Bebo.com: Victim Blaming?
By Jonathan Bailey • May 17th, 2006 • Category: Articles, DMCA, Legal Issues, Personal ExperiencesThe problem with using a rating system that colors hosts with broad strokes (Heroes, Citizens or Villains) is that some hosts don’t fit neatly into one of the categories. Several hosts, such as Myspace, fit somewhere between most Citizens and most Heroes.
Bebo.com, on the other hand, fits somewhere between most Citizens and most Villains. They deal with copyright infringement quickly and effectively, but have questionable policies and an autoresponse that, to many, will seem to be a case of victim blaming.
What is Bebo?
Bebo describes itself as “the next generation social networking site” and is positioning itself against other social networking sites such as Myspace and Xanga.
It provides many of the same services as its competitors including a profile page, a blog, photos, quizzes and friends management. Bebo, also like its competitors, has seen an explosion of growth as the Web has moved over to social networking sites, and has an estimated 22 million accounts.
Bebo also recently won the Webby Award for best social networking site and, in February, announced a partnership with Skype to introduce instant messaging and voice chat to the service.
Bebo’s success, however, seems to mask a problem when dealing with copyright infringement, an area where Bebo’s policies, at the moment, leave a great deal to be desired.
Copyright Complaints
First off, I want to make it clear that my problems with Bebo are not related to a lack of response or even a slow response in dealing with copyright infringement. Bebo’s staff responded to my complaint quickly and effectively.
There are, however, surrounding issues that give me cause for concern.
First, registering a complaint with Bebo requires signing up with an account. Any attempt to file an abuse complaint via their contact page will direct you to click the “Report Abuse” link on the member’s profile. That link only works if you have an active Bebo account.
Second, after you file the complaint and the matter is closed, Bebo sends you an automated reply to let you know the matter has been handled.
While this is typical of many hosting companies, Bebo’s autoreply instructs you to prevent copying of your photos in your Bebo account and to block the infringing user from viewing your Bebo profile.
These steps, which have only limited usefulness for Bebo users, are completely useless to Webmasters that are not hosting their content on Bebo and only registered an account so they could report the abuse.
However, the most striking element of the letter was one of the closing lines of the email: “Do not post anything on your homepage unless you are 100% sure you would like to share it with the entire internet community.”
This struck me, and stunned me, because it rang of the classic victim-blaming argument many copyright foes present, “If you post something to the Web, you should expect it to get stolen.”
Whether or not that was their intent is unclear (an email sent to Bebo seeking clarification was not immediately returned, I will update this story should they respond), but it is disturbing to think that a host, even a cooperative one, might on some level harbor those kinds of feelings.
Hosts are critical when it comes to defending copyright online and, in that regard, cooperation is key. A host harboring such feelings could create problems, even if they begrudgingly go along with the letter of the law.
Means of Improvement
With that in mind, it’s worth pointing out that none of Bebo’s problems are difficult to resolve. In fact, Bebo’s speed of response could serve as a lesson for many hosts, including Microsoft.
Here are the steps that Bebo would, in my opinion, need to take in order to earn true “Citizen” standing.
- Register with the U.S. Copyright Office, as is required by the DMCA (PDF).
- Offer an email address to receive complaints from non-members (would be an element of 1).
- If Bebo wishes to continue to use autoresponders, which is fine, it should have a separate one for members and non-members.
- Bebo should drop the language that gives the appearance of “victim blaming”
If all of that took place and I could be convinced of Bebo’s sincerity in the fight against content theft and plagiarism, they would easily be a solid citizen, perhaps even a hero in the fight.
Conclusion
In the end, I’ve decided not to pass a rating on Bebo at this time. I have a few future cases that I’m going to monitor and I’m waiting eagerly for Bebo’s response.
Regardless, I wanted to make my concerns known now both to begin the dialog of improvement and to alert others that might be dealing with Bebo in the near future.
Simply put, Bebo, like most major social networking sites, is too big to ignore and their copyright policy will likely become a critical part of the copyright makeup on the Web.
It’s important that we deal with the matter as quickly as possible to prevent another case like Xanga’s.
[tags]Plagiarism, Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, Bebo, Myspace, Xanga[/tags}
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Jonathan Bailey is The Webmaster and author of Plagiarism Today, which he founded in 2005 as a way to help Webmasters going through content theft problems get accurate information and stay up to date on the rapidly-changing field. He is also a consultant to Webmasters and companies to help them devise practical content protection strategies and develop good copyright policies.
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hello pleased to talk to you , on the site bebo there is someone taking my e-mail address and i cannot write comments or anything ? please help me and fix this
your sincerely : Shannon Molloy
hello pleased to talk to you , on the site bebo there is someone taking my e-mail address and i cannot write comments or anything ? please help me and fix this
your sincerely : Shannon Molloy
i go on to mi bebo nearly every day but but mi bebo has changed um.. mi bebo indtead of having proper bebo i hav online social network and wen i go onto mi profile you can c nearly anithing because all of the boxes r over laping
i dnt no how to fix this problem
if any1 als has this problem and has fixed it can u pls pls pls reply to ths mail pls
thnx
charlie
i go on to mi bebo nearly every day but but mi bebo has changed um.. mi bebo indtead of having proper bebo i hav online social network and wen i go onto mi profile you can c nearly anithing because all of the boxes r over laping
i dnt no how to fix this problem
if any1 als has this problem and has fixed it can u pls pls pls reply to ths mail pls
thnx
charlie
Shannon: I am sorry for the delay, I must not have gotten the email confirming your comment. I’m really unsure what you are describing though, if you want send me a private email (the address is on the right) and I’ll see what I can do. If there’s an issue I can help with, I will.
Charlie: I’m afraid that’s out of the scope of this site and this article. You’d be wise to ask help from Bebo’s support staff.
Shannon: I am sorry for the delay, I must not have gotten the email confirming your comment. I’m really unsure what you are describing though, if you want send me a private email (the address is on the right) and I’ll see what I can do. If there’s an issue I can help with, I will.
Charlie: I’m afraid that’s out of the scope of this site and this article. You’d be wise to ask help from Bebo’s support staff.
bebo isnt letting me on some of my friends profiles and it wont let me write them a comment what shall i do ?
bebo isnt letting me on some of my friends profiles and it wont let me write them a comment what shall i do ?
someone has got into my account and my partners they changed the details on my page and my partners the problem is they have changed his password and email address and we cant get in to delete the vulgar discusting lies please help us .
my partners user name is jensen82
please help
some one has entered my bebo page and changed everythin but they also went into my partners and have changed his to vulgar discusting lies and they have also changed his password and email address so as he cant get rid of this rubbish and can we no who done this
please help if u can
thank you
This has happened to my son someone has used his profile and posted some vile disgusting comments to girls some who he doesnt know.Weve contacted bebo who havnt responded weve contacted the police and theyve said they cant do anything even though its involving children. My son is distraught we dont know where to turn to next to get help
Sadly, in this case, there is not much that you can do. Without cooperation from Bebo on this, you are pretty powerless in this case. A prosecutor isn't likely to get involved unless the damages equal more than $5000, which is unlikely, or something tragic happens beyond this. If you need help getting the profile pulled, I can probably assist with that, but other than shutting down the site, there isn't much that can be done.
my bebo got deleted for no reason and i want to no why
some one deleted my bebo bebo is full of bullies and is easy to say you are 16 when you are 42
it is a target for weird people to connect boycot bebo!!!!
yah same here they should tell us why we got deleted and you shouldnt be able to delete peoples accountS .
i love bebo!! but for some reason when i signin on bebo it goes back on to the google search for bebo its really annoying and it has been like this for a while ! Can you help??
yours sincercly : Ciara McGrath
Some one deleted my Bebo for no reason!!!
its really annoying i have made a new one but i still miss it and all the stuff i had on it!!! ahhh… drives me mad!!! can you help!!!
Dear madam/sir today when i went on bebo instead of my bebo page coming up a little pink box came up saying “sorry this page can no longer be accessed”. I was really annoyed because i was looking foward to go on my page.I would hope you would look into this so i can go on my page again my bebo name is DarrenpM!!!!!
Yours faithfully
Darren Malone
The amount of love you get on bebo is annoying we should get unlimeted !!!!!!!