Redacted

Confession: I rarely check the gmail account associated with this blog, grafixavenger666@gmail.com. For no particular reason other than I forget to do it.

Well, I did use it the other day to contact Al Sullivan, and was delighted to find a few surprises in my Inbox: an email from an ex-boyfriend who now reads GA from Long Island, another from a close college buddy who vanished years back without leaving tracks, and a Blogger DMCA Takedown Notification.

Now the first 2 require no explanation, but... does anyone know what a Blogger DMCA Takedown Notification means?

DMCA stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

From the actual notice:

A bit of background: the DMCA is a United States copyright law that provides guidelines for online service provider liability in case of copyright infringement. If you believe you have the rights to post the content at issue here, you can file a counter-claim. For more information on our DMCA policy, including how to file a counter-claim, please see http://www.google.com/dmca.html.

Now, I thought that was fascinating. It was not a threatening notice, in fact Blogger didn't delete the blogpost in question, but merely moved it to my 'Draft' folder. I was curious, though, which post that had allegedly infringed on another's copyright was removed. I hadn't noticed one was missing.

It was the post titled "Mayor Zimmer Bad Gardener". Zapped!

Did you see it?

It was a parody of the H411 story on the pool at the Boys and Girl's Club pool closure due to budget constraints, with quotes from 4th Ward Candidate Timmy Occhipinti who happens to sit on the Boys and Girl's Club advisory board but was unaware about the May city-wide notification and budget constraints that forced a 6-week summer schedule .

The entire GA blogpost was actually a .jpeg-- the only portions which were not Photoshopped over completely were the top portions and the photograph. The bottom (text) is all PhotoShopped using a matching font.

So, who filed a 'copyright infringement' complaint concerning H411 content with Blogger? Hmmmm...

Well, with respect to any original text or photographs, the original post is reprinted below with all the aforementioned redacted. In case you are confused which those are, I've noted them as "redacted" in red font- you can't miss it.


Now, I like to throw in a bit or irony whenever possible, and this episode is rife with it.

So, regarding the topic of "coyright infringement" or as I like to put it-- theft of intellectual property, that may be a can of worms for H411 to open. I have long observed the abundance of original graphics that site lifts on a regular basis, not only without attribution (a.k.a. 'credit') to the source, but he modifies them by adding the watermark "Hoboken411.com" along with text, etc.

That is a big, legal no-no in the world of intellectual property ownership.

Did I ever report this? No. Has anyone ever? Not to my knowledge. Quite frankly, it's not worth my time. But a fascinating case of the (black) pot calling the kettle black.

Here are some of the graphics H411 has stolen without attribution, and I would like to credit either accuweather.com or weather.com as the original sources. But I don't actually know which to credit.

All graphics below are original,copyrighted material modified by Hoboken411.com and originally published on Hoboken411.com as shown without attribution, and were downloaded and posted on Grafix Avenger to illustrate this point.




That's a smattering. There are plenty more.

I noticed this serial theft long ago, but wasn't going to blog it. But now it's relevant to point out the hypocrisy of complaining someone stole your cookies when you've got both hands in someone else's cookie jar.

For your information, see below.

Excerpt from Weather.com's Term's of Usage:

The Services contains copyrighted material, trademarks and other proprietary information, including, without limitation, text, software, images, video, graphics, music and sound, and the contents of the Services are copyrighted under the United States copyright laws. You may not modify, publish, transmit, display, participate in the transfer or sale, create derivative works, or in any way exploit, any of the content, in whole or in part. Except as otherwise expressly permitted under copyright law, no copying, redistribution, retransmission, publication or commercial exploitation of downloaded material will be permitted without the express written permission of TWC and the copyright owner. In the event of any permitted copying, redistribution or publication of copyrighted material, no changes in or deletion of author attribution, trademark legend or copyright notice shall be made and no ownership rights shall be transferred.

  • You shall not e-mail, upload, post or otherwise make available on the Services any material protected by the copyright, trademark, or other proprietary right without the express permission of the owner of the copyright, trademark, or other proprietary right and the burden of determining that any material is not protected by copyright rests with you. You shall be solely liable for any damage resulting from any infringement of copyrights, proprietary rights, or any other harm resulting from such a submission. Subject to TWC's policies regarding privacy, any e-mails, notes, message/billboard/forum postings, images, videos, ideas, suggestions, concepts or other material submitted will be treated as non-confidential and non-proprietary and will become the property of TWC throughout the universe.

  • Excerpt from Accuweather.com's Terms of Usage:

    6. Intellectual Property.Information furnished by AccuWeather to Subscriber is intended for Subscriber's sole and exclusive use and shall be considered proprietary information, ownership of which shall remain with AccuWeather or its Providers. All Products, information, data, images, and other things comprising the Service are to be considered copyrighted by AccuWeather, its Providers or the content originator, as the case may be, and they remain the sole and exclusive property of such persons. Subscriber is authorized to use such for the purposes stated herein and to store such information during the term hereof. Subscriber may not store for future use such information beyond that period, nor develop a library of such information. Subscriber agrees not to copy materials on the Site, not to reverse engineer or break into the website and not to use the website materials, Products or services to violate law, the Notice Specific to Products Available on this Website, AccuWeather's Privacy Statement, or the Acceptable Use Policy. REGARDLESS OF ANY OTHER PROVISION HEREIN, THE TRADEMARKS OF ACCUWEATHER AND THE ACCU WEATHER NAME SHALL NOT BE USED BY SUBSCRIBER IN ANY WAY, ESPECIALLY NOT AS A MEANS OF IDENTIFYING THE SOURCE OF THE SERVICE TO PUBLIC AUDIENCES OR CLIENTELE WITHOUT A SPECIFIC LICENSE TO DO SO FROM ACCUWEATHER.

    Comments

    1. The original post lives on in Google cache until Hypocrisy411 finds out a way to change that too. Enjoy!

      http://tinyurl.com/336godh

      ReplyDelete
    2. ha ha ha... leave it to you, hulla! Thanks for finding it!

      How long does it stay there?

      ReplyDelete
    3. And Perry wonders why he is so universally disliked.

      ReplyDelete
    4. Unless I'm mistaken it will live in Google cache forever and ever; thank you Google cache. The Giant has a wonderful story about a post that a certain self-important individual thought he'd excised; once again we have Google cache to thank:
      http://thehobokenjournal.blogspot.com/2010/07/flashback-lane-bajardi-on-zimmer-and.html

      ReplyDelete

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