Record Label Infringes Own Copyright, Site Pulled 282
AnonCow sends in a peculiar story from TorrentFreak, which describes the plight of a free-download music site that has been summarily evicted from the Internet for violating its own copyright. The problem seems to revolve around the host's insistence that proof of copyright be snail-mailed to them. Kind of difficult when your copyright takes the form of a Creative Commons license that cannot be verified unless its site is up. "The website of an Internet-based record label which offers completely free music downloads has been taken down by its host for copyright infringement, even though it only offers its own music. Quote Unquote Records calls itself 'The First Ever Donation Based Record Label,' but is currently homeless after its host pulled the plug."
And people say (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Who says that? The pro-copyright infonazis say it's not even near comprehensively draconian enough (though they don't say draconian). The digital liberty freaks say it's gone way too far. I haven't seen _anyone_ say it's fine the way it is for a looong time.
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Not to mention that this situation has nothing to do with the state of our copyright system.
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It does have to do with the state of the copyright system being based with the assumption that all copies are unauthorized, unless proven otherwise, and the DMCA(among other legislation) not specifying non-snail-mail proof as acceptable just exacerbates the problem. However, in the main, you're right, this is a stupid ISP problem, not a copyright problem.
Re:And people say (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm wondering if the RIAA told on him. I'm wondering if I decide to write a poem and post it on my Website; will I then have to pay to have a lawyer formally copyright it for me. I suppose it would be useless for me to even start a blog in that case.
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doing it on-line only costs $35, much less than an attorney would charge you just to discuss the issue.
I have some experience with lawyers, as my ex-wife once successfully sued the city of Springfield when I was married, and I've been divorced and bankrupted, both endeavors of which necessitate legal council. A lawyer will NOT charge youto "discuss the issue" unless you already have him or her on retainer. (S)He will tell you if you have a case or not for free.
If it is you who is doing the suing, in most ca
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Benefits of copyright registration (Score:3, Informative)
You're partly right. As soon as you record something "in fixed form" (on paper, hard drive, CD, or whatever), the copyright is yours. But if you want to go to court over it, you'll want to have it registered.
From the Copyright Office website [copyright.gov]:
Re:And people say (Score:5, Funny)
And some people say (Score:4, Insightful)
...publicity stunt.
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Right, and he just happens to need people to download his content on P2P and send it to him. He never thought to make a backup or even to burn a CD. Get real.
Re:And some people say (Score:5, Insightful)
Lol.. Creative commons is a license. A copyright is something completely different from a license. You need a license (read permission) to use someone else's copyrighted works.
It doesn't matter that he needed others to store his music or whatever, he was required to snail mail proof of copyright to the ISP and instead attempted to rely on a license he offers with works he owns or controls the copyright to.
It's like the GPL. I can put the GPL on any piece of software that I find. But unless I own or control the copyright to it, it is meaningless and I will be getting a lot of people into trouble. But it I can show that I own or control the copyright, then the GPL is valid for whoever obtains the software and uses it in a way that needs permission because of the copyright.
Re:And some people say (Score:5, Insightful)
He claims he owns. Without the registration, the ISP has to assume he doesn't.
More importantly, TFA doesn't say who made a complaint (if anyone). ISPs don't unilaterally decide something is infringing a copyright without a complaint. That's the double edge to the DMCA safe harbor provisions. Any ISP that does unilaterally remove content based on copyright is setting themselves up to lose that safe harbor. You can't have it both ways. Either you can tell if a file violates copyright or you can't.
Re:And some people say (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, right, but I think we are going at two different ends of the problem. Unfortunately, it does look like the ISP acted unilaterally on this because there is no record of a complain in which a DMCA take down notice would require. Perhaps the ISP simply has a policy that you provide copyright validation of anything hosted or something.
Either way, the guy seems to be wanting to rely on a license instead of an actual copyright for validation. I do however, think that a sworn affidavit pertaining to the ownership of the material should be enough to prove copyright ownership without a officially registered copyright. It probably wouldn't be enough to defend in a court against an infringement but it should be enough to provide an appropriate legal trail to absolve the ISP of any perceived liability. It's not like I have to provide receipts of purchase for items stolen from my home to convince a judge that I owned them before they were stolen or someone used them inappropriately and broke them.
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He claims he owns. Without the registration, the ISP has to assume he doesn't.
By that same logic the cops must assume a crime is in progress in your bedroom without proof to the contrary.
imagine if you went into a store and tried to buy something and they store demanded proof that the 10$ bill you were carrying truly belonged to you?
Imagine if every morning IRS agents showed up and demanded proof that you filed your taxes on time. Or the cops showed up demanding proof you weren't a fugitive on the run from the law?
a society can't function unless people are able to take basic honesty
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I'm making no claims about his copyright or license, frankly I don't care. All I'm saying is he claims he doesn't have the content he claims to own. Suspicious. That's all. Remember when people used to do publicity stunts, I sure do.
I don't even care if his stuff was really taken down or not. I think he allowed it to go down for publicity. Or he was really an idiot and the ISP took his stuff down at which point he seized the opportunity.
I don't even care if I'm right, I'm just pointing out my observation
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You need a license (read permission) to use someone else's copyrighted works.
I'm pretty sure this isn't true for most copyrighted stuff (computers are funny here due to how they work). Specifically, I don't need a license to read a book, or look at a picture, or watch TV... I need a license to make copies legally however.
Re:And some people say (Score:4, Insightful)
In all fairness, I don't think the host deserves all the blame. They are running scared, since any mention of copyright tends to involve lots of scary lawyers, or at least the threat of them. It's a lot easier for the host to deal with potential copyright violations this way, especially as the chances are that the majority of content flagged in this way is in fact infringing.
Also, Creative Commons licensing is not exactly mainstream, so I can understand why they might not have taken it into account.
That said, a quick conversation with a customer service rep (or manager, if necessary) should be enough to sort this situation out. If not, then my opinion of this host would plummet, because that *is* part of their core business.
Re:And people say (Score:5, Informative)
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The same thing happened to Kahvi.org a few years back. Kahvi.org hosts free legal music, sent for release by the artists themselves under various licensing, many a times Creative Commons etc. Someone decided that nobody can really be giving legal music away for free, and called Kahvis ISP, which promptly pulled the plug without even consulting with Kahvi staff. They were understandably pissed off, and terminated their contract with said ISP immediately. Theyre still going good, and serving free and good ele
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Your friend should go read the OCILLA section of the DMCA. There is nothing there against being proactive, and if anything, an ISP that independently discovers infringing behavior is liable if it does not end the infringing behavior. The only way being proactive can get an ISP in trouble is if it allows the ISP to end a contract on a bogus reason not supported by the contract.
Re:And people say (Score:5, Insightful)
Your friend should go read the OCILLA section of the DMCA. There is nothing there against being proactive, and if anything, an ISP that independently discovers infringing behavior is liable if it does not end the infringing behavior.
I would dare to say that there has been no copyright infringement and therefore this ISP has done a legal wrong. Their behavior well may make them liable for a number of possible actionable complaints by the copyright holder.
The only way being proactive can get an ISP in trouble is if it allows the ISP to end a contract on a bogus reason not supported by the contract.
Or if it materially and/or intentionally interferes with a copyright holder's copyright. Not to mention the possible libel involved here, as well as other possible criminal charges that may come along with such. Any affiliation this ISP would have in ANY way with the RIAA could also lead to some conspiracy investigations as well.
It all depends on how anal the wronged company decides it wants to be about the situation.
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I would dare to say that there has been no copyright infringement and therefore this ISP has done a legal wrong. Their behavior well may make them liable for a number of possible actionable complaints by the copyright holder.
I doubt it. They seem to be enforcing the letter of the contract, so unless the contract itself is illegal in some way they're in the clear. It's not illegal to be brain-dead.
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No, you're completely wrong there about forums. Fortunately, the chances of it being tested in court are slim to none. But anyway: it's libel if it's published and ANY third party (beyond the sender and the person being defamed) see it. So an
Yawn (Score:3, Insightful)
When even pink contract spammers can find a way online, are you telling me they can't find an ISP that doesn't have their head up their ass? File a breach of contract lawsuit if you got good reason to and if not just move on.
Upside-down argument (Score:3, Insightful)
To use a Slashdot-approved car analogy, what you are telling us is that if you find a used-car salesman that offers stolen cars for sale that's no big deal because there are plenty of used cars for sale that aren't stolen.
Re:Upside-down argument (Score:5, Insightful)
No, he's saying sue/file a police report on the salesman and find another, instead of bitching about having no car
Re:Yawn (Score:4, Insightful)
When even pink contract spammers can find a way online, are you telling me they can't find an ISP that doesn't have their head up their ass? File a breach of contract lawsuit if you got good reason to and if not just move on.
The problem is one of perception. There is a perception that spammers (and other internet denizens of a dodgy nature) are primarily a Russian and Chinese problem (a lie, but there we are), and that the US, with its 'clean' internet must crack down on the currently hot, if in reality extremely unimportant, issue of copyright enforcement (not that it isn't important, but no way is it as important as is being ranted in the halls of power).
Its an assumption that all the big problems on the internet are 'somebody elses problem', so they focus on silly things like music copyright, often mindlessly following 'the rules' so that only the big labels get a say.
Its classic disassociation, and it can't last. I'm not being all 'ooh look at me, I'm a liberal', I'm being realistic.
The old economic and copyright models are collapsing. Not into anarchy, that's far too pessimistic an assessment. No, they're falling in the face of different models. In the case of Internet and copyright the people who run things (businesses, not regulatory bodies) aren't quite as up with the trends as they need to be.
There are plenty of hosts out there (Score:5, Informative)
Re:There are plenty of hosts out there (Score:5, Informative)
If you RTFA, then you would know that the ISP is denying him access to his data, and he has no other copies because his local hard drive died. Summary: Murphy struck and his ISP is holding the only copy of his data hostage until he can prove that he owns the copyright on the files.
One could argue that his local hard drive was the backup to his ISP and vice versa. I have a co-worker who says you should always keep three copies of important data in different places. This lends weight to the three copies idea.
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It's probably a good time to ask them about it:
http://www.ixwebhosting.com/index.php/v2/pages.LiveChat [ixwebhosting.com]
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That picture makes the live help look like some sort of phone sex service. I might have to go in and ask them to tell me I'm naughty.
Re:There are plenty of hosts out there (Score:4, Informative)
According to ecommerce.com's website, ixwebhosting is their service.
Ask for Samir.
Domain name: IXWEBHOSTING.COM
Administrative Contact:
Master, Domain samir@ecommerce.com
247 Mitch Lane
Hopkinsville, KY 42240
US
+1.8003850450
Technical Contact:
Master, Domain samir@ecommerce.com
247 Mitch Lane
Hopkinsville, KY 42240
US
+1.8003850450
Re:There are plenty of hosts out there (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see any reason that the site owner couldn't contact the feds, and charge the ISP for data theft. If it were me, I'd look into something like trademark dilution also since the ISP is hosting ads on the domain name.
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Pretty outrageous huh? The key to everything is to use the system to your own benefit. Even if you have to fling a lot of shit at it until something sticks.
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He should just create another domain like company-license.com which is for the sole purpose of showing the CC license.
Then just snail mail a letter saying the license is this and that and online at company-license.com and get his data...
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I have a co-worker who says you should always keep three copies of important data in different places. This lends weight to the three copies idea.
"I tell you three times!"
-- R.A.Heinlein, "Number of the Beast" 1980.
Re:There are plenty of hosts out there (Score:5, Insightful)
See, that's the point where I stopped caring. This guy is too stupid to own a computer, let alone run a record label.
Re:There are plenty of hosts out there (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There are plenty of hosts out there (Score:5, Insightful)
Hold on now. He contracted the storage of his data to professionals (the ISP) and retained a personal backup. What's stupid about thinking that would be sufficient? What's wrong with thinking that the people you contracted and paid to store and serve your data would actually do those things?
Any data not stored on equipment or media under your direct control should be considered expendable. Period. That means that the owner of that data should have maintained multiple backups (preferably incremental so he'd have a history of changes) with off-site copies. Unless that ISP specified that it would provide backup and loss indemnification services (some do, but I'm betting this one doesn't) he's responsible if that data gets lost.
In the meantime, assuming that this goofy ISP still has his site, he really should contact law enforcement, or a good lawyer at minimum. This is insane.
The OP is correct: the guy screwed up.
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Well, his local hard drive was the backup. I guess he reasoned the likelihood of his driving failing at the same time his ISP lost the data was very small. Technically his ISP hasn't lost the data, either.
But yes; it seems very sloppy to only have one copy. I suppose if his contract with the ISP says that they're maintaining a proper backup scheme then using a local copy as a failsafe is reasonable. Except when the ISP decides not to give you your data, and your local drive happens to die at around the same
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Seems like he needs to file a complaint in court and get a subpoena or get a judge to order that the ISP turn over the files.
And pursue some legitimate action against the ISP for unwarranted disruption of business (removing his web site).
They are clearly not operating within the DMCA safe harbor, if they are "pulling for copyright infringement", and not putting the materials back up without proof.
If there were a DMCA letter anyways, the site owner has the option of a DMCA counter-notification.
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There's no mention of a DMCA complaint, the ISP just decided to say "prove it or fuck off." That causes no static with the DMCA safe harbor provision, if anything the safe harbor provision says ISPs that know of infringing content are liable.
All that said, the ISP is still a bunch of idiots, if law-abiding idiots.
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The market for hosting is huge. Prices are very low. However, most of them are lame and full of bullshit. The problem mentioned here is with ixwebhosting.com.
Stop the world (Score:4, Funny)
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THAT was what broke your camel's back? Not, you know, politics, entertainment, police videos, scientology, or anything else, it was COPYRIGHT infringement that set you over the line? Seems odd. Copyright issues to me seem one of the less blatant examples of insanity I could think of.
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It's not the final blow of a stonecutters hammer that breaks the stone, it's the dozens of blows before.
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Who holds back the electric car? Who made Steve Gutenberg a star? [hulu.com]
The copyright notice (Score:5, Informative)
It's right here [archive.org]
Might want to check that title... (Score:4, Informative)
Copyright holders by definition cannot violate their own copyrights. They have the (copy)right to do with their own material as they see fit.
Re:Might want to check that title... (Score:5, Funny)
Copyright holders by definition cannot violate their own copyrights.
You say that, but I've violated my own copyrights several times. I can send you a video for $20, assuming you're over the age of 21.
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Can you send me a new keyboard too?
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Copyright holders by definition cannot violate their own copyrights.
Tell that to the webhost.
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Wow, just wow. I mean I know people don't read the article, but you have outdone yourself by not even reading the summary. That is the whole point of the damned story and the summary seems to be fairly clear in indicating that.
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And you (and the post in question) have outdone yourselves by assuming that the subject is a good place for comment text.
Use the comment body, that's what it's fucking there for!
Not exactly copyright's fault... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not exactly copyright's fault... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not exactly copyright's fault... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, that talking woman that pops up sure is annoying.
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If we can /. them from a link in a comment, they shouldn't be used by anyone to host pretty much anything.
Re:Not exactly copyright's fault... (Score:5, Informative)
If we can /. them from a link in a comment, they shouldn't be used by anyone to host pretty much anything.
While trying to retrieve the URL:
http://www.ixwebhosting.com/ [ixwebhosting.com]
The following error was encountered:
* Connection to 98.130.254.114 Failed
The system returned:
(111) Connection refused
You were saying?
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Who in their right mind would go with an ISP that has flash video on their front page? How annoying. Of course, mine uses cPanel, so who am I to judge?
Re:Not exactly copyright's fault... (Score:5, Informative)
Hilarious! A website I co-maintain switched away from IX just last week, because when they last recompiled PHP, they set the register_globals setting to "on", thus allowing our site (and who knows how many others) to get hacked. When we asked them about it, they claimed that the default setting in PHP 4 and 5 is "on", which isn't true (the default has been "off" since 4.2.0, in 2002, and the setting is being done away with altogether in PHP 6).
They have horrible service, with response time to service tickets measured in days. We've had numerous issues with the database servers being pegged as they've expanded their customer base without upgrading their servers. You can't restore from backups without contacting customer service. Sure, it's cheap, but as they say, you get what you pay for.
The incident mentioned by the OP is apparently the frosting on the cake.
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How could they think hosting unregistered original music is a risk? Have they never seen a band's MySpace profile?
I'm with Warll below, that they made up an excuse to dump a high bandwidth user.
Well. (Score:5, Interesting)
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I would be suprised to actually HEAR that. I wouldn't be suprised to see evidence SUGGESTING that.
Noob question: wouldn't they have it in their contract that you can't use more than a set amount of bandwidth if that is an issue? If not, why not? Or are ISPs kind of acting like all-you-can-eat buffets that SAY you can eat all you can, but cut you off at 20 pounds of taquitos... lying bastards at ponderosas...
Re:Well. (Score:5, Informative)
Well, most hosting providers actually expect their customers to use a significant amount of the bandwidth they provide, and enforce quotas when reached. If a customer used 100% of their allocated bandwidth they would at most be cut off for the duration of their payment period, or given the option to purchase additional bandwidth. This isn't like a cable company offering "unlimited" bandwidth and retroactively redefining the meaning of unlimited.
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But then you get into resellers selling hosting as unlimited (which is quite common these days) when it's just a virtual server with no such lack of restrictions.
And there's thousands of these guys out there now. Fly by nighters that disappear after they take in a few bucks and hit their limits.
Find another host. (Score:3, Insightful)
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These guys need a good lawyer... (Score:5, Funny)
And I think I've found the perfect guy for them [madisonrecord.com].
Re:These guys need a good lawyer... (Score:4, Funny)
And I think I've found the perfect guy for them [madisonrecord.com].
Huh ... looks like he sued himself in the foot.
Record label dude is kinda asking for it (Score:4, Insightful)
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The advantage to copyright registration is to be able to prove ownership if questions arise. Anything created is immediately copyright by the creator, but that can be challenged by a thief if there's no record. The creative commons is just a license people stick on their material, but it's still not proof that they own the copyright. Someone can just come along, challenge the material in court as their own, and maybe win that challenge without a copyright registration. It's not all that expensive to do,
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Re:Record label dude is kinda asking for it (Score:4, Informative)
>Fair enough
Not fair at all. First of all, if the blog and myspace post are accurate, then the ISP is citing their TOS as the agreement that requires this. The TOS here dated June 16:
http://www.ixwebhosting.com/index.php/v2/pages.tos#q21 [ixwebhosting.com]
says *nothing* about copyright registrations being required or any other provenance for hosted content. If they don't have some other reason for the service outage, I'd speculate that they're making up the "terms" as they go.
>why record label dude doesn't simply register
I see no indication of how many files we're talking about. Depending on how it's structured, $35/file could add up to cash that a struggling artist does not have. They probably would not be needed later either, as I think most folks are inclined to respect CC license provisions.
Still, it's hardly a problem going forward. If the label's report bears scrutiny, then the IX brand is toxic.
*AA Involvement? (Score:3, Insightful)
Are we sure the AA's aren't involved in some back room, pulling the strings to cause this guy more grief?
He was in effect in direct competition to the 'industry'.
Only in America... (Score:4, Insightful)
... literally, because the rest of the world has the Berne Convention. What are these "copyright registration forms" of which you speak?
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Actually, no, copyright forms are very far from bullshit.
As I just wrote in a previous comment, they're used for legal proof of ownership, and they are the only proof of ownership accepted in a court of law. Any other "proof," such as a "poor man's copyright," is too easy to fake.
sounds fishy (Score:5, Interesting)
the story does remind me of something eBay tried years ago -- they took down auctions of people selling their own software or software for linux because the auctioneers didn't have licenses from Microsoft.
however, this story sounds a bit fishy. I believe that the ISP pulled his site because it's highly likely they're retards and see any online music as pirated, but I'm suspicious of his having lost his own copies of the files. Did the other musicians in any of the bands not have copies? Didn't any of them burn onto CDs to give to their friends, or to play in their cars?
I think this is creative marketing. When the site goes back up, he'll get loads more hits to his site, and make a bunch of pity sales and more people have now heard of him and his bands. Epic Win.
Host giving up DMCA safe harbor? (Score:4, Insightful)
According to the article, the web hosting outfit "proactively" took it upon itself - with no complaints - to take down the site.
IANAL, but.... (take the rest with a grain of salt)
Since it did not follow DMCA provisions, I would presume that it left behind the DMCA safe-harbor provisions, and is open to a lawsuit...
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Sounds like pressure from the RIAA (Score:4, Interesting)
It sounds like some suits from the RIAA worked over the weekend to study the nuances of the RoR and narc'd the company to its own host.
IX Web Hosting... (Score:2)
The web hosting company is IX Hosting, and I certainly hope they get Slashdotted into a smoking crater, and that their support folks get a whole lot of input from various sources about the idiocy of their policy...
http://www.ixwebhosting.com/index.php/v2/pages.customerCenter#top [ixwebhosting.com]
--
Tomas
Evite once rejected my logo... (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a feature on Evite.com, which lets you associate your own icon with your "account". Obviously, using copyrighted images is prohibited.
Well, the geniuses at Evite have deleted my logo [algebra.com], which I created in Paintbrush [wikipedia.org] back in 1993 (before switching to Unix for good), because — they thought — it can't possibly be my own creation...
Well, ass-covering, ignorant dimwits working for a corporation... Spit-spit-spit...
Years later, the same image is forcibly deleted by Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] — where it was only used on my own user-page [wikipedia.org].
The idiocy spreads...
Maybe, there is some artistic merit to that poorly-drawn cat on a castle wall? Should I try selling it or something?
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Re:Evite once rejected my logo... (Score:4, Informative)
I think wikipedia succeeds _despite_ the efforts of the admins.
Maybe one day the admins will have the wikipedia exactly the way they want it to be. All the nonfree pictures removed, all the "not notable" information/pages deleted.
And that's the day everyone else starts using something else.
Quote Unquote are actually really good! (Score:5, Informative)
They gave away stencils and cds at shows for free, so that fans could make their own t-shirts. They've got a brilliant DIY ethic going on, and they became something of an underground hit without even properly releasing a CD.
So I don't know who tagged this "andnothingofvaluewaslost", but you don't know what you're talking about.
It's very easy to complain about how the RIAA does things, but you need to think up solutions, as well as identifying problems, or you're just being annoying. Quote Unquote make the perfectly valid point that some artists aren't interested in wealth, and can get by on donations alone. Obviously it suits some bands better than others, but it's _a_ solution, not the only solution
Copyright infringment continues (Score:3, Interesting)
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"Who cares about companies violating their own copyright? Last night I sexually molested myself. I must be stopped before it happens again."
Pics or it didn't happen.
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Yet another person is left unsatisfied.
IX Webhost Rep (Score:5, Informative)
here's a partial transcript from Live Chat with an IX Webhost Rep (be warned. there's a lot of incoherent rambling because the customer service rep is from Ukraine, and i think there was a slight communications barrier):
Re:IX Webhost Rep (Score:4, Funny)
Re:IX Webhost Rep (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that this is really two stories:
1) Record label gets stung by not having any backups of any of it's own songs.
2) Record Label finds out that $4.95/mo "Unlimited Bandwidth" hosting only has unlimited bandwidth if you don't use too much bandwidth.
It really sounds like the host knocked them off for using too much bandwidth (reading between the lines here), and did what they normally do to sites that are hosting music files... pull the copyright card and take down the site. I'm sure that most sites that distribute music on cheap hosting are doing so illegally, so this profile is not unreasonable. It doesn't fit in this case, but the assumption on the host's part makes sense unless they actually took the time to check the facts.
Lessons learned:
* Back up your mission critical data! Jeesh...
* Use real hosting for real websites.