Millions of Blogs Knocked Offline By Legal Row 162
another random user writes with this excerpt from the BBC: "A row over a web article posted five years ago has led to 1.5 million educational blogs going offline. The Edublogs site went dark for about an hour after its hosting company, ServerBeach, pulled the plug. The hosting firm was responding to a copyright claim from publisher Pearson, which said one blog had been illegally sharing information it owned.
... The offending article was first published in November 2007 and made available a copy of a questionnaire, known as the Beck Hopelessness Scale, to a group of students. The copyright for the questionnaire is owned by Pearson, which asked ServerBeach to remove the content in late September."
Re:No, Actually It's Exactly How It Was Stated (Score:5, Interesting)
Astonishing but still within the copyright term length. Abhorrent? You bet. But I wouldn't go around attacking publishers and would instead focus on reducing the law that governs said term length.
What is the purpose of copyright? To allow a creator to profit from his or her creativity.
What creativity in this case could possibly be profited from? Is the publisher actually going to lose money from a small portion of 40 year old book making it into the public domain? Are you actually arguing that this is the case?
So what you're saying is that if I want to make money publishing my research, I should stay away from publishing suicide prevention materials since placing a copyright on that is morally reprehensible because if it's public domain it might actually save lives?
I said no such thing, but you're free to put words in peoples mouths if it gives you a reason to argue over nothing on the internet. I would however suggest that creating something that is intended to benefit the public health be allowed to benefit public health first, and be used as a mechanism for profit SECOND. But apparently I am to consider myself in the minority in that viewpoint.
So I'd like to point out that from what I've read they were given 24 hour notice from their provider [techdirt.com] and they failed to remove the article from their cache (although they did remove it from their site). If you're running a site that costs $6,954.37 just in hosting service per month, I would hope you would be a little more competent about complying with DMCA requests.
And I would hope that someday small internet businesses be freeed from the ridiculous requirement that they respond to such takedown notices before a judge has actually confirmed that someone is losing money from the violation. But I must be some kind of dreamer to hope that small business be allowed to create jobs first, and protect the property of other companies in different industries second, right?
I'm telling you right now, the way you described how horrible this is makes me never want to produce any sort of writing that might be construed as beneficial to society because then I won't be paid for my work or I'll be a monster. If Pearson can't make money off these texts, goodbye Pearson. It's that simple. And yeah, that might be the future with self publishing on the rise but right now they have those texts under laws that are legitimate US Laws.
So, suggesting that a portion of a work that was written 40 years ago might be better in the public domain actually makes you afraid to write? Are you for real?
Re:Hahaha (Score:4, Interesting)
Disclosure: I used to work for a company owned by Pearson.
$120 for a test is very much the reality of clinical testing. The research, norming and validation of the test are not cheap, and while I don't know anything about this particular test, instruments like this are normally developed and refined over multiple years of research. You are talking about lots of administrations in clinical settings, and follow ups to determine the eventual outcome of the patient. And research papers in peer reviewed journals to convince people in the industry that you have statistically valid results.
And any clinical test has a small market, since the number of people that can use it is relatively small. And usually getting paid by health insurance to boot.
Re:Do hosting companies have a clue? (Score:2, Interesting)
I do not see anything summery about TFA. My impression is that the incident was rather chilling. Wintery, actually.
Additionally, TFA states the copyrighted material was in a buffer that was not accessible to visitors to the blog. So there does not seem to be any reason for any take-down action, as the copyright was not being breached. Also killing 1.5 million blogs instead of just the one offender seems like an excessive response in any case.
The take-away I see in this story is that customers of ServerBeach would be better off if they moved to another web hosting service. Since ServerBeach is incapable of properly handling the legal issues that a web hosting service routinely faces.
Perhaps ServerBeach needs to fix its policies and procedures; that is, perhaps the failure is stupidity in management. Or perhaps they need to hire competent help or train the staff they have until they are competent in their duties. But that too is ultimately a failure due to stupidity in management. So any way you look at this, ServerBeach fails it in the worst kind of way, and its clients should really take their business elsewhere.
Re:A good reason to host your own blog (Score:4, Interesting)