I
say something quietly before lunch every day -- but there is a great value in
compartmentalising. Robert Frost's neighbour confidently asserts, "good fences
make good neighbours" -- I guess it's more that good neighbours respect the
fences and use them to lower your own mental stress and drama.

Candice could have used a good fence between her charity and her infringing
account.

~~~
pdonis
> Candice could have used a good fence between her charity and her infringing
> account.

Agreed, but GoDaddy could have also taken option 2) from dangrossman's post
above, which happens all the time with "live" servers anyway, every time
people change their own configurations through the web "control panel" for
their hosting provider. For the kind of plan it looks like she had, her URLs
were most likely being served by the same Apache instance as the URLs for
dozens of other customers; so any time _any_ customer changes their setup, the
"web server" has to reconfigure itself. That's why servers like Apache do that
on the fly, without requiring a restart.

------
baldheretic
To be clear, I took no joy in shutting her site down. GoDaddy is a bit heavy
handed in their response and I have learned a lesson here. The main point is
that she used the image without permission and her site went down because of
it. To turn around and accuse me of being a part of a diabolical conspiracy
was out of left field. She should have contacted GoDaddy and worked it out. I
did my part by rescinding my DMCA when I realized the impact it was having and
offered her my willingness to resolve this one on one.

~~~
tomflack
She's still using the image on the business' Facebook page. Are you going to
tackle that one too or is the burn not worth it at this point?

~~~
daemon13
I wonder whether DMCA stuff is applicable for Facebook also and if anyone had
real experience in that?

~~~
tomflack
It is and it was mentioned in the article we're discussing.

"Facebook, for example, would remove the image in a matter of hours."

------
dangrossman
Yeah, people like that exist. I've run into a few that blew up exactly like
this, throwing everything they can at me in an endless tirade of e-mails for
days, including the nonsense legal threats, and "think of the children" guilt
tripping.

It takes very little to set them off -- something as simple as a declined
credit card for an advertising purchase has led to multiple accusations of
"denying my child food in violation of federal child protection laws". One guy
CC'd every e-mail to every United States senator and the FBI.

I just send a polite reply and try to ignore the follow-ups... communicating
after there's nothing more to say on the real issue just spurs them on.

~~~
incongruity
I'm no mental health professional, but I play one on the internet – and that
woman sounds like a straight up example of borderline personality disorder
with a dash of narcism thrown in.

It's awesome how the internet shortens the distance between you and crazy –
reach out and touch someone, indeed.

------
ZeroGravitas
I've just been reading "Against Intellectual Monopoly" and it's interesting
how things change when you mentally substitute "protecting my copyright" with
"exercising my monopoly". It completely changes the dynamic of who is acting
and who is reacting.

~~~
gee_totes
While those terms are interchangeable, I don't think they are equivalent. The
OP doesn't have a monopoly over the Houston skyline, and anyone is welcome to
set up a camera in the same spot and take an identical photo and use it for
their website.

Is this the link to the book mentioned?
<http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm>

~~~
ZeroGravitas
He's not got a monopoly on all pictures like that but he has a monopoly right
on that particular image he took, lasting for 70 years beyond the date of his
death, or else he wouldn't be able to send out DMCA takedowns for it and
otherwise control the manner in which it is duplicated and used.

(I just googled to check the length and found this heartbreaking message on
one of those cheesy Q&A sites: _My grandmother has a senior picture of my mom
from 1969 and I wanted a copy of it. Is the copyright for that picture up? If
not is there a way for me to get a copy of it?_ )

And that is the book, though note it's a slightly out of date version. The
final version is here:

[http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.ht...](http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm)

It's not a great work by any means, but it's a good overview of the craziness
of copyrights and patents when viewed from the perpective of economics.

------
jorgeleo
I wonder... Does the original website from which the photo was taken had: 1\.
A statement that the photo was not public domain? 2\. A way to contact the
author with the clear purpose of license it?

I can understand that someone might react against seeing their work all over
the Internet used for free, and use the DMCA to prevent that. I can also
understand a generous reaction, and feeling flatter instead.

While I don't agree with Ms. Borderline, I do think that if I am going to
react handing take down notices, providing a way to buy the image up front it
is a fair preventive measure.

After all, the internet is like a world wide getto street, and it would be
naive to leave my precious jacket out night after night and be surpriced that
someone finally run away with it. Attaching a price sign to it at least, and
some people might respect it, while others will actually consider buying it as
initial offer as oppose to a legal threat.

~~~
bigiain
"I wonder... Does the original website from which the photo was taken had: 1.
A statement that the photo was not public domain? 2. A way to contact the
author with the clear purpose of license it?"

It doesn't work that way.

Just like you don't need to put a sign on your door saying "The belongings in
this house belong to me. If you want to buy them call me on 5555-1234".

The _default_ is that if you dont own a photograph(/song/story/program/movie),
then somebody else does - and unless they've explicitly permitted you some
rights to use it, you have _no_ right to use it. (with some very specific
"fair use" exceptions, which are far less well understood by just about
everybody than they should be. If you're ever tempted to claim "fair use",
make sure you know what it means first…)

~~~
jorgeleo
In theory there is no difference betweem theory and practice, but in practice
there is.

I agree that in default should works the way you say, but that is theory, in
practice it is not what actually happens a the OP found out. And we need to
acknowledge the reality that people does not behave as theory, law, or
whatever other abstract term expects (the law is so abstract that it needs a
punishment machinery to be respected, it is not natural at all, and while some
people will surrender their free will to goverment compliance, others will
not, not even under the threat of heavy legal pain). Not realising this fact
of life is naive.

You can go around beating people over their head for their wrong doings
(natural or artificial), and if that makes you feel better about yourself or
your position then take your measuring stick and go on your merry way.

I, on the other camp, rather attempt to figure out how people actually works,
and make decisions accordingly.

Try to understand how things work vs. Do a I say or I'll beat you up. I guess
that is one of the differences between tinkers and lawyers.

One book that explain tis concept better than me would be Nudge by Sunstein
and Thaler.

~~~
wpietri
It may be hard to reach you way up on your high horse there, but I don't think
a "these photos are mine, all mine" disclaimer would have done a ton for him.

Take Candice as an example. She's crazier than a bucket of ferrets on meth.
Even normal users don't read much of the text on websites; look at any of
Jakob Nielsen's eye-tracking studies. People who are task-focused (e.g., find
an image for their site they're rushing to get up) read even less. Given that,
how much do you think Candice will read?

And once it's on another site, people will start stealing it from there too.
_Coughpinterestcough_.

So as someone who _also_ tries to look at how things work, I don't think he
did anything wrong here. Suddenly everybody's a publisher, and it's going to
take a while to teach them about copyright. This is part of the education
process.

~~~
jorgeleo
Is not a matter of high or low horses, but a matter of choices.

"She's crazier than a bucket of ferrets on meth"... love it.

"how much do you think Candice will read?" A bucket of ferrets on meth...
none. But that was not the only place the he found the photo.

"and it's going to take a while to teach them about copyright. This is part of
the education process."... teaching, that is something that I can agree with.
On the other side, in principle I cannot agree with Goya's picture "La letra
con sangre entra" (Teaching by punishment, or spare the rod and spoil the
child)
[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:La_letra_con_sangre_e...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:La_letra_con_sangre_entra.jpg?uselang=en)

If I am in a high horse, then then that kind of "teaching" is egocentric and
self entitlement.

~~~
wpietri
What disappoints me about your argument here is that you're basically
complaining that other people aren't doing things the way you'd like them to
be done.

You mention egocentricism, but don't seem to realize that _he_ is under no
particular obligation to live up to _your_ standards. Reasonable people can
disagree on how to handle this. He apparently disagrees with you, possibly as
a matter of morals, but more likely as a question of how best to solve a
problem with limited resources.

If you really care about this problem, solve it yourself. Go make something
that makes it easier for somebody like this to act the way you want than the
way that's easy for them. Until then, you're just one more person telling the
Little Red Hen how she should bake her bread.

------
wpietri
Wow. That is quite a story.

I hope he doesn't actually file suit against her. Partly because she's so
obviously nuts that I'd feel a little bad. And partly because it's a bad idea
to get involved in a court case with a crazy person. You may win in the end,
but your lawyer can rack up some big bills keeping up with a manic loon.

~~~
unreal37
Worse if the crazy person is themselves an attorney. She can just file crazy
motions all day long and it won't cost her anything.

I think GoDaddy is to blame in this. Taking multiple sites down for one DMCA
take down request. And the blogger too seems too happy about taking sites down
as he does. He should work harder (at least for GoDaddy sites) to contact the
sites directly and get a license fee.

Diplomacy before nuclear war.

~~~
dsl
The state bar association will make quick work of her. Real pro lawyers hire
other impartial lawyers to represent them in lawsuits.

~~~
tylermenezes
Impartial lawyers? How can you be impartial if you're representing your
client?

~~~
jvc26
I assume he means 3rd party/independent lawyers (i.e. not yourself).

------
DanBC
Is she a lawyer? She claims to be a lawyer. In the UK it is not legal to claim
to be a solicitor if you are not one. Isn't it the same in the US?

~~~
fruchtose
It is very much illegal to impersonate a lawyer. Being a member of the bar
means state regulation, and it is very much an institution.

~~~
meepmorp
But on the other hand, that's likely only ever applied in instances where a
person offersactual legal services to others without being admitted to the
bar.

Having worked service jobs in the past, I know that the population of the area
where I worked was at least 70% lawyers, judging by the number of people who'd
threaten to sue me/the business/the owners/unrelated parties when they didn't
get what they wanted.

------
tomflack
> The most interesting actions come from GoDaddy. If you file a complaint with
> GoDaddy and they find your complaint has merit, they will completely disable
> the site until the matter is resolved.

What happens if I forget about the issue and never tell GoDaddy the matter is
resolved? Is the site permanently down?

~~~
entropy_
I'm no expert but I think the owner of the site in question can file a
counter-notice and then GoDaddy has to put the site back up.

~~~
tomflack
A counter notice would imply some kind of dispute, in which case the matter is
definitely not resolved, possibly headed for the courtroom.

It does seem rather heavy for Godaddy to disable the entire site, instead of
just the infringing content.

------
slowpoke
This is ridiculous, and I don't mean the response of that site owner. While
yes, that woman is at least slightly nuts, the problem in the first place was
"oh the horror, people are using my image, let's throw around DMCA takedowns".
Yes, it's not nice to not give attribution, but I don't see a fundamental
problem here. What was the loss involved? Nothing. People liked the image, so
they used it. Where's there any theft? Nobody stole anything. Just another
example of why the DMCA is a very bad law and needs to go away. Ideally along
with copyright as a whole.

~~~
etfb
I can understand where you're coming from, but I think you lack empathy and
experience. If you like, send me a copy of every piece of creative work you've
ever produced -- songs, poems, articles, computer programs, graphics, whatever
-- and I'll just go ahead and post it wherever I want without giving you any
attribution. If you can tell me you're OK with that, I'll modify my opinion:
rather than saying you lack empathy, I'll say you have a very different
worldview than anyone I know, and I'll acknowledge that, under your worldview,
your opinion is entirely consistent and reasonable.

~~~
slowpoke
_> I'll just go ahead and post it wherever I want without giving you any
attribution_

Actually, I use the WTFPL[1] for a lot of code I produce, so yes, you could do
that, though it wouldn't be nice to do that.

My opinion is that copyright should not exist. While I can't demand copies
from anyone, I don't think anyone has a right to stop me from sharing anything
that I have access to, either. Putting things on the internet counts as giving
me access. I simply reject the notion that people should be able to control
the distribution of digital data. It's both illogical to assert ownership of
something abstract and harmful to society at large.

On the other hand, I think people should be credited for their work (if they
want). But that's a social issue and not one that can be solved by laws. Look
at the scientific community: plagiarism is _highly_ frowned upon and proper
attribution is required. And that's mostly by social pressure, not by laws.

So in short, my believe is "Give credit where credit is due, but don't try to
tell others what they can or can't do.".

[1]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL>

~~~
etfb
OK, I can see that your worldview differs from mine, but I can't reconcile the
last part of your first sentence ("... though it wouldn't be nice to do that")
with the rest of your comment. If copyright -- by which I mean the right to
copy, not necessarily any laws pertaining to that right -- did not exist,
there would be no justification in saying it "wouldn't be nice" to ignore it.
It's like: if I didn't like redheads, and I said I didn't want to see any out
my window, but I acknowledged that there is and should be no law restricting
them, then clearly I'm being unreasonable somewhere along the line.

~~~
slowpoke
You're misunderstanding the "it's not nice" part. For example, it's not
against the law to be (somewhat) rude, either - but it's not nice. As I
pointed out, the whole attribution thing is something that needs to be
addressed on a social level, not enforced by law.

And in general, I don't think it's an unreasonable world-view to dislike
something, but be against regulating it. For example, I'm vehemently against
right-wing ideology and fascism, but I still would not want laws restricting
nazis to voice their misguided opinions, because everybody is entitled to free
speech. That's not being unreasonable, that's being consistent.

------
DigitalSea
All she had to do was take down the image, it's not like it was beneficial to
her charitable business to have the image on the site in the first place.
Being someone that gives out legal advice, you'd think she would know better.
Glad it worked out in the end, sheesh I would be way less patient if I had to
go through this hassle just to get an image removed.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading, great story.

------
pdonis
I've seen other indications that GoDaddy is a bit heavy-handed, to put it
mildly, in responding to DMCA takedown notices. This confirms it. Assuming
that the notice was worded properly, they should only have taken down the one
specific site that infringed, not _all_ the sites belonging to the same
person.

~~~
peetahb
Apparently many of her sites used that specific photo. Hell, her business page
on Facebook still uses it as its cover photo.
[https://www.facebook.com/pages/Schwager-Consulting-
Marketing...](https://www.facebook.com/pages/Schwager-Consulting-
Marketing/345405795498111)

~~~
pdonis
> Apparently many of her sites used that specific photo.

Ah, didn't catch that.

~~~
peetahb
A lot of people fail to understand what's legally protected by fair use.

~~~
pdonis
Are you implying that the use in question was fair use (i.e., that the OP
should not have sent the DMCA takedown notice for this use)?

~~~
sbronstein
No, she claims she is covered under fair use because she doesn't make any
money from it, blah blah blah.

~~~
Natsu
Actually, there _have_ been fair use decisions when an entire work was used
non-commercially:

<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/fair-use-defense/>

I'm not saying that's the case here, but whether the use was commercial or not
is one of the four factors considered when deciding fair use.

~~~
pdonis
I don't think "commercial" requires you to "make money" from the use. I think
using the photo as an illustration on your business website qualifies as
"commercial" even if you can't show that it brought you any business. (Of
course, IANAL.)

~~~
Natsu
There are different degrees "commercial." It's not a binary distinction.

------
chmike
What is not explain in the post is how do we prove to be the author of a photo
?

------
Proleps
Is it possible to own the copyright of a photograph of a city? You own none of
the buildings in the photo.

~~~
cdeonier
People are copyrighting the composition of the photograph, not necessarily the
subject of it.

------
d_t_w
Copyright infringement isn't theft you huge douche.

~~~
etfb
Agreed - and I usually don't agree with people who express strong opinions
regarding copyright in internet fora. But just because it's not theft doesn't
mean it's not wrong. The accusation is hyperbole, not error.

