This is a bizarre case taking copyright law and take-down notices to an extreme. According to this article, lawyers representing doctors have found in copyright law a way to discourage bad reviews.

By assigning copyright to your doctor on all reviews about his services, the medical professional’s lawyers could then send a takedown notice if you post a poor review on a site like Yelp.

Thankfully, “the former general counsel of review site Epinions, said he’s contacted roughly a dozen websites that publish patient reviews, and all of them said that if a doctor sent a “take-down” notice based on copyright issues, they would not honor it.”

Yet, legally, the review sites could lose their safe-harbor status and suffer the same fate as PirateBay or MegaUploads. (The safe-harbor exempts hosting providers and sites that use user-submitted content from lawsuits as long as they remove copyrighted material when asked to do so by the copyright owners).

So next time you visit a healthcare professional, make sure to read the fine print.

Back in 2009, while we were working on building Myows Online Copyright App, I remember reading about Sky News using a Twitpic picture by Joe Neale without permission or licensing and the debate that followed.

In Today’s case, the perpetrator is again SkyNews, this time using a 1 minute Youtube video without seeking permission and then using legalese bullying techniques to reach an ersatz settlement.

When Terence Eden discovered that a video about O2′s Security flaws he uploaded on Youtube (with usage restrictions) had been used on SkyNews, the news channel of the year shamelessly first offered to pay a laughable 75$ compensation.

Terence rightfully refused and instead asked for a reasonable 1500$ fee.

To add insult to injury, the answer he then received is proper white-collar Goliath intimidation:

As I indicated, we do not yet agree on a sensible figure for this use.

Bearing in mind you are now invoking the Copyright Designs and Patents Act I have placed this matter in the hands of our lawyers.

This does not represent an unwillingness to come to an agreement between us but, unfortunately, it is likely to slow the progress slightly.

So now we have a giant news channel that steals content from the public, then only offers to pay $75 when caught, or else the matter “must go to their legal department that will slow down the process”. I cannot believe that SkyNews is unable to provide a proper licensing fee for it’s content without resorting to such techniques.

No, it’s not OK to just steal someone’s work, and if they catch you to offer a tiny fraction of what the cost would be to produce it in a proper way.

It’s like someone taking a train without buying a ticket - if that person gets caught, has money and attitude, should they be allowed to get away with paying 1/4 of the regular price? What would that say to the other passengers who’ve duly paid for their ride?

So how did this gripping copyright saga end? To be honest, quite disappointingly.

Head over to the original article Sky News Infringed My Copyright on Terence Eden’s blog to find out.

After Thought
Perhaps this is a clever ploy to force content creators worldwide to watch SkyNews, just in case they discover one of their pics or videos being used without permission? Skynews, we’re keeping an eye on you, and you can’t fool all the people all time!

Unbelievable case today, and shocking response from the copyright perpetrators, Curebit, a startup that recently received 1.2M$ in funding and couldn’t be bothered to pay the few thousand dollars it would cost to design and code their own landing page. Poor form Curebit.

Angered by the blatant design and code copyright infringement, David Heinemeier Hansson, the director of 37signals and creator of the the popular Ruby on Rails framework called the Curebit team “fucking scumbags” for serving content straight off the Highrise (one of 37signals’ products) servers.

For the full story, including code comparison evidence, the heated Twitter exchange between the two startups and Curebit’s douchebag response when caught, head over to Venturebeat’s indepth article covering Curebit’s low morals when it comes to copyright.

With close to 50 000 Twitter followers, Jacob Cass is a celebrity in the design world. He runs the popular logo award site Logo of The Day and publishes regular great articles on his website, JustCreativeDesign.

Many freelance designers worldwide aspire to be him; some taking it too literally as this Tweet may attest.

So today we have a case of a brand identity specialist who’s own identity is being used by an unscrupulous thief in hope of getting work from Freelancer.com – imagine the disappointment on the client’s face should he fall for it?

Thankfully, as a design professional, JustCreative seems to be proactive about it.

This obviously reaches further than just copyright infringement, as Jacob’s moral rights are also being infringed, as well as a legally enforceable case of identity theft. (You can read the excellent post by our resident lawyer Steve Ferguson Copyright and Your Moral Rights – What to do if someone claims your work in their portfolio).

I’ve stated before that with great talent comes great responsibility (to defend your intellectual property), and top designers have to deal with copyright infringement on an all-too-often basis. Just ask @Vonster how he feels about it!

Copyright infringement does not only strike you once. Make it clear you won’t let perps get away with it

As a follower of @justcreative on Twitter, I took a screenshot back in August of another case of someone using Jacob’s work in their portfolio (assumably in order to get agency employment)

While stealing is never OK, don’t you reckon it’s particularly pathetic when people steal from within their own community (read the post about MWEB stealing Numericable’s campaign I published recently).

Remember Myows is there to help you protect your copyright.

We’ve humorously covered various copyright infringement scenarios in our KopyKat Files – here are two examples to lighten up the mood:

Before Myows, dealing with Copyright Infringement was a pain, and to quote a recent article from HitJerker Songwriting:

“My favorite site for this kind of copyright protection is Myows. You can register your work electronically by uploading text, audio, etc. Then you can get unauthorized copies of your work removed from sites, send cease and desist letters, takedown notices and build cases against infringers.”

From Registering Copyright on the Internet

Have you ever had your work, or worse, your identity stolen? What are you doing to prevent this happening to you?

Whether you are dealing with plagiarists online, in an academic environment or in the workplace, odds are that you’re going to hear a lot of lame excuses for the misdeed.

Over the years, I’ve heard hundreds of excuses and I often joke about writing a book of “Things Plagiarists Say” made up of quips from my email box from people caught taking the works of others without attribution.

However, rather than doing that, I’ve decided to revisit the overarching themes of plagiarism excuses and the patterns that I see. After all, when you are accusing someone of plagiarism, you are basically accusing them of lying and, as with any other fib, people will do almost anything to avoid being called out on it.

So, the next time you have to confront a plagiarist here are just some of the more common excuses you can expect.

1. I’m Too Good to be a Plagiarist

This one is surprisingly common. When you accuse some people of plagiarism, often they will try to divert the topic to other elements of their person that put them in a better light.

Whether it’s highlighting other accomplishments, standing in the community, religious affiliation or simply their power and position, the idea is basically “Plagiarists are bad people and I’m not a bad person, therefore, I’m not a plagiarist.”

This excuse completely ignores that even the most noble people make mistakes, including plagiarism. However, the difference is that the truly great will face their mistakes and correct them rather than making excuses for them or ducking blame.

2. It’s Just Coincidence

This one is a tough one. Many cases of suspected plagiarism reasonably could be mere coincidence. However, many plagiarists will stretch this argument well past the breaking point.

For example, when you have hundreds of words copied verbatim, given the many thousands of common words in the English language, the odds of being the exact same to another work quickly reaches astronomical numbers.

Think of it this way, picking just five numbers (from 1-100) correctly can win you millions of dollars, getting dozens or hundreds is more or less impossible.

Granted the odds aren’t truly random, as with lottery numbers, (this is due to common phrases and the structure of our language) it’s still random enough to eliminate coincidence in most plagiarism cases.

3. I Didn’t Say It Was Mine

Imagine the frustration of an instructor, talking to a student about plagiarism, only to have the student claim that he “Never said it was his work.”

Many fail to grasp, or don’t want to grasp, that authorship is implied in anything you put your name to unless you expressly say otherwise.

There are variations of this excuse that question what authorship actually means. Some have adopted this idea that authorship is a nebulous thing and that, since there’s nothing new under the sun, nothing can say they didn’t write a work that they merely copied.

But while philosophers will debate the nature of authorship for generations to come, academia, literature and the law all have pretty solid definitions of what authorship is and most students and creators are aware of those rules, try as they might to ignore them.

4. I Made a Mistake

The mistake excuse, as with the coincidence one, is often a gray area. While forgetting to attribute a single quote is an understandable error, copying large portions of a paper without any attempt to attribute any of it is more than a mistake or sloppy note-taking.

For ethical academics, journalists and creatives, attribution always follows any copying. Even if a mistake is made in attribution, usually there is some clear attempt to provide it, such as mentioning a name or including quote marks. After all, attribution is a multi-step process of identifying what is copied, separating it from the original material and attributing the source. Failure to do all of that is not a single, simple mistake but a series of them that would be almost impossible to do without some malice or, at the very least, extreme negligence.

So, while mistakes happen, it’s usually pretty easy to separate an honest mistake from a true case of plagiarism.

5. I Have a Photographic Memory

Eidetic memory, more commonly known as photographic memory, is often claimed by plagiarists who can’t explain how the words of others work wound up in their creations.

However, scientists currently believe that eidetic memory is either a myth or exists only in a small handful of people. Most people who claim to have a photographic memory merely have a good one as even The World Memory Championships have failed to find a confirmed case of eidetic memory.

But even if a plagiarist had eidetic memory, they would also remember where the work came from and, most importantly, the rules for attribution and using the content. In short, they wouldn’t remember all of the work they copied and forget how to use it correctly.

That being said, there are situations where peoplke genuinely believe that they said something that, in reality, they heard elsewhere. However, generally, that’s over very short phrases and sentences, such as with a joke, and doesn’t extend to exact word choice.

6. It Wasn’t Me, It Was Someone Else

Of all of the plagiarism excuses, in most cases, this one is probably the dumbest. Not only is it almost always a lie, but, by admitting that you got the work from someone else, you’re admitting that you’re a plagiarist. The only caveat is that you got permission from someone else to do it.

This would be like saying “I didn’t rob the bank, I was just the getaway driver.”

To be fair, there are situations where it is considered acceptable to pass off the works of others as you own, as with ghostwriting and Web development, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t responsible for everything you put your name to.

If you didn’t create the content yourself and you’re putting your name to it, you need to be sure that it is original and doesn’t violate any laws (not just copyright). Failure to do so is simply reckless.

Bottom Line

When you accuse someone of plagiarism, if you’ve got your evidence lined up and the situation looks clear, you should definitely brace yourself for some excuses, most of them very pathetic.

All in all, the best thing you can do is ignore them. Though it’s tempting to mock or attack excuses, the problem is that excuses often turn to anger, threats and worse when challenged.

Simply ignore them, handle the situation the same as you would have otherwise, and then move on (possibly laughing at the excuse in private later). If you’re pressed on whether or not you believe them, say that what you believe doesn’t matter, that you have to do what you have to do.

It reduces the stress in dealing with these situations and, in the end, doesn’t give the plagiarist a reason to feel angry or victorious.

Instead, it just lets everyone put the incident behind them as quickly as possible.

Special Thanks: I want to thank Cath Murphy at Lireactor for a great post about the lame excuses plagiarists make that was, in large part, the inspiration for this article.

LiCENSE: This article by Jonathan Bailey was first published on Plagiarismtoday and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

When it comes to plagiarism, Amazon has been dominating the news this past weekend, largely due to an article by Adam Penenburg of Fast Company, who detailed Amazon’s recent troubles with plagiarism in its erotica section.

The problem is fairly simple. Amazon, through its Kindle Direct Publishing program, makes it easy for authors and small publishers to upload works for sale on the Kindle platform. However, as with any other self-publishing platform, the system has become a target for abuse by plagiarists and others wanting to turn a quick buck selling the creators of others.

In Penenburg’s article, for example, one of the authors had 19 ebooks that were entirely stolen, often from free sites such as Literotica. Though Amazon removes infringing/plagiarized content when notified, the process is generally very slow and, since there’s no punishment for plagiarizing authors, many just set up shop again and re-upload the same works under different titles.

The cycle repeats itself and little changes. However, this isn’t exactly a new problem for Amazon. Copyright blunders have been a major part of the Kindle’s growth. Back in 2009, Amazon introduced a means for bloggers to sell Kindle versions of their site and forgot to put any checks to make sure it was the site owner doing the selling.

This also isn’t a new issue for the larger self-publishing industry. Back in 2005, in what was one of the first articles on Plagiarism Today, I took a look at self publisher Lulu and it’s practices with plagiarism. In 2007, I re-visited self publishers and rated their DMCA policies. Though Amazon wasn’t involved in that comparison, CreateSpace, an Amazon subsidiary was and received a B-.

But exactly how much is Amazon to blame for its plagiarism problems? In my view, quite a good deal and, simply put, the situation isn’t going to improve without a lot of work from Amazon to make things better.

My Amazon Problem

Of all of the sites I work with regularly, Amazon is easily one of the worst. The response times to DMCA notices are slow, they throw up artificial roadblocks to filing them (until recently, they didn’t even post their DMCA contact email on their site) and generally not responding at all to some claims until the second or third try.

In my experience, cyberlocker sites, web hosts and even Google are much easier to work with and bring about an effective response in a much more timely manner.

In 2005, Amazon fought hard and won DMCA protection over its services. Since then, for the most part, Amazon has done the bare minimum to maintain that protection and has done little to help keep its products clean. Even as Ebay was pioneering IP enforcement with its Verified Rights Owners (VeRO) program, Amazon has, for the most part, done as little as it can to get by.

The problem is that this isn’t just an intellectual property issue for Amazon, it’s a customer one as well. Going back to Penenburg’s article, if a buyer purchased “Dracula’s Amazing Adventure” only to find out that it was really just a plagiarized version of “Dracula” by Bram Stoker, which is in the public domain and available for free on the Kindle, how is the buyer likely to react?

Amazon, a company that usually earns high marks for customer service, is putting its Kindle customers at risk of being scammed by plagiarists by not taking this situation more seriously and doing more to stop it.

Even worse, Amazon is risking tarnishing its entire brand, especially of its Kindle line, byt not doing more to stop plagiarism and keep infringing authors out.

What Should Amazon Be Doing

Even if the law doesn’t say so, ethically, when you’re selling and earning revenue from works being uploaded through your service, you have a higher degree of responsibility than a regular web host. This is not just for the authors who might be victimized, but for the customers putting down money on a product and the legitimate authors who are using your system in the intended manner.

In Penenburg’s article, ideas were kicked around such as passing all uploaded books through a plagiarism checker, such as iThenticate, and having new mambers of the program register a credit card both for identification purposes and to issue a financial penalty if plagiarism is discovered.

While these ideas are great, the main thing that has to happen is that Amazon has to get tough with its own policies and take these issues seriously. While all self-publishers have issues with plagiarism to some degree, taking the matter seriously, investigating cases thoroughly and removing works quickly are a good first step. Couple that with a plagiarism policy that has teeth, such as requiring plagiarists to repay revenue received, would help a lot to discourage this kind of abuse.

However, that’s going to require that Amazon change its overall position on copyright matters and shift from being a company that does only what’s required or convient to one that is proactive and forward-thinking on these issues.

I don’t see that happening on Amazon, though I’m hoping that this recent round of bad press gets them thinking more about these issues.

Bottom Line

To be clear, I think that Amazon is, despite this, an overall positive for content creators. Not only does it help creators earn money, bypass middle men and get a worldwide audience almost instantly, it’s done so while, mostly, being fair to creators.

Likewise, it’s also my belief that the number of actual plagiarists posting to Amazon is small. It’s just that, due to how easy it is to post a plagiarized book, they tend to be more prolific and can take up a larger share of the “noise’ then they should.

Despite this, there’s definitely room for improvement and this is one of those areas. Both for the sake of authors and buyers, Amazon needs to look long and hard at this plagiarism problem and come up with real solutions to them.

Because, while they’ll never be able to completely eliminate plagiarism, counterfeit or otherwise false offerings on its services, it can definitely do more to reduce them drastically. That will help make the experience better for everyone and, in the long run, help make the market better and earn everyone more money.

LiCENSE: This article by Jonathan Bailey was first published on Plagiarismtoday and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

We’ve been working on this feature for over 6 months – busting both legal and development challenges – and I can barely contain my excitement as we are nearing releasing the Myows Cogen to the world and offer you a way to generate, send and get approvals for copyright licenses relating to your work.

Before the official launch and accompanying Press Release, we need a few Beta Testers to push the app to it’s limits and report back to us.

If you’re interested in being amongst the first to witness this game-changing new feature, helping our friendly team and generating a few contracts early to manage how you assign your rights, please leave your existing Myows username in the comments below and we’ll hook you up with an account on our test servers.

If you’re a web designer, UI Master, illustrator or general pixel-wrangler, you already know about Dribbble, the exclusive basketball-themed designer club.

To get in with the big boys (and girls) you need an invite – and those are hard to get by. We have one to give away and we need to choose wisely.

How can you get our Dribbble invite?

We’ve thought about it, and to get your hands on it, you’ll need to show us three things:

- That you have talent and produce Original Works
- That you are a Myows User
- That you’ve liked us on FaceBook http://facebook.com/myows (Do it now!)

So here’s how it works:

Simply leave a Facebook comment below with:
1 – Your Myows username (Click here to signup, it’s quick, free and painless)
2 – Reasons why you love Myows
3 – A link to your portfolio
(PS: preference will be given to you if you display one of our Myows Banners on your website)

I look forwards to seeing your Original Works – The winner will be announced on the 17th September 2011

The Next Web published today 5 ways to Protect Your Work Online and says “Myows is by far one of the most elaborate services available to protect your copyright online for free.”

After Popular Science, to be recommended on such an authority site (with close to 600K twitter followers) really made our day!

Read the full article on The Next Web.

Last night I was looking for illustrations of eagles.

I went to istockphoto and recognized a logo that our own logo designer, Von Glitschka, had created (this one FYI: Eagle illustration by Von Glitschka ) but it was in someone else’s istock profile (SlipFloat) who had various works with very different styles.

I sent a tweet to @Vonster asking him to check it out.

Unbelievably, The infringer had uploaded that file in 2009 and sold the artwork with istock’s blessing over 100 times for 15$ before anyone notified Von.

Vonster sent a DMCA notice and today I see that the pirated work has been removed from istock.

This brings 3 serious Questions to mind

- What happened to the revenue istock made by selling illegal content?

- What happens to those who bought it in good faith and are unsuspectedly spreading a copyright infringement? (I would have gladly paid to buy it had I not recognized Von’s unique illustrative style)

- Why is the perpetrator’s account not banned from istock? (UPDATE: The perpetrator’s portfolio has now, it seems, been removed from istock – so that’s 1 question answered!.)

As Vonster’s tweets suggest, besides the fact that someone is making a few hundred dollars off a work you created, it is crucial to act upon notification that your work is being redistributed illegally, or it could become an orphan and you will lose ownership.

With great talent comes great responsibility.

Let’s be honest, no one will steal your work if you have no talent. That’s clearly not the case with Von who is constantly having to fight copyright thieves.

Last week, he exposed Logogarden’s LogoGate in a fascinating and well documented article which I urge you to check out. You won’t believe how audacious some online businesses are, shamelessly ripping hundreds, or thousands, of Original Works.

To quote Von himself:

“The biggest hassle in dealing with a copyright infringement is dealing with a copyright infringement.

So design ass holes like John Williams fully understand this and exploit the loop hole as long as they can get away with it.“.

My personal closing thoughts about copyright law at large

Something is really wrong when corporate logo thieves get away with a slap on the wrist after making small fortunes from stealing creatives’ hard work and I believe it’s time for change…

Why should the concrete threat of our OWs going orphan waste hours out of our busy freelance schedules? Should the cash-cow USCO registration fee still be a requirement to seek punitive damages? Shouldn’t websites like istock have better measures in place to prevent the redistribution of stolen artwork? What do you think?