Yesterday, I talked about the 5-year anniversary of Plagiarism Today and what it has meant for me and the site. It’s been a great 5 years to say the least, but it has also been an interesting five years for content creators.

When I walked into Plagiarism Today, I was inspired to do so by the spate of human plagiarists, people taking my work and claiming it to be their own (despite a license to freely use it with attribution). That is why this site is named Plagiarism Today and not Copyright or Content Theft Today. However, a lot has changed over those five years and the site has had to adapt and change to those movements.

So, with that in mind, here are the five biggest changes for webmasters and bloggers that I have observed over the past five years and what they mean for those who are interested in tracking and protecting their work on the Web.

5. Growing Awareness of the Issue

When I started Plagiarism Today, I had an uphill battle convincing people that plagiarism online was a serious problem. In fact, my first mention on This Week in Tech was a fairly negative one as the hosts didn’t see the plagiarism issue I did.

Things have changed though and, perhaps the greatest sign is that I am now a recurring guest on This Week in Law, which is on the TWiT network, including most recently on Episode 63.

Clearly, people are more aware of the issues of content theft and plagiarism on the Web and that has made my job, as well as the job of webmasters, much easier.

4. Hosts Less Cooperative

One discouraging trend I have noticed is that hosts are becoming more and more hostile to dealing with copyright matters. This isn’t universally true, most hosts that were great still are and some have improved, such as Google Blogger, but most paid hosts in particular have been aggressive at trying to avoid compliance.

This isn’t an issue I’ve faced much personally, likely due to my site being well-known in these circles, but I’ve been getting increasing reports of hosts being aggressive in trying to not comply with notices. In one recent case, even accepting a counter-notice before the takedown notice was filed, in violation of the protocol.

I’ll have more on this problem in the future.

3. Social Networking Boon

In 2006 Facebook had a mere 8 million unique visitors and had just opened for public use. In 2009, Facebook has an estimated 200 million unique visitors log in every single day.

This has had a huge impact not just on how people use the Internet, but where they post works and the types of copyright infringement that are more common. Where, five years ago, forums and free blogging sites were the most common sources of human plagiarism, today it’s Facebook and other social networking sites.

This is an example of a shift in the broader Web having a dramatic impact on the way content is used (and misused).

2. Rise (and Fall) of Scraping

Much of the initial interest in Plagiarism Today was not generated by human plagiarists but by automated spammers who were scraping RSS feeds, sending people to this site to find ways to stop them.

When I started PT, full RSS scraping was fairly rare, though I did mention it first within a few months of starting the site, but it became extremely common between 2006-2008. However, the method fell out of favor with many spammers since then, in part due to improved duplicate content filters and also in part due to copyright complaints from bloggers.

Though there are still plenty of RSS scrapers out there, other types of spam blogging are increasing in popularity, including scraping search engine results, truncated feed scraping and content generation. In short, full-feed RSS scraping, though common, is losing some favor and the newer methods skirt most copyright issues.

However, from what I am seeing, human plagiarism is on the rise again, meaning that there is still plenty of work for me to do.

1. Improved Technology/Tools

In 2005, the best tool for tracking your content was Google Alerts and Copyscape was still fairly new. So much has changed in 5 years that it is difficult to put it into words.

For one, we have great new tools for tracking blog content, including free services such as FairShare, Copyscape alternatives such as Plagium and even free tools for tracking images, such as Tineye. This doesn’t count the spate of more traditional plagiarism checkers, the licensing applications and non-repudation tools that register and datestamp copyrighted works.

The tools available today put what was available in 2005 to shame and gives me a great deal of trouble trying to stay on top of all the changes. If you’re a creator of content and eager to track your work, now is a great time to be active on the Web and it seems poised only get better.

Bottom Line

The past five years have been a period of rapid change for webmasters in this area and the next five will be the same. However, I am curious about what you think will happen over the next few years in this area.

Please leave your comments below or drop me a line to send me your thoughts.

Earlier this month, a group of independent game developers got together to create the Humble Indie Bundle, a group of games available for purchase under a “pay what you want” business model.

The idea was that, rather than charging a flat rate for the bundle, purchasers could pay whatever rate they wanted for the games, as low as a single penny, and could also decide how much of the money went to the developers or to two charities chosen for the event.

For the most part, the sale was a smash success, bringing in over $1.2 million in revenue and earning almost $400,000 for the two charities. By no means is this a failure or even a small success.

However, as the sale was ongoing, the operators, Wolfire Games, noticed something unusual. The number of downloads for the bundle exceeded the number of copies bought and not by a small margin. A full 25% of the downloads were unpaid for, even at the rate of one cent.

To be clear, this doesn’t count the people who swapped the game on Bittorrent or other file sharing networks, just those who downloaded the game directly from the source. This also means that the pirates actually cost the developers money with their piracy by making them pay for the bandwidth.

This raises a lot of serious questions about piracy, ones even I have only begun to chew over. Even sites like Cracked, which often lampoons the RIAA and MPAA for their anti-piracy efforts, have come down on the pirates of the bundle, saying that it highlights that gamers have some “serious entitlement issues“.

But while many of the implications about this bundle, along with similar offerings by Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails in the music industry, will be long-debated, here are some of the thoughts that seem to be running through my mind repeatedly.

Ending Piracy Excuses

Whenever I read comments from pirates who talk about why they download content illegally, there is usually a set of reasons or excuses they fall back on. However, in the case of the Humble Indie Bundle, all of them fall flat.

1. Sticking it to the (Middle) Man: The Humble Indie Bundle was produced by small, independent game developers without publishers or other middle men. Every dime went directly to the people who make the game. But even if one believed these developers were “fat cats” that wouldn’t be hurt by piracy, there was also the option to donate every penny to charity, one of which was the EFF, which is actively working to defend accused file sharers.
2. Too Expensive: The Bundle could have been purchased for as little as a penny. No matter how limited one is with their financial resources, one cent is not too much to ask, especially for five games that required hundreds of hours to develop. This also cripples the “try before you buy” excuse as one could have donated a penny, downloaded the games, and made a real purchase later, all legally.
3. DRM/Crippled Features: The games were distributed DRM free. There was no copy protection on the games and they could be played on any operating system. There was no “better” version of the game to be obtained.

The Humble Indie Bundle was, in many ways, an experiment to see what happens when the excuses for piracy are stripped away and, like it or not, the answer was that piracy continued to take place.

To be clear, the developers did list other causes for the discrepancy between purchases and downloads. One possibility being those who purchased the bundle as a group, such as friends contributing to make a single donation and then sharing download links. However, given that the links were so widely distributed on the Web for those who had not bought the game and the game was also pirated on other file sharing services, it seems likely this only represents a small part of the problem.

The only potential excuse left is one of convenience, something the developers mention in their blog post. The links to download the bundle were widely distributed and many likely preferred to click the link and download directly rather than go through the checkout process. This, however, was an unavoidable inconvenience for the developers as they had to set up some system for accepting payment though systems such as Steam, Amazon with its one-click purchases and even iTunes are working to mitigate this issue as well.

Still, it is unlikely even a truly “perfect storm” of catering to the pirates will result in a complete cessation of piracy and this offers hard lessons to copyright holders.

Making a Business

I’ve repeatedly said on the Copyright 2.0 Show that any remedy for the copyright climate online is going to require changes to the law, business models and technology. There is no silver bullet solution.

Here though, you have a group of developers that did pretty much everything they could do on the business model side to reduce piracy and, though they definitely seemed to put a dent in the amount that took place, were very far from eliminating it or making it trivial. Though the bundle was definitely a success, the amount of piracy raises concerns that such an approach may be a repeatable business model for others to follow and not just a novel idea that caught on.

In short, though the Humble Indie Bundle was a great success, it is also a warning to those that wish to try a similar approach.

Though there are many who tout business model solutions as the way to solve the piracy problem, it is clear from this that those are only part of the answer. More complete solutions are still needed. This is something I deal with at CopyByte, my copyright and plagiarism consulting firm and try to help clients understand.

But more importantly, it exposes the excuses in favor of piracy as being just that, excuses. The people who cheer at pirates of movies, music and mainstream games were faced with a very different dilemma with the Humble Indie Bundle. Many, despite the clear differences, still chose to pirate.

Though piracy is no more ethical or legal when it is against big corporations, the touted logic by many in the pro-piracy community took a hit with this bundle show that, for many, it isn’t about who you’re pirating from or how much it costs, but rather, about getting stuff quickly, easily and for free, no matter who it hurts.

Bottom Line

In the end, the developers of the bundle have said that they are going to take no action against those who pirated the game. The strongest response they made was asking them to please use a peer-to-peer means of downloading the game to avoid costing them money on bandwidth.

While I am sorry that the bundle was pirated so heavily, though still less than other games, I am glad it was a success, that two charities are getting a great deal of money and the developers had a good payday.

But the long-term future of many entertainment industries relies on pirates and copyright holders coming to the table to meet each other’s needs. The Humble Indie Bundle showed that at least some creators are willing to go to great lengths to cooperate while many pirates are not willing to spend a few clicks or a single penny to reciprocate. This only highlights the chasm between the two sides and the hugeness of the task that lies ahead.

The question now for copyright holders is not “How do you eliminate piracy?” but “How do you minimize it while maintaining a business model?” or “How do you bring as many possible pirates into the fold as reasonably possible?”

These are fundamental questions that actually predate the Internet, going back to physical media piracy, but are now being shown in a very new light.

Leslie Burns, a creative/marketing consultant to commercial photographers wrote a lengthy post on her blog about the American Society of Media Photographers’ (ASMP) recent “interactions” with Lawrence Lessig, the founder of Creative Commons author of several books on the Free Culture movement.

The ASMP is an organization she is close with, and she stresses that she still feels it to be a great organization with good people, she feels that their involvement with Lessig, who spoke at a recent ASMP event, is dangerous and that Lessig needs to be “ignored/silenced as much as possible” as he has “done more harm to small creative businesses than any other single human in the US”.

This viewpoint was punctuated by a commenter to the post, Don Giannatti, who described Creative Commons as a “thinly veiled rights grab”.

This post is just the most recent example I’ve seen of the hostility toward Creative Commons in many creative communities. However, it is a hostility that I don’t fully understand.

Yes, freely available works have hurt many freelance and small artists, I understand this well, but Creative Commons did not create this problem, much of this is simply due to the Internet itself and would still be a problem even if CC disappeared tomorrow. In fact, without the licensing structure of Creative Commons, the problem could be much worse.

While I’m not saying that CC has been a great thing freelance artists, at least those with business models that don’t work with it, it isn’t the pariah that many have made it out to be either. The truth is much more humble than that.

A Strange Rights Grab

The thing about Creative Commons is that it is completely opt-in. If artists and content creators did not want their works licensed under a CC they simply had to do nothing and default copyright would apply. Even though Creative Commons is not for everyone, perhaps not even most, it is clear that many artists, of all types, do want their works licensed under less restrictive terms.

In fact, this behavior was going on well before Creative Commons. But rather than having formal, proper licenses for their content they were simply adding footnotes to their work saying things like “You are free to copy my work so long as you give a link back”, for example. Some were even going so far as to dedicate their works to the public domain.

These licenses are flat out dangerous as homebrew licenses by those without knowledge of copyright issues are, almost universally, flawed and can either fail to achieve their goal or give away more rights than intended.

The Creative Commons organization saw a need and filled it. Group A wanted to share their work, Group B wanted to be able to use shared work, but the law was in the way. The CC Organization created a series of licenses to act as a bridge between them. However, these two groups existed before CC and would exist after it disappeared and they would still find ways around the obstacles created by the law, they would just lack a pretty, easily understood tool to do it.

That, in turn, would create new problems including greater copyright confusion, poorly written licenses that give away additional rights and legal uncertainty for all involved. This type of climate would further taint the copyright pool and that would, in turn, hurt all copyright holders, CC or not.

However, what is truly confusing is how Creative Commons is a rights grab. It’s hard to “grab” rights that are freely offered and it is even unclear who is doing the grabbing. Some point the finger to corporations but I rarely see corporations using CC photos and, when they do and it makes the news, it’s usually because of a non-copyright-related disaster.

Corporations have been shy about CC licensing, largely due to the strict attribution requirements. They can afford the small amount required to properly license stock content and do so. However, smaller Web sites have been grateful, preferring CC-licensed images over paid content to make ends meet in their thin budgets.

It’s Not Just CC

Though it is true that Creative Commons is the most popular means of legally sharing free content on the Web, it is far from the only. Sxc.hu, for example, is a free stock photo site that is both immensely popular and doesn’t use CC licensing at all. There’s also a slew of free article Web sites, such as Articlesbase, that do the same thing with text content, once again without CC licensing.

These aren’t sites that are part of the “Free Culture” movement by any stretch. Much of the content is submitted by professional writers and photographers hoping generate some free promotion for their paid work, but they fill much the same gap.

So while some blame CC for being the worst thing to happen to smaller artists in generations, much of the problem seems to be attributed not to CC, but to the Web at large.

After all, the Web has given countless casual artists a voice and a broad audience. Many of these artists feel little need to commercially exploit their work and, instead, are just happy to let others use it with certain restrictions. Those desired restrictions vary from person to person, thus why CC created six different licenses, but the idea remains the same, there are certain uses of their work many people are not interested in compensation for and, often, wish to actively encourage.

In short, Creative Commons didn’t “create” the legions of free content available, but rather, just made it easier to search for and license correctly.

CC As a Lightning Rod

In reading the comments, much of the backlash against CC is really more directed at Lessig and the larger free culture movement.

I’m the first to admit that I don’t agree with everything Lessig has said, his favoring of copyright formalities being one my biggest sticking points, but there are others who are far, far more extremist than Lessig on copyright issues.

Lessig has always considered himself a supporter of intellectual property, and backs this up in his writing, but he favors reforms to the current system. However, where Lessig still believes in copyright, there are others who don’t believe copyright should exist at all or that copying should never be against the law, under virtually any circumstance.

The problem is pretty simple. The copyright wars have been divided sharply into two camps. The freedom-stomping content creators and corporations who don’t understand the Internet and the thieving pirates who don’t want to pay for anything, or so that’s what you read on the relative sites.

Copyright centrists, whether right or left leaning, get lumped into one of those two camps and it seems many have thrown Creative Commons in with the pirates. This is unfortunate as it stifles much of the legitimate copyright debate and only sharpens the divide between the two sides, making compromise even more difficult.

We saw this a great deal in Andrew Keen’s book, where he frequently considered Lessig a copyright abolitionist, and it is a common mentality of others on the Web.

However, this lumping makes Creative Commons an excellent lightning rod. A publicly acceptable and “hip” face of the “pirate” movement. It’s an easy target though one that is often misunderstood.

Bottom Line

In the end, the ASMP was taking a very bold, but necessary step in inviting Lessig to speak. Serious dialoge about copyright is urgent if the situation online is going to get any better. Everyone has to listen with open minds and think of real solutions.

There is no magic bullet, no easy way out. Any real answer is going to be messy and involve sacrifice. However, these are issues that can be solved.

But for that to happen, we have to stop seeing copyright as a black and white issue and look at it as a shades of gray issue. There are no two sides, but many sides and almost everyone, most likely, has at least some of the answer.

Until we start comparing notes with open ears, I don’t think we’ll ever find the real solution.

By their very nature, schools are supposed to be a place of education. Students, whether they are young children or retirees, go to schools to learn and grow as human beings.

However, on matters of plagiarism, that seems to be less the case. Educators have been quick to consider plagiarism a cheating issue, which it certainly is, but either ignore or pay inadequate attention to the fact that it is also an education one.

Simply put, no one is born with the ability to understand the difference between paraphrasing and original work, how to properly cite sources and when citation is necessary. These are all things that have to be taught and learned and anything that must be learned must be learned through some trial and error.

Unfortunately though, schools have created zero tolerance policies on plagiarism. While these policies are well-intended, they actually do more to create a climate of fear among students and that, in turn, creates not a desire to play honest, but a desire to try and defeat the systems that check for plagiarism.

In short, educators have accidentally created a plagiarism war and, rather than educating their students in how to cite sources correctly have, in many cases, encouraged them to learn on their own how to better get away with plagiarism.

This is creating real consequences for both the education system and for content creators outside, problems that are, in many cases, avoidable.

The Biology of Plagiarism

In more ways than one, plagiarism is a bit like a virus (or more appropriately a bacteria) in that it is an unwanted item that damages a healthy system. Like a virus, it can grow and spread, often as students teach one another about plagiarism or help each other commit the acts, and infect other parts of the system.

However, most importantly, plagiarism evolves in response to the environment. In that regard, we can think of anti-plagiarism software as being similar to an antibiotic. Useful for detecting and stopping plagiarism initially but, through overuse, becomes less and less effective.

The problem is that plagiarists have not responded to anti-plagiarism checking software by playing it straight and doing their own work, they’ve responded by changing how they plagiarize and where they plagiarize from.

Though my evidence is merely anecdotal, it comes from talking with students and administrators alike at various schools. When I talk to administrators about plagiarism, most want to know about how to detect it more effectively, not how to prevent it. When I talk to students about plagiarism, most want to know about how to beat the tools that detect it (often through very sneaky questioning), not how to actually cite sources.

In my experience, only the most inept or lazy students get caught plagiarizing trivially. Most are aware of the detection methods used and will either plagiarize from a source under the radar, such as a bought essay from another student, or by modifying it heavily enough to avoid detection, which can only be done with great effort in most case.

In short, students who want to plagiarize can do so with little fear of getting caught. It is just a matter of increasing the effort put into it. However, with anti-plagiarism tools available, no student should want to plagiarize at all because the effort and time required to avoid detection is equal to or greater than the effort of creating an original work.

It seems illogical for students plagiarize but many still do. With either fear of getting caught or a difficult task staring down at them, one would expect students would respond with honesty. However, that is clearly not always the case.

The Climate of Fear

I remember when I was in college, one of my English classes had a very tense day. The instructor told the class that she could not return the papers from the previous week as plagiarism had been detected in one of them. The teacher invited to the student involved to come forward, assumedly to receive a lighter punishment.

The students, all 30 of us, wondered who it was but were more worried that it was us. Many of us began to talk openly about that fear saying things like “I didn’t plagiarize but… I hope it wasn’t me.” The conversation then shifted to specific quotes, missed citations and other mistakes, wondering if that triggered the alarm.

We were informed the next class that the student had come forward and the matter had been handled in private, much to everyone’s collective relief, but I realized that, as students, we were not aware as to what constituted plagiarism. Discussions about citation had been limited to the various styles and we were all unsure where the lines were drawn.

This was the climate that existed in the late 90s. Now, things are much worse as anti-plagiarism systems have become more prominent and are used by more and more schools. However, teachers don’t seem to be any more dedicated to instructing students on issues of plagiarism, at least in many schools, and that is creating a very real sense of fear with the submission of every assignment.

What Teachers Should Be Doing

The first thing educators need to do is focus on actually teaching about plagiarism. Currently, in many schools, the “education” about plagiarism is limited to a few paragraphs in a student handbook.

Writing courses, which are mandatory, need to teach more than just the mechanics of writing a good paper, but also how to cite sources, paraphrase correctly and be a good researcher. It seems simple but there seems to be a divide between what is taught in writing classes and what is useful when creating actual assignments.

Also, instructors need to focus on crafting assignments that are resistant to plagiarism. This includes topics that can not be easily copy/pasted and including in-class portions that test knowledge away from access to outside sources.

Finally, there needs to be a recognition that there will always be a plagiarism problem and that it can not be “stamped out”. The same as there are viruses and bacteria in even the healthiest person, there will always be some cheating, even in the most honest school.

If you accept that and deal with the cases that are caught, you’re much better able to ensure that honest students don’t turn to plagiarism further down the road.

Bottom Line

Strict plagiarism enforcement without solid plagiarism education doesn’t make better students, it makes better cheaters.

If schools are going to deal with the epidemic of plagiarism, they need to treat it more like an actual infection and focus on all-around health rather than pumping in more quick fixes. The current path only makes cheaters more resistant to the methods that are used to catch them and creates a climate of fear that is both counter-productive for learning and can actually encourage cheating, since many students feel as if they are being treated as such anyway.

Even worse for copyright holders is that these better cheaters, after graduation (or while in school) often show a high level of disrespect for intellectual property of others. Though not every file sharer or Web plagiarist is/was a plagiarist in school, or vice versa, there is little doubt that rampant plagiarism in an academic environment erodes the respect one has for honesty and other people’s work.

For the sake of academia and the creative world at large, it is crucial that school shift the way they deal with plagiarism and find a more product approach to the problem.

Twitter, through its media blog, recently announced that it is making it easy to embed tweets into your site, the way many already add YouTube clips or audio from various sources.

The idea is fairly simple, you visit Twitter’s experimental “Blackbird Pie” page, paste in the full URL of the tweet (it ends with /status/########) and Twitter creates a block of HTML code that you paste into your site.

But is this something that users of Twitter really need? Though tweets are often cited in long articles, including this one pointed out by Twitter on ReadWriteWeb, the process has worked fine before and alternatives already exist.

Though I can’t say for certain how popular this feature will be, I can definitely see reasons why those who wish to quote and the Twitter users they pull from should cheer this move. However, there are also a few concerns that have me a bit worried about using this service.

How it Works

As mentioned above, all you do to use the service is find the URL of the tweet you want to cite, paste it into Twitter’s Blackbird Pie page and then insert the generated HTML into your post. Here are two samples.

First, the very first tweet from my significant other’s Twitter account for her new art blog.

Here is one from my friend and Copyright 2.0 Show co-host Patrick O’Keefe’s Twitter stream:

Finally, here is one twitter user @iLoveCopyright:

As you can see looking at the three samples, each one tries to keep the formatting of the original tweet but fails. The reason is it simply uses the background and color options from the last tweet on a page. If you upload multiple embeds to one page, the system breaks but it works fine for just one. In those cases, the embeds look the same as they look on Twitter’s site.

This is, or at least could be, the most powerful element of this new feature and reason enough for most people to consider using it. However, there are many other good reasons to embrace this new method for quoting tweets.

Advantages for Bloggers

Without embedding, the only three options for citing a tweet in your profile is to:

1. Link to the Tweet: This requires a user click and is often missed when reading a long article.
2. Take a Screenshot: Grabbing an image of the tweet requires more time and can be a hindrance to visually impaired visitors.
3. Copy the Tweet: Copying the tweet destroys the formatting and wreak havoc with attribution.

None of these options are ideal and all require at least some sacrifice, either to the reader, the Twitter user or the person doing the quoting.

Embeds are a truly elegant solution to this problem. It’s a simple copy/paste HTML code fix, the formatting/attribution is preserved (complete with clickable links) and it looks good (when only pasting one tweet).

In short, if you’re a blogger or a Web site that is looking to cite some tweets, this may be the best solution you have, at least if you only have one tweet you want to cite.

Advantages for Twitter Users

If you’re a Twitter user, this is good news as well. This system preserves the formatting and attribution of your tweets, offers clickable links to your tweet and your Twitter account and includes your icon/branding. In short, readers will know the tweet belongs to you instantly and can follow up on it easily.

The biggest advantage, however, is that it may make sharing tweets more common, increasing exposure. Since the copyright risks are minimal with a single tweet and the tool is not geared to easily copy all of the tweets from one’s account, it is simply an excellent opportunity for promotion.

However, there are also concerns that I have with this tool and, though I don’t consider these to be deal-brakers, they are all things I would like to see fixed before the service is considered to be an official “feature”.

Concerns and Problems

To be completely fair, the author of the Twitter Media blog, Robin Sloan, has made it clear that this is an experiment and not a feature. As such, problems are bound to creep up. But in addition to the formatting issue I mentioned before, there are a few other issues I would like to raise.

1. In-The-Clear Text: The embeds keep the text in the clear. While SEO concerns are minimal due to the short number of characters, this does mean that the person doing the embedding could alter the words to make the tweet say just about anything. Though you can click the links and verify the the tweet, few will likely bother with that and it is also possible to change the links to make it appear that the tweet was simply deleted.




I’m really just a robot.less than a minute ago via webJonathan Bailey
plagiarismtoday

2. Mangled Backgrounds: If you use a custom Twitter background, as I do, the script seems to mangle your embeds. It would be nice if the script could pull from the center of the background and not the upper-lefthand corner, but in lieu of that it might be wise just to have all embeds use the same background or a solid color related to the profile.
3. Lengthy Code: Shorter code is already on the future feature list but the length of the code is rather large, especially when compared to YouTube or other embeds. It has a lot of in-line CSS that causes the interference with multiple embeds in the same page and can be a real pain to edit.

While these problems are pretty nasty, they can probably be fixed in future iterations, especially if Twitter decides this is a good idea and invests time and energy in making a true embedding service.

Bottom Line

All in all, this is a neat service and, in my opinion, a good idea. Quoting tweets is a common practice and, due to the nature of tweets, almost always allowed by copyright law. These embeds just make it easier to quote properly and ensures that the original author gets credit.

With a few fixes, I could easily see this experiment being integrated deep into Twitter’s product and would welcome that change.

In the meantime, if you’re only quoting one tweet on a page, give it a try. Otherwise, you’ll probably want to look at an alternate method for citing tweets in your posts, as you can see above.

A recent story about a Twitter DMCA takedown has been getting a lot of press, including a mention on Mashable and on Ars Technica.

What exactly happened, remains unclear, as I will discuss in a minute, but this is not the first time that Twitter has gotten negative press for its handling of DMCA issues. I wrote about it last year (last year to the day actually) calling their DMCA procedure “A Fine Mess”.

But while those aren’t the Twitter’s DMCA issues being scrutinized now, they are related. It seems that Twitter may be ill-prepared for handling copyright issues and the case of JeanPierre Chigne seems only to solidify that position.

What Happened

What is known about the case is that it revolves around a music blogger named JeanPierre Chigne. According to his post on the topic, he posted a blog entry that linked to a leaked MP3 from an upcoming album entitled “High Violet” for the band The National.

According to Chigne, he found the MP3 for free on another site, Pitchfork, where it had been hosted legally since April 13. He then posted it to Mediafire, a file hosting service and wrote the blog post about it, following that up with the now-famous tweet.

The tweet simply read “New Post: Leaked: The National – High Violet” and contained a link to the post. However, some time after it went up, Chigne received an email from Twitter saying that they had removed the update due to a DMCA complaint. Who sent the complaint is unknown at this time but Twitter did pull down the tweet though both the original post and the linked file remain active.

This raises a lot of questions but not just about Twitter’s DMCA policy, but also about the DMCA notice itself and whoever filed it.

Twitter’s Role

Twitter, as a service provider based within the U.S., is legally obligated to have a DMCA agent and promptly respond to proper notices of copyright infringement by either deleting or disabling access to allegeldy infringing works. Failure to do otherwise could make them liable for infringement that takes place on their service, even if they didn’t upload it.

Twitter, nor any service provider, can afford that. They would either be forced to police user uploads for infringement, which is impractical, or not accept user content at all, meaning shut down. This is why the safe harbor protections of the DMCA are so important.

Most likely the DMCA notice was filed not under 512c, which deals with web hosts, but rather 512d, which deals with information location tools (search engines, link blogs, etc.). But this feels like a stretch to me. Twitter was hosting a link that went to a blog entry that, in turn, linked to an allegedly infringing file. Typically, with 512d, one is supposed to disable links that go directly to infringing material.

However, the law does not say that expressly. Instead, it says “referring or linking users to an online location containing infringing material or infringing activity by using information location tools, including a directory, index, reference, pointer, or hypertext link.” It is unclear how a “link to a link” would apply here, if at all.

Twitter has the right to use its better judgment when deciding which notices to comply with. However, I’m certain that Twitter decided it was not worth the potential fight to avoid deleting a single tweet. Also, since Twitter wasn’t in a position to judge whether the content being linked to was infringing or how the statute deals with these links to links, Twitter also realized they may face actual liability.

In short, Twitter’s decision may not be popular, but it was the right one to make considering how much uncertainty there is over this tweet and how little impact the deletion actually had.

Chigne’s Role

It is very likely that Chigne did infringe the copyright of the band and the label. Contrary to the Mashable article, even though the song was available legally and freely on the Web beforehand, nothing gave Chigne the right to reupload it to Mediafire and share it there.

Many sites, including Mashable and Ars Technica, distribute content freely on the Web. However, if others take that content and repost it elsewhere, especially en masse, there’s a great likelihood DMCA notices would follow if the reuse violated any licenses. There are many reasons why one would want freely available content to stay in one place, statistic tracking, advertising revenue, etc., and what Chigne did is an infringement, if it was done without permission.

However, the tweet was not. The tweet itself merely contained the title of the post and a link to it. No infringing material at all and no direct links to such material.

That, in turn, raises a new question: Why was his tweet taken down?

The Filer’s Role

Even if we can reach the conclusion that the filer’s notice against Twitter was appropriate, which is very much up for debate, this approach makes almost no sense.

Twitter merely had a link to a blog post that had a link to an MP3. Filing a notice against the Tweet was just poor strategy.

It’s a bit like trying to keep people out of a building by setting up a roadblock across town simply because it is a way that some people might access it. It makes much more sense to simply block off the actual area. Doing otherwise not only restricts people’s movements unnecessarily, but it also does nothing to prevent others from accessing the restricted area.

It is just plain stupid.

If the MP3 is infringing, it makes much more sense to target the blog or the file host directly, not Twitter. It is a waste of everyone’s energy that will do nothing to stop downloading of the file and, with the attention this story has grabbed, has almost certainly increased it.

It is such an insane act that part of me suspects that copyright enforcement was not the real goal, but rather, promotion. To file a notice against a single tweet but not take action against the blog or the MP3 indicates that whoever filed the notice wanted to draw more attention to it, not less. Whether it is a clever marketing ruse, relying on the Streisand Effect to draw attention to the band and song, or something else I can’t say. But this approach seems almost tailor-made to increase the number of downloads, not decrease them.

Bottom Line

No matter how you look at it, this was a legally-dubious and flat out stupid use of the DMCA. There was no reason to involve Twitter in this matter if the MP3 is truly infringing. It makes no sense.

Though, based on what I’ve read, it is likely that Chigne did infringe the song when he put it on Mediafire, unless there is more to the story, the response doesn’t make any sense and, given that the song was being freely distributed it probably didn’t call for a response at all. After all, just because something is technically infringing doesn’t mean you have to stop it.

I strongly suspect there is more to this story than what is being told but we may never know.

In the end, I don’t think Twitter did anything wrong in this case and the fault lies completely with the person who filed the notice for making a dubious claim that resolves nothing. While I do think Chigne’s uploading of the song was likely an infringement, it seems the response was tailor made to do nothing to resolve it.

In short, it’s a debacle alright, but not one of Twitter’s making this time.

photo credit: festadeipirati2010

Copyright is practically a four-letter word in the digital age. All you have to do is a Twitter search for the word and you’ll find hundreds of people with various gripes and concerns about copyright.

The main perception of copyright most of these authors have is that copyright is working against them and preventing them from doing things that they want to do, whether post a YouTube clip with suspect audio, share files or something else.

Sometimes the gripes are legitimate, such as when people have trouble moving content they legally own from one format to another. Sometimes the gripes are less so, just someone unwilling to pay for a song or movie. But it is clear that, at least from the perception of someone casually surfing the Web, copyright has turned into a war against consumers and is all but an act of tyranny.

Of course, the reality of copyright is much more complex than that. While there are flaws and issues with copyright law, the law is not nearly as oppressive as many make it seem. However, the image people have of copyright can and will eventually have an impact on the law itself, making it important that we take a serious look at copyright’s image and what can be done to bring it more in line with reality.

The Police Analogy

Copyright’s image issues are actually similar to those faced by the police. Though the comparison of copyright to the police may be an unfortunate one, especially considering how derogatory the term “copyright cop” is, the analogy is still a fitting one.

When a police officer is writing speeding tickets or otherwise enforcing small, common crimes. They are despised, avoided and entire books are written about how escape them. Things are even worse in the rare cases where police officers abuse their power or cross the line. These incidents are spread across the Internet, fanning flames of hatred against the police.

Yet, if there’s a break in, mugging or worse, most will not hesitate to call the police and get help.

The problem is that, for most people, the majority of their police interactions are the first kind, not the second. You are many times more likely to have a police officer write you a ticket for speeding than have one catch the guy who stole your TV.

The same holds true for copyright, though the law is there to protect everyone, most people are directly affected by having their YouTube clips muted (sometimes by mistake) or warnings for file sharing. Not by having their works protected.

In short, the image of copyright is based almost solely upon what it prevents people from doing, not what it enables or the protections it gives every content creator, large and small.

Some Real Problems With Copyright

This focus on what copyright prevents is, of course, only a part of the issue. Copyright law also has some very real problems that need to be addressed. These include:

1. Out of Date: Copyright law is hopelessly out of date with current technology and there is little chance to get caught up.
2. Abuses of Law: Many copyright holders have abused the law. This includes everything from false takedown notices to lawsuits that do not match the alleged misdeeds and border on extortion. Though these are relatively rare, they are widely publicized, often by design of the abuser.
3. Overly Restrictive: The current term of copyright is excessively long and actually hurts copyright holders by creating the orphan works issue. DRM circumvention and weak, unpredictable fair use provisions give far too much power to copyright holders, especially large ones, in many areas.
4. Bias Toward Large Copyright Holders: Under the current system, especially in the U.S., only large copyright holders can afford to enforce their rights in court. Between registration fees, attorneys and court costs, large copyright holders have nearly all the power.

There are other issues, of course, but these are some of the biggest issues that have been raised repeatedly that are legitimate complaints.

However, the overall idea of copyright is still solid. The idea that authors and creators, who spend time and money creating works for others to enjoy deserve rights over those works and renumeration for their efforts still makes sense.

That idea of authors retraining control over work is what made the Statute of Anne so different 300 years ago and why the idea is still valid today.

But to keep that idea, we have to stop looking at just what copyright prevents and also look at what it enables.

A More Robust Conversation

A one-sided conversation on copyright does no good. Those who depend on copyright as part of their living need to turn the conversation around from being just one about the things you can’t do because of copyright to one about what it enables everyone to do.

After all, every human being, with almost no exception, is both a consumer and a creator of copyrighted works. If you take photos, write blog posts or fix any work of creative authorship into a tangible medium of expression, you are a copyright holder.

Copyright protects those works under the same rules it does major motion pictures and best-selling albums. Though money certainly aids in that protection, knowledge and information is more important.

This is why, when people complaint to me about copyright law and talk about abolition, I immediately shift the conversation to the rights they would lose in their own work without it. I don’t know if I’ve won any hearts or minds, but the conversations have always taken a different tone. Most, it seems, either don’t know or don’t think about the rights they have in their own work.

This, in my experience, has always been more effective in discouraging activities such as file sharing than threats of lawsuits. Mention a huge lawsuit and most people don’t believe that they can get caught. However, remind people that copyright is a two-way street and others would be able to do to their work what they are doing to others and most begin to seriously about their approach.

If copyright holders want to get people to support their rights, the first step is to remind the world that everyone is in this together and that, while copyright does restrict what one can do with other’s content, it also protects their own.

Bottom Line

Much like with the police analogy, though railing against copyright and the excesses of it is popular on the Web and people are understandably hesitant to grant more power to the institution, very few are seriously talking about getting rid of it altogether.

There is a very real need for copyright reform, both to modernize and rebalance the law, but the big idea of copyright remains valid and very important, perhaps even more so now that more people than ever are involved in the creation of creative works.

However, such efforts to update the law productively will be hindered greatly so long as the public attitude toward copyright is so overwhelmingly negative and large copyright holders, including the MPAA and the RIAA, make this an “us vs. them” battle.

It’s time to realize that we’re all copyright holders and consumers. We all have a stake in this from both sides. If we approach the issue from that mindset, it may not be easier to decide on the exact reforms we need, but it will be easier to get all sides involved talking.

photo credit: greyloch

One fact I’ve often repeated when giving lectures and in conversation with friends is that I’ve managed to detect, track and stop some 700 plagiarists of my work, all within the last 7 years or so. That’s an average pace of about 2 per week.

Though there hasn’t been what I would call a “typical reaction” to being found out, reactions range from denial, indignation to sweepingly apologetic, there has been one question I’ve been asked over and over “How did you find me?”

The assumption, I suppose, is that the Web is a huge place and they felt safe in their little corner of it. The problem, of course, is that even the tiniest corner of the Web is extremely public and can be easily found.

Plagiarism isn’t just a lie, it isn’t just cheating (in cases of contests or academia) and it isn’t just copyright infringement (in many cases), it’s also incredibly stupid.

Anyone who takes a moment to think about plagiarism will quickly realize that the odds of getting away with it, especially repeated plagiarism of text works, are effectively nil.

But if you need it spelled out, here’s the basic rundown of why plagiarism is a stupid thing to do, just in case you are seriously contemplating doing it.

It’s Called Google, Duh

Whether you’re a writer checking for plagiarists of your work, a professor checking students for cheating or an editor looking into misbehavior by employees, you already know well the power of Google.

If it is on the Web and not somehow made private, such as on closed forums, Google can find it and will do so eventually. No matter how out-of-the-way you might think your source or your reuse of it is, Google will know what it is and that enables anyone to backtrack it.

The process is very trivial and doesn’t need any special tools. All one has to do is punch in a unique phrase from one work and they can either find the duplicates or the source depending on what they’re trying to achieve. It only takes a few minutes to perform such a search and confirm the results.

Even better, I don’t actually check for my work. Google, through Google Alerts, does all the work for me. I simply set up the alert and Google is nice enough to email me when it detects a copy, plagiarized or not. I simply follow up.

But what makes plagiarism so laughably dumb is that many plagiarists use Google to find the material they want to copy. They understand the power of using Google to find material they want to claim as their own, but don’t understand that the same tool works in reverse.

This is comparable a bank robber using the bank’s security system to case the location but then walking into the bank not expecting that the camera’s would be used to catch them after the crime was done.

However, this isn’t to say that you’ll get caught every time you plagiarise, or even most times, just that it is easy for someone to do when properly motivated.

Russian Roulette

Despite the ease with which verbatim plagiarism and other copying can be detected, at least for textual works, most plagiarists don’t get caught on the first incident. The reason isn’t because they outsmarted the technology, but because no one was using the tools to check their work.

The simple truth is that, even in professional environments such as newspaper, few are motivated to do thorough checks of others works or actively look for plagiarism of their own content. Some of this is due to poor ethical judgement, some of it laziness but more often than not it is due to one being unaware of even the risk.

But people are becoming more aware. Colleges have widely adopted anti-plagiarism checking systems that largely automate the process of looking for copied text, newspapers may be slower to adopt but after the Jayson Blair and other scandals, are waking up. However, more importantly, authors online are becoming more aware of misuse and are actively searching for their works, including using tools like FairShare and Copyscape.

But even if we assume that the likelihood of being caught for plagiarism is extremely low, such as five percent, even a basic understanding of statistics shows that the odds of getting caught increases quickly the more you do it. Since few plagiarists, in my experience only plagiarize once or twice, the odds of getting caught increase significantly after a relatively small number of incidents. In fact, after about 20 incidents, your chances of going without being caught completely drops to less than half.

Plagiarism is, essentially, a form of russian roulette. Though your odds for each incident remain relatively constant, the more chances you take, the more likely the negative outcome will happen at least once.

However, it is all an unnecessary risk. The really stupid thing about plagiarism isn’t that it is easy to get caught and, for most, a practical inevitability. Rather, that there’s no point to it at all.

The Really Dumb Part

The plain truth is that, when one plagiarizes, they undertake a huge risk but gain almost nothing in return. The time it takes to provide attribution to content is insignificant compared to the time it takes to find the work in the first place.

Most instructors are happy to allow you to quote and paraphrase outside sources so long as you attribute them and most content creators are equally happy to allow you to use their work under the same rules, especially for education.

Taking two seconds to add an attribution line means nothing. Taking the extra moments to paraphrase and cite sources means almost nothing. The difference between a plagiarism and a good research assignment or a welcome use on the Web is often just a few more moments of time.

If you’re worried about the quality of your writing, not only does plagiarism not actually correct the issue, but your instructors, friends and readers, almost certainly, are aware of your struggles and will treat your sudden improvement with suspicion. This makes it far more likely your work will be scrutinized closely and you will be caught.

In short, if you are plagiarizing as a shortcut, you are wasting your time. If you are plagiarizing to cover up your own perceived deficiencies, you’ll more likely find yourself arousing suspicion.

Bottom Line

In my experience, people don’t become plagiarists because they are the best and the brightest. Though some smart people make mistakes, the majority of the worst offenders are simply idiots looking for a way to skate through an assignment, building a Web site or some other project. They don’t think their actions all the way through and, often, feel that they’ve done nothing wrong.

And that is the truly amazing thing about plagiarism. Despite all of the dire warnings, the lectures, the stiff penalties, many refuse to believe that it is an offense, inside or outside the classroom. After all, the second most common question is “What did I do wrong?”

When I was in the very early stages of my fight against plagiarism, I have to admit that seeing how widespread the problem is almost made me lost a lot of my faith in humanity. Hundreds of people taking credit for my writing, often in very stupid ways, can certainly have that effect.

But I’ve come to realize as I’ve gotten more involved that the hardcore plagiarists are the extreme minority and, while they do seem to have at least some issues with their ethics, the bigger problem seems to be one with their ability to think through their actions.

In short, plagiarists are not evil geniuses, at least on the whole. Whether it is out of panic, laziness or sheer stupidity, plagiarism is one of the dumbest ways a person can land themselves in trouble and its an offense that, even with the most basic evaluation, stops looking like a good idea.

Last week Google shut down a series of music blogs running on their popular Blogger service. All of the blogs were shut down for alleged copyright violations but at least six of the blogs were popular music blogs, including several that claimed they had obtained all of the music they were sharing legitimately.

This kicked off a firestorm of controversy and blame was quickly spread around. Many blamed the labels for sending such clearly false DMCA notices, others blamed Google for sending inadequate notices and others still blamed the laws themselves

The truth is that there is plenty of blame to go around. When you step back and take a look at the situation and how it unfolded, you can see that there are no completely innocent parties nor any one guilty entity. It was a perfect storm created by a series of bungles and missteps that, fortunately, is more rare than it seems.

However, to figure out how to prevent such takedowns in the future, let us take a look at what happened and what everyone can do better.

The Record Labels

The record labels initiated the whole situation. Their automated bots detected copies of their MP3s on various Google-hosted blogs and their staff filed takedown notices against those blogs. At least some of these takedowns, however, were against blogs that, according to their owners, had received permission from various agents to post the content. In fact, many had been pushed by PR firms to post the songs and promote them.

Why Blame Them: Though it seems likely the vast majority of the notices were legitimate as there are, or at least were, many unlawful music blogs on Blogger, greater care should have been taken to avoid sending notices to blogs that had been given permission to post the music files. In many cases, according to the bloggers, even a cursory evaluation of the actual page the MP3 was on would have shown it was a permitted use, something the record labels failed to do. Clearly, the record labels could have and should have done more to avoid filing against those they recruited to push out their works.

In Their Defense: Record labels are huge corporations, even today, and there are countless departments and third party contractors involved with the companies. It is very likely that enforcement team does not know what the PR team is doing, especially since both are likely outsourced to some degree. Furthermore, given the sheer volume of such notices that are almost certainly sent out and the relatively few that turn out to be mistakes, the record labels, overall, seem to do a decent job handling the situation under the circumstances. While there is clear room for improvement, I don’t think anyone would call these notices malicious, especially since they hurt themselves and their own PR efforts.

Google

Google’s role in this was more of a middle man. It received the takedown notices from the labels, removed or disabled access to the infringing works and notified the bloggers involved of the removals. Once the DMCA notices reached a threshold to be considered repeat infringers, Google then deleted the blogs, as demanded by the DMCA.

Why Blame Them: Google’s notices seem to be at the source of much of the confusion. Bloggers initially claimed that they didn’t always know what was being removed or why nor did they know how to respond. Others also claimed that they thought the removal of the content was the end of it and nothing more needed be done, much less that the notices had a cumulative effect and could result in an outright ban of their blogs.

In Their Defense: Simply put, Google has done more than most in this area. Google’s partnership with Chilling Effects, which has been deeply integrated into the Blogger takedown process, ensures transparency and as you can see in this sample notice links are clearly provided. Though Google may have some work to do in explaining the counternotice procedure, they still do more than the vast majority of hosts out there, especially since their overhauls in August.

The Bloggers

If we focus solely on the bloggers operating legitimate music blogs and not those using the service for unlawful purposes, the bloggers largely did nothing. They received permission to post MP3s, in some cases having them pushed upon them, and did so. They received takedown notices but, since the work was already removed, did nothing further.

Why Blame Them: Music bloggers, especially those who post MP3s, have to understand that they are very likely to run into copyright issues. They have an obligation, when using other’s copyrighted works, to understand the law and what their obligations are. Also, no response is one of the worst responses to any legal papers received. If they had read the notice thoroughly, researched the law behind it and then filed a counter-notice when appropriate, their blogs would still be open.

In Their Defense: The law is confusing and impossible even for attorneys to fully make sense of. Bloggers, for the most part, lack the time, resources and knowledge to fully understand copyright law. They rely upon their Web hosts and those filing objections against them to make what they need to do understood. Furthermore, those who did nothing wrong put their faith into the system, assuming that it would work without them needing to take any action but that was clearly not the case.

The Law

The DMCA safe harbor provisions require hosts to expeditiously remove or disable access to allegedly infringing material when they receive a proper notice. They also require that hosts ban or otherwise shut down the accounts of repeat infringers. Google, as a U.S. company, is bound by this law and it is the method that the record labels used to secure the removal of the files they viewed as infringing and it was under this policy that the blogs in question were shut down.

Why Blame It: The law doesn’t offer much forgiveness nor, at least initially, voice to the person who is the subject of the DMCA notice. When notices are filed correctly, the system works fine, but when mistakes are made it is often very ugly and unfortunate. Under the law, Google had little choice than to remove the allegedly infringing pages, even if they were marked in error, and put the burden on their user to respond.

In Its Defense: The DMCA provides very robust protection against misuse. There is a counter-notice system which restores works that were removed and the DMCA also provides very harsh penalties for those who abuse the law. If hosts carry out the DMCA correctly and users respond appropriately, a mistake in the system should be just an annoyance. Failures such as this one require a very rare set of circumstances to come together at once to compound the problem.

Bottom Line

So who is to blame for Musicblogocide 2010? Everyone.

For this type of disaster to take place, there has to be a very sizable series of mistakes and errors. There is a reason why incidents such as this one are very rare.

Simply put, the record labels need to do better when sending their notices, Google needs to better explain them (perhaps relying a bit less on Chilling Effects for that assistance), bloggers need to be aware of the law and respond accordingly. Also, the law itself could probably use a few tweaks to streamline the handling of errors.

For the most part, the safe harbor protections have been very good for the Web and, on the whole, have been used as they were intended. Though a few have used them maliciously, they have, for the most part, been dealt with. Though a few mistakes have happened, they are rare in the big scheme of things.

Still, when something like this does happen it is important to analyze it and see where the mistakes were made. This way, we can prevent them in the future and continue to make rare occurrences even more rare.

In the end, I hope that this will be a learning experience for all involved and those who were spared. If we move forward from this wiser, then it was not a completely useless experience.

photo credit: somegeekintn

The U.S. Copyright Office recently raised its estimated time of arrival for a registration certificate to nine months. Nine months. This is up from three months and four months as recent estimates.

I have a longstanding history of criticizing the Copyright Office, especially its Electronic Copyright Office (ECO) system, which was supposed to make registrations faster and cheaper.

I’ve called for the Copyright Office to close, said that it hurts bloggers and explained how it helps make the copyright of U.S. citizens second-rate. Worst of all, those are just some of my pieces about the USCO over the years.

However, this is the final straw. With a nine month estimated turnaround time for a certificate, the ECO system is officially a dismal failure. Nine months was the average of the old paper system before the ECO was even on the drawing board. The ECO system has not made the registration process faster, it has failed to keep up with the demand and is now making things worse than they were.

But rather than create another post about the ECO itself and why the USCO registration system is flawed, I’ve decided to illustrate my point a different way. Here are 25 things that you can do in the time between when you file your ECO registration and when the Copyright Office expects you’ll get your certificate back.

Biology

1. You could create a human life from conception through delivery.
2. You could grow your hair approximately 4.5 inches longer.
3. You could also grow your fingernails over one inch longer.
4. Assuming eight hours of sleep, you could sleep roughly 90 days during that time.
5. Assuming a healthy weight loss of 1-2 lbs per week, you could lose almost 60 pounds.

Travel

6. By walking just 2 miles per hour (low), ten hours per day, you could leisurely stroll across America… and back (approx 5,400 miles).
7. On a bike, assuming a tame 15 miles per hour and eight hours of riding per day, you could travel approximately 32,400 miles, enough distance to circle the globe at the equator.
8. Driving at just 55 miles per hour for 8 hours a day, you could travel 118,800 miles, about half the distance to the moon.

Sports

9. You could win the Super Bowl (from preseason through the playoffs).
10. If you prefer baseball, you could win the World Searies, preseason through playoffs again.
11. For NASCAR fans, you could almost win the Sprint Cup in Nascar.
12. In basketball, you could win the NBA championship with time to spare.
13. For hockey fans, you could win the Stanley Cup.

Money

14. If you are an average U.S. citizen you will earn approximately $24,000 in the time it takes to receive their registration.
15. If you were Michael Jordan, on the other hand, would likely have made about $24.75 million during that time.
16. Failing that, you could also file for and be granted bankruptcy, joining the over 1 million Americans who will do so during that time.
17. On the other hand, you could start a business and join the estimated 450,000 who will do so during that time.

Education

18. You could complete any year at almost any U.S. high school or two semesters at almost any college, first day through last.
19. Along the same lines, you could be halfway through an Associates Degree at a technical college.
20. If you’re not in school, nine months is time enough to apply to, be accepted and start school at almost any school in the U.S.

The Web

21. You could register one or more of the approximately 18 million domains that will be registered in that time.
22. You could also catch up on your Digg and be one of the 315 million visitors that will go there during that time.
23. You also can create a new Facebook account and join the estimated 202 million that will do so during that time.
24. Once you sign up for Facebook and get addicted, you’ll spend an estimated 5 days on the site total.
25. You can also upload photos to Facebook knowing that they’ll each be just one of over 3.7 billion uploaded to Facebook during that time.

Caveats

There are several caveats to this. First, I based all math on an average month of 30 days and an assumption that nine months was equal to exactly .75 of a year. Also, I used latest-available statistics. Links provided when they were used.

Also, to be fair, the USCO does say that “many” will receive their certificates sooner and there seems to be a lot of variety in the actual time frame it takes, though it seems almost everyone is reporting much longer waiting times.

Have Something to Add

Thought of something I missed? Great! Either post a comment or send me a message on Twitter. I’m going to update this post with your suggestions but please, if possible, leave your Twitter name for easy inline attribution.

Bottom Line

In an electronic world, any amount of time is too long to wait, especially for something this critical (and when there is a limited time frame to file suit). When I can get a TV from Amazon in a week, even a month is too long for the USCO. If the system can’t keep up with the digital world we live in, it needs to either be drastically reformed or scrapped completely.

Hopefully this illustrates just how silly the system has gotten and how badly in need of repair it really is.

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