Archive for August, 2009

Complaints DMCA

How To Stop Online Copyright Infringement With A DMCA Complaint

Complaints DMCA by Brian Scott.

In 1998, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act became a U.S. Law. This controversial legislation was designed to bring copyright law in line with developing technologies and to afford protection to rights in the Internet environment.

Though vast in scope, one particular area of DMCA is of special interest to those who are suffering from an online copyright infringement. It stems from the “Safe Harbor Provisions” in Section 512 of the law.

In basic terms, the DMCA provides hosts of websites with a form of immunity from lawsuits stemming from copyright infringements that occur on “their” sites.

A host actually stores the data that comprises a website. Most people do not host their own sites and rely upon a host company to do the job. You can think of it in terms of an apartment owner.

The owner of the building (the host) rents out apartments (server space for websites) to tenants (webmasters).

The DMCA allows the landlord to avoid being held responsible for what tenants are doing in their individual apartments so long as they take appropriate action when notified of wrongdoing.

The Safe Harbor Provisions of the DMCA allow individuals to provide that notice to the host.

Thus, if you are being victimized by someone who is infringing upon your copyrights, you can advise the host of the problem and the host is then obligated to take down the offending content.

However, you can’t just pick up the phone, call a host and demand that material be removed. Well, you can, but the host is under no obligation to listen to you.

The host will only be obligated to take action if you supply them with an appropriately structured DMCA “take down” complaints.

The law provides exactly what must be included in such a complaint. We’ve supplied a sample DMCA complaints in the Appendices of this text for additional guidance.

At a minimum, a valid DMCA complaint must contain the following:

* Detailed description of the copyrighted work that was allegedly infringed upon, in the form of the original URL of the image, text, or page or other information that can specify the copyrighted work.

* Detailed identification of the material, with enough information to locate the material. This includes what actions were taken in finding the material to the direct link to the infringing web page.

* Information to allow the Xanga Abuse team to contact you directly (Email address is preferred.)

* A statement that you in good faith believe that use of the copyrighted material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

* A sworn statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information given is accurate and that you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright holder or owner of an exclusive right.

* An electronic signature (your full legal name) of a person authorized to act on behalf of the copyright holder or owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Once you have created an appropriate DMCA complaint, it must be sent to the host.

Finding the host is usually not a difficult process. Although Whois data is unlikely to reveal the host (instead providing information about the registrar of the site), other tools like SamSpade can help.

If you can’t determine the host, or are unable to get a satisfactory resolution from them, you may have some success by contacting the company through which the site was registered.

Reputation Professor Complaints DMCA author Brian Scott is a freelance journalist who covers copyright law for www.ResearchCopyright.com. Download his free e-book, “Copyright Basics” at ResearchCopyright.com.

Comments off

August 31, 2009 · Filed under Complaints DMCA

Reputation Management – Do it Yourself

Do it Yourself Removal of Australia Reputation Management
Author: Dustin Woodard
Online reputation management is increasingly important as more and more friends, family and employers search your name. Even if you are always on your best behavior online or you have a fairly unique name, as the population swells and more people become creators of content on the web, there’s a great chance that people will mistake others activity online as your own!

Controlling or managing search rank for your own name is fairly easy for an SEO (search engine optimizer), but what can the average person do? Below I outline a number of free, quick, easy and effective ways to populate the first page of results for your name. I highly recommend people start creating content for their name now as it will be much more difficult after waiting for someone else with your name to muddy the search results to spur you to action.

1) Create a Blog Even if you build just a one-page site using your name on a free blog network, you can quickly use your blog to create pages about yourself and link to other pages you are going to create on this list. Use your name in the blog name. free blogEstimated time to complete: 10 minutes Free Options: Blogger (blogspot), WordPress, LiveJournal

2) Create a Wiki Several wiki platforms have done a great job of creating publishing tools that are even easier to use than most blog technology. Though wikis are best suited for group collaboration, the will also work well helping you link to your blog and other pages. Use your name in the wiki name. free wikiEstimated time to complete: 10 minutes Free Options: Wetpaint, Wikia Wikia

3) Register your domain If you are lucky enough to have [insertyourname].com (or .net, .org, .info) available, snatch them up. The $8 a year fee is well worth it even if you don’t actively build a site using it because, at the very least, you are preventing your competition (other people with your name, or people who don’t like you) from ranking high for your name. Even better, use your domain for the site or wiki you are going to create. go daddyEstimated time to complete: 5 minutes Cheap Options: GoDaddy, Yahoo, 1&1

4) LinkedIn Set up a LinkedIn profile and make it publicly available. Add background info like education, employment history, awards or certification (or anything else you are proud of). Add links to your other sites/pages. linkedin Estimated time to complete: 5-10 minutes

5) Jobster Some people are a little shocked when they find out their profile shows up in search. Not you, because you want it to! Create a jobster account, allow it to be publicly available, fill out a little employment info, answer a couple questions, but write it keeping in mind that your current employer could come across it. jobsterEstimated time to complete: 5 minutes

6) Myspace pages tend to show up in search as well. Though Myspace has probably ruined more people’s reputations than helped, you will create a clean Myspace page for your name and, if you feel the urge, put the racy stuff on a different profile. myspaceEstimated time to complete: 5 minutes

7) Flickr accounts and images have a great chance of showing up in the engines, especially for image searches. Creat an account, upload a few photos you like and label them with your name. flickrEstimated time to complete: 10 minutes

8) Comment on Popular Post Sometimes I see a commenter’s name show up in search. Find a popular blogger site or newspaper site that allows comments, and find a post that you feel comfortable commenting on. Use your real name for the name field. Try this on a couple sites. Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes

9) Employer Site If your employer features profiles on their website, ask them to add one for you. If not, talk them into it or author a post on their blog (if they have one). Estimated time to complete: 5-30 minutes, depending on your company

10) Join a Forum Do a search for a forum that you might want to participate on. For example, if you are into guitar, you should search for “guitar forum.” If it looks like a place where it would be easy for you to make five or six posts, then sign up and use your name for your profile name. Make your five posts and fill out your profile page with information about you and use your name at least once in the profile description. Estimated time to complete: 15 minutes

*Disclosure: I work for Wetpaint, but honestly believe their wiki solution is the best option

In the future, Facebook might also be an option. They recently allowed profiles set to public to be crawled, but they are showing logged-out status of your profile, which is basically your name and picture right now. Eventually, I believe, Facebook will open it up to show your full public profile (probably in ‘08).

Keep in mind, Google usually only shows two results for any one site. That’s why I have you contributing on multiple sites. A couple more tips:

  • If you ever receive a great interview or bio online, link to it from your sites.
  • For online activity that you don’t want to be associated with your name, use a nickname or “handle” that is completely different from your real name.
  • If you have stiffer competition for your name, you may need to spend more time building out and linking to the various options I list above.

Other options:

a) Wikipedia If you have a strong brand you can list your company in the Wikipedia online encyclopedia. Estimated time to complete: 30-45 minutes, depending on your company

b) Press Releases Press releases do well in news search, and if you point a few links at them it could also help them outrank other pages. PRWeb is popular. Estimated time to complete: 30-45 minutes, depending on your company

c) Writing Articles This is another easy way to create content that is highly relevant to your brand or name at places like Article City. Estimated time to complete: 60 minutes, depending on your company

Please email reputationprofessor.com recommendations to improve this page.



Comments off

August 29, 2009 · Filed under Australia Brand Reputation Management, Australia Online Identity Management, Australia Online Reputation Management, Australia Search Engine Reputation Management, Defamation