If you have been using RightsAgent to license your work, previously reported on here, you need to be aware that the site has been down for at least two days and all of the buttons are returning broken images.
I have emailed the owners of the site but all messages have bounced.
RightsAgent was a licensing service based upon CC+ that allowed content creators to license their content both for free and paid credits. Its system connected with Creative Commons licensing, allow the automatic selling and distribution for commercial use when such use was not directly allowed under the license.
As I reported back in July, RightsAgent has been slow to find traction. Though it remains to be seen if this is just an extended temporary outage or an abrupt closure, it is definitely a sign of trouble at the company.
In the meantime, all of the buttons for the service, including the one that was on this site, have stopped working. If you are using the service, I strongly recommend that you remove the button and only consider putting it back should it come back online.
I will report any additional information when I get it.
This is really a shame, but I guess that it did not get enough users because it was centered on Creative Commons, and most of us who are concerned about content being stolen use copyright.
Anyway, I think it was a great service.
Congratulations for your blog, Jonathan. Plagiarism Today is a kind of site that was long awaited by many of us. I subscribed to not miss any of your posts.
It is a shame but I do have a feeling this closure is permanent. As they say, the silence is deafening.
I have to slightly disagree though that most people who are concerned about content theft don't use Creative Commons. I use it on my site and have used it on every site I've run since the 1.0 licenses were released. I don't mind people using my work under certain conditions, but I protect the rights I reserve closely.
After all, Creative Commons does not replace copyright, nor is it meant to, it is a way to give permissions to use your work under certain circumstances.
I'm glad you like the site and definitely email me if there is anything that I can do to help!