However, compared to that earlier announcement, this latest change doesn’t really offer much different at all. Given how much of the post focuses on recapping the existing DMCA policy, it can be easy to overlook what exactly is new.

The answer, for better or for worse, appears to be “not much”, at least not for most of us.

Google’s DMCA Announcement

According to Google, they are instituting two changes to the way they handle DMCA notices for Blogger, those changes include:

1. Streamlined Submission Tool: For rightsholders that file DMCA notices in large quantities, Google has created a new, streamlined tool to make the process quicker and, hopefully, get response time down under 24 hours.
2. Streamlined Counter-Notice Tool: Designed to help users who feel they were on the subject of a false or misguided takedown get their works restored.

To be clear, the bulk of the DMCA process remains the same. For most filers, they will use the same DMCA form that Blogger started using last year and not much will change on that front.

In short, these DMCA changes will only impact two relatively small groups. Those who file bulk DMCA notices, which very few organizations have such a need, especially with Blogger, and those who need to file a counter-notice.

Bottom Line

The odds you’ll be affected by this announcement are fairly slim overall. Unless you’re a major copyright holder or a Blogger user that gets hit with a false DMCA notice, you probably won’t see either of the new systems in action.

The good news on all of this is that Google is still clearly working on refining and improving its DMCA process. It’s a sign of life for a system that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention lately, at least no publicly.

Behind the scenes, I can say that response times have improved for Google Blogger though I’m not always or even routinely seeing the 24 hours they have repeatedly promised to shoot for. That being said, it’s still far better than the previous time frame for removal.

All in all, I wouldn’t consider Google one of the best or most responsive hosts on DMCA matters, but I certainly don’t think of them as the worst anymore either.

Hopefully that improvement trend can continue and both copyright holders and their users can reap the benefits from it.

For those needing to file DMCA notices with Google, this was a vast improvement as the only previous methods widely accepted were fax and postal mail (though I had a workaround for emailing a DMCA notice to Google).

Apparently though, Google was satisfied with the test results and has now expanded its DMCA form to work with nearly all of its various products including Web search, image search, Adsense, Adwords, Android Market, Orkut, Picasa and, strangely, Gmail.

The only service that does not use the form is Google-owned YouTube, which still has its process on the main site (complete with a separate form).

Using the form is also remarkably simple. One just selects the service they wish to report the copyright infringement, select “I have found content that may violate my copyright” and then indicate you are either the copyright holder or a designated agent. Once you do that, Google walks you through the steps of filing the notice, including providing an electronic signature so there is no need to provide a physical signature via fax or postal mail (a previous sticking point with Google).

Testing Google’s DMCA Form

Having used the form a few times since it recently went online, I can say safely that it is very easy and very quick to use. It has drastically cut down on the time required to file a Google DMCA notice, in particular for Web search.

Though you have to be careful to note that each form is slightly different, asking for information unique to that service, they are all pretty self-explanatory and can be completed by a layperson with great ease.

The big drawback I’m seeing is that response time to these notices appears to be a good deal slower than one would expect. One notice I filed with the Blogger team took nearly three weeks to get a clear spam blog removed. I’ve gotten at least one other report of similarly slow responses.

However, I’m putting out an open call for your experiences. If you’ve used this form recently, please let me know what service you reported to and how quick the response was. You can do so either using my contact form if you wish to respond in private or by posting a comment below.

Bottom Line

All in all, I’m happy to see that Google is taking steps to one and improve their DMCA procedure. Streamlining the process not only could mean faster response times for creators, but also less work for Google and a more reliable process.

However, all of this hinges on Google responding to notices in a timely and appropriate manner, as well as Google making sure that the form isn’t overloaded with false complaints, spam or other garbage.

If Google can overcome these issues, then this change could be a great thing for copyright holders of all stripes. That being said, early indications are that they haven’t, though I’m hoping that they are problems they can iron out soon.

I’ll keep everyone posted on what I find out.

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Feds Arrest Owner of Seized Sports Streaming Domain

First off today, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations have arrested Brian McCarthy, a Texas man they believe ran the site Channelsurfing.net, which offered streams of various sporting events. McCarthy, who has been charged with criminal copyright infringement, had already had his domain seized by ICE and had reopened shop on a .eu domain. If convicted McCarthy may spend up to five years in prison. The site, however, is still available.

2: Turkey Blocks Google Blogger in Football Broadcasting Row

Next up today, Google’s Blogger service has been blocked in Turkey but the reason is very surprising. It turns out Turkish satellite firm Digiturk went to court to protect their exclusive rights to broadcast Spor Toto Super League content on their Lig channel and had petitioned the court to block the entire service, with an estimated half a million blogs, because one site was broadcasting the matches unlawfully. Google has noted they have their own takedown system and that the ban was not necessary, but Turkey’s strict copyright regime makes it possible to easily ban entire sites.

3: Net Pirate Ruling May Force ISPs to Cut off Cheats

Finally today, though the recent iiNet ruling in Australia was a major victory for ISPs over content creators, it may have helped set the stage for copyright holders to, in the future, force ISPs in the nation to kick off suspected pirates. Though the court ruled that iiNet was not liable for copyright infringement by its users, despite movie studio’s insistence they were enabling the infringement, the ruling laid out what some are calling instructions for more effective notices and cooperation between ISPs and copyright holders in the future. This includes information on how to write better notices and to take on the financial burden of sending the notices.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 6 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

1: Google Throws Down Gauntlet: No More Book Settlement Changes

First off today, Google has made a series of filings in the Google Book Search lawsuit defending the current settlement and saying that it will not revise it any further. The new settlement, which gives Google the right to scan, display and sell copies of in-copyright but out of print books, was adjusted previously after the Department of Justice filed objections over the proposed settlement. Google is now defending the agreement vigorously and seems to be digging in for a fight.

2: Dumb Labels, Laws (Not Google) To Blame for Music Blog Deletions

Next up today, we have several updates on “Musicblogocide 2010″, which saw Google shuttering several music blogs on its service due to repeat copyright complaints. Previously bloggers had said they could not file counter-notices because Google provided inadequate information for them to do so. But Google has issued a statement that it always provides a URL and that several bloggers have admitted that they simply didn’t respond for various reasons. It’s also come to light, as was expected, that the takedowns were the product of a bot that tracks MP3s on the Web.

3: Video Site Backed by Time Warner Inc., Eisner to File For Chapter 7

Finally today, we have to say goodbye to an old friend, Veoh. Today Veoh filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy and is ceasing operations. Veoh famously won its case against Universal Music Group, which had sued it for copyright infringement, claiming safe harbor did not protect the site. The ruling in that case is likely to have a bearing on the YouTube/Viacom case that is ongoing. This distraction, however, was cited as one of the reasons the company is going under. Goodbye Veoh!

Programming Note

On a persona note today, Fat Tuesday is this coming Tuesday and, as a New Orleanian, I probably won’t be in the office much Monday or Tuesday of next week. So please understand if there is no 3 Count for a couple of days. I will be back on Wednesday to record a new edition of the Copyright 2.0 Show and resume normal posting!

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Saturday morning for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Monday morning right here on Plagiarism Today.

1: Google Shuts Down Music Blogs Without Warning

First off today, Google is drawing heat this morning over its closure of several music blogs hosted on its Blogger service. The reason is multiple copyright infringement notices against the sites, however, the sites themselves say they have permission for the tracks they post. The bloggers have said that filing a counternotice is often impossible due to a lack of information provided by Google and that resulted in the string of uncontested removals. Google has announced that they are going to tweak their policy for music bloggers to reduce this problem in the future.

2: University Worker Accused of Extorting Student File Sharers

Next up today, a University of Georgia employee has been fired and arrested on charges of extortion after allegedly promising to make an RIAA infringement notice “go away”. The employee, Dorin Dehelean was arrested after a student reported him to police and an undercover operation showed him taking money as a bribe to not pass along the notice to the school’s disciplinary board.

3: Cannot Chase Paperchase

Finally today, Paperchase, a British company specializing in the sale of printed items, is caught up in something of a plagiarism scandal as artist Hidden Eloise filed an accusation that one of her designs has appeared for sale on at least one of Paperchase’s products. Paperchase has responded by removing the product from their Amazon store and issued a statement saying they received the design from a reputable firm but are looking into the matter.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Saturday morning for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Monday morning right here on Plagiarism Today.

Back in April, I announced that Blogger was now accepting DMCA notices via a form, the first case of Google easily accepting DMCA notices online. The next month, I noted that Chilling Effects, a major database for takedown notices, had come back to life after many months with little activity and was mostly posting Blogger notices.

Though these were clear signs that Blogger was changing their approach to the DMCA, there had been no formal announcement about the shift. However, earlier today, Blogger announced these changes on their blog and, along with them, noted a few other shifts in their DMCA policy.

Given Google’s status as an industry leader and Blogger’s status as a leading blog platform, it seems likely that other hosts will be watching these changes closely to see if they should be making changes to their own system for handling DMCA takedown notices.

Some Background

According to Google, they began looking at making improvements in their DMCA system after they received some negative press regarding their handling of takedowns, especially for music blogs. The complaints, specifically, were that Google was taking down posts and not informing bloggers and providing no meaningful recourse if the notice was filed in error.

According to Blogger, every time a takedown was filed, the blog owner was notified at the email address they signed up with. However, many bloggers had not updated their email and thus not received the notice.

Still, Blogger wanted to improve the system and approached users and several other organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Chilling Effects, about ways to improve the system, the changes to which went live today.

The Changes

There are four basic changes to the system that are taking place, effective immediately:

1. DMCA Complaints Handled via Form: This has actually been in service since April, but this is the first formal announcement of it.
2. Complaints Automatically Sent to Chilling Effects: Once again, this has been taking place since at least May, but all notices are forwarded to Chilling Effects are posted to the site almost immediately, sans personal information.
3. Users Receive Dashboard AND Email Notifications: If a user is the subject of a DMCA notice, they will be notified via both their Blogger dashboard and email, ensuring that they find out.
4. Subject Blog Posts are Set to Draft: Rather than deleting allegedly infringing posts, they are instead set to draft (thus taking them offline) and users can then edit the post to remove the infringing material and then reupload it. This was done largely to appease music bloggers, who didn’t want a whole post take down to a notice over an audio file embedded inside.

That being said, it is the fourth change that will be the biggest worry for most copyright holders. There is little to stop a blogger from just reposting the infringing material. However, a representative from Blogger told me that they expect those cases to be very rare and plan to take them very seriously. It was also emphasized to me that nothing in this policy will change their approach to repeat infringers and that sites used solely to infringe content, such as share links to illegal downloads, will still be dealt with severely.

This system is designed for bloggers who see notices very rarely, to ensure that they are given proper notification, via Chilling Effects, and that they remove the infringing content with a minimal amount of impact on the rest of their site.

Personal Thoughts

Overall, I am very pleased with the system. It seems like a true win-win that will result in faster, easier take downs of infringing material while providing better notifications to users and better protections against false notices.

The use of draft status to remove infringing posts is somewhat worrisome. For one, there are many posts where the entire work is an infringement and there isn’t anything to edit out. Also, there are many infringements on Blogger that don’t deal with an individual post, but an image in the sidebar or something else that is a part of the template. It is unclear how those will be handled though, most likely, the previous system would be applied (save that the user would be notified via their dashboard).

However, as long as the reassurances I received turn out to be true, the use of draft status to remove works is not that worrisome. We will have to watch this and see if there are any issues with it in the future.

On the other side, the use of Chilling Effects to give the users the notice seems flawed to me. Not only does it rely on a third-party service to pass along the notice, meaning if CE goes down, so does the ability for the user to get a copy of the notice, but the site omits personal information. There needs to be a clear system in place for retrieval of the full notice if needed for legal reasons. Though I am a supporter of Chilling Effects, this does not seem like the best use of it.

Still, the news is overall very good for copyright holders and users alike. Hopefully that is how the system will play out.

Bottom Line

In the end, most people who file DMCA notices with Blogger probably won’t notice any change. Content will still go down after a notice and most likely stay down. The form will remain in use and infringements will be handled more quickly than before. Users will get better notification of takedowns and Chilling Effects will be able to effectively collect data on the DMCA process.

Though there are concerns with the system, it is certainly an improvement over the previous one, which both lead to slow takedowns, due largely to a requirement for a fax or mail notification, and obviously left gaps in how it notified customers.

I hope that they will continue to hone and improve the system, but for the most part these steps make a lot of sense.

One of the recurring themes on Plagiarism Today has been how difficult it is to send a DMCA notice to Google, especially over their Blogger service. I first wrote on the topic in 2006, and posted a workaround to email a DMCA notice to Google in 2008.

However, sometime very recently, Google updated their Blogger DMCA page, to include a new contact form that automates much of the process.

Since Blogger, Google’s free blog hosting service, has been a strong focus for spam blogs and other kinds of infringers, this is a potentially huge step forward, especially for those who have dealt with misuse by Blogger users. The previous means of emailing a notice to Google involved creating a PDF of the notice, complete with scanned signature, and emailing that in. This form makes it almost instantaneous to send in a complaint to Google.

However, there are some limitations to this form that have to be considered and it is important to use it for the right reasons.

How it Works

The form, though not much to look at, could not be much more clear. It works by having the person filing the complaint fill out a series of blanks and then submit it, much like with any other contact form.

Someone filing a DMCA notice puts in their name (first and last), company, email address, location of original works, description of the original works, infringing URLs, agree to two sworn statements and then date/sign the form. It is very straightforward and ripped pralmost directly from the DMCA itself.

There are only three issues that I see with the form.

1. Offline Works: The form could be a bit difficult to use for works not already on the Web. You are required to list both a location of the work and identify the work. Though both are a requirement of the DMCA, sometimes they are one and the same, for example with books and ISBNs. However, both boxes are required. You may for example list the publisher and ISBN in the location box and the Title in the first, as Google suggests.
2. Layout: I’m having some trouble viewing the form in my browser (Firefox on Mac) as the description text runs over the edge of my monitor and I can’t scroll horizontally. I was able to work around this by doing a “select all” and pasting the text into another application.
3. No Additional Contact Information: Though it’s not specifically required by the DMCA, it is considered a best practice to obtain mail and phone contacts for people filing the notice. The reason is that, should there be a dispute, the person who is the subject of the notice may need that information to appropriately respond.

All in all, while the system has its flaws, it is a vast improvement over the one that existed before. Still, there are some limitations to be wary of.

Limitations and Problems

It is important to remember that the new Blogger DMCA form is exclusively for Blogger and not any other Google services. For example, Picasa, Orkut nor any other Google service offers an online form for filing a DMCA.

In those cases, the method I described above is the easiest way to email a DMCA notice successfully.

Hopefully Google will create other forms to make filing DMCA notices easier for those services. My wager is that they are taking this route to discourage people from filing DMCA notices with Google Search over items hosted on other Google services. Not only is that a waste of time for Google, which likely spends much longer dealing with search DMCA notices than regular ones, but less effective for copyright holders.

I’m hoping this marks the beginning of a change for Google in terms of speed, cooperation and user-friendliness when it comes to matters of copyright infringement.

Bottom Line

It is nice to know that, after literally years of talking and writing about these issues, Google is finally responding. There had been rumors such a system was in the works for some time, but after years of no activity, it seemed that the project had been abandoned.

Though the new form is far from perfect, it is definitely a step in the right direction and a tremendous improvement over the current DMCA regime at Google. If I were doing my DMCA Seven review of Google Blogger today, I would likely say that it is a “B+” rather than its original “D”.

Google has taken a very big step forward and I encourage others to take advantage of this form when reporting abuse on Blogger. If you do, please let me know what your results are as I’ll be eager to hear what others’ experiences are like.

I will post on my own as soon as I have cause to file against Blogger.

Hat Tip to Digital Inspiration

When it comes to the DMCA, it seems that Google has been nothing but a headache. In the past four years of this site, I have lamented Google’s lack of email contact information, developed a hack to get around that, I have faxed a 17-page DMCA notice to their Adsense department (which is separate from Blogger), accused Google of intentionally misleading content creators on how to file a notice with Adsense and consistently given Google low scores for its handling of the DMCA.

However, it appears that Google’s poor handling of the DMCA does not stop with the frustrations of rights holders. A series of articles, first in the LA Weekly last month and last week on Ars Technica, have looked at Google’s handling of DMCA takedowns from the perspective of those that are the subject of them, in these cases, music bloggers that use their Blogspot service.

The criticism is that, once a notice has been filed, Google does not always seem to notify the blogger it has pulled the content from and, when the blogger becomes aware, doesn’t provide a copy of the takedown notice. This, in turn, makes filing a counter-notice (to have the material put back) almost impossible.

It seems that, when it comes to the DMCA, Google has a resoundingly negative review from both sides. This is something that Google needs to address as it strives to become not only the largest search engine, but one of the largest hosts. With so many new services expanding Google’s function as a host of content, not merely an index, these issues can not be ignored.

But fixing these issues is not going to be easy for Google and it is going to require that they completely rethink their DMCA strategy, something they have been unwilling to do up until now.

Bad All Around

The problem with Google’s DMCA regime starts when one seeks to file a notice. If you visit their Blogger DMCA page, you see quickly that Google does not provide an email address for submitting a DMCA notice. The reason is that they require, at least from most notices, that the filer provide a handwritten signature, thus causing them to limit their contact methods to fax and snail mail.

However, this handwritten signature requirement is something of a perversion of the law. When asked in the past, Google has said that it is because the DMCA, in Section 512(c), requires “A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.”

The problem is that the law clearly states that an “electronic signature” is adequate for a complete notice and the ESIGN act of 2000 defines an electronic signature as “an electronic sound, symbol, or process, attached to or logically associated with a contract or other record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record.” This means that something as simple as typing your name at the end of an email or indicating a signature with a “/s/” should be adequate for a DMCA notice, meaning that emailing a notice is not just possible, but easiest on everyone.

The vast majority of Web hosts and search engines agree with this interpretation as do the attorneys I’ve spoken with, including many who dislike the notice and takedown system.

However, once these hurdles have been overcome and a successful notice has been filed, it seems that Google has changed its policy of notifying bloggers and letting them remove their own content in a less-destructive way. Now, Google deletes the posts themselves, making them more like other hosts, and, in some cases, doesn’t seem to be notifying the bloggers they are pulling from.

But then comes the real problem for bloggers. Once the content has been removed, getting a copy of the notice is almost impossible. Google, reportedly, has been stonewalling bloggers that ask for copies of their notices. Google does have a long-standing relationship with Chilling Effects, a joint venture of several non profits and universities that is working to build a database of searchable database of cease and desist letters as well as DMCA notices, which it has promised to forward all of the DMCA notices it receives to for inclusion.

But despite this promise, it is clear that the volunteer-staffed service has fallen well behind. Only five notices have been posted since the beginning of the year and none were posted in January or so far in March.

The problem with this is that, without a copy of the notice, it is impossible for a person who has had works removed to file a counter-notice. Filing a counter-notice without being 100% certain that the original notice was filed in mistake opens one up to a wide range of legal problems that didn’t exist with just a takedown.

Thus, without a copy of the DMCA notice, there is no viable way to correct a false or erroneous takedown. It isn’t possible to know who demanded the takedown and what the specific work involved was (could be the post, an image in it or a link).

In short, Google has built a DMCA system that equally screws content creators and legitimate users. Likely, the only people benefiting from this system are spam bloggers, who have extra protection from having a DMCA notice filed against them and those that with to abuse the takedown process, as they can do so with little worry about being discovered.

Fixing the Beast

It is clear that Google’s DMCA system is hopelessly broken. Not only is the process for filing a notice unnecessarily difficult and legally dubious, but the way Google handles its own customers is worrisome and makes the system prone to abuse.

The two problems, however, are almost certainly related. Google’s demand of a handwritten signature makes it difficult for rights holders to file a notice and virtually ensures that such notices will be in a non-text-friendly version. This increases the time it takes Google to process notices and makes it harder for Google to forward on the information that they get.

The problem is that DMCA handling, like all abuse resolution, is overhead and smart companies are going to look for ways to trim such expenses, especially during down economic times. The fact that Google is cutting corners with its DMCA resolution process shouldn’t be a shock to anyone. They are stripping down their process to the bare minimums of their interpretation of the law, but, if they changed their interpretation of the law to fit with other hosts, they might save money with their DMCA process.

Though allowing plain text DMCA notices would likely lead to a rise in the number filed, it would also make it easier to handle the notices on Google’s end. They could more freely copy, paste and use the information in the notice. This would be helpful both in locating the links that need to be pulled down and in forwarding the relevant information to those who have had their posts removed. That would mean faster resolution for copyright holders and better service for Blogspot users.

With text-based notices, especially if Google provided a form-based system, much of the process could be automated, including the notification of the user. Privacy could be respected (when necessary), users would have the information they need to file counter-notices when appropriate and Google would spend less time, and thus less money, on each notice. It seems like an easy win-win-win.

However, Google has always refused to do this, at least for the general public. Either Google stands by its rather unusual interpretation of the DMCA or it is afraid of a perceived onslaught of notices that would result from easy filing and wants to fight email/form DMCA notices the best it can.

Either way, it is creating a situation where everyone suffers. As long as Google continues the status quo, there will be no winners.

Conclusions

Google is and always has been something of a strange beast when it comes to copyright issues. Both the largest search engine and one of the largest blog hosts, they’ve always had an approach to the DMCA that is all their own. No one, quite literally, handles these disputes the same way.

The sad truth is that, as large as Google is and as great as they are at many of the things they do, this is one area that they have consistently gotten things wrong. Companies only a tiny fraction of Google’s size, such as Automattic with WordPress.com, have gotten these issues just about perfect without breaking the bank.

The question isn’t whether Google can fix these problems, but if it is willing to do so. Perhaps now with their flawed DMCA system impacting their own users as negatively as other copyright holders, change may finally be possible.

Of course, especially with Blogger, Google has promised that it’s going to improve its system before, especially as it pertains to spam blogs. Sadly, none of that change has materialized as of yet.

Hopefully 2009 can be the year it happens.

1: Mac clone maker wins legal round against Apple

Hackintosh maker Psystar has won a skirmish against Apple. The judge in the case is allowing Psystar’s counter-claim, which originally accused Apple of anti-trust violations but was since modified to accuse Apple of copyright misuse. Apple originally sued Psystar because the company was putting Apple’s operating system, OSX, on non-Apple-licensed machines, a violation of Apple’s license.

Psystar counter-sued, however, the first attempt was thrown out as Psystar was unable to support an anti-trust claim. They now have been allowed to move forward with a copyright misuse claim, which, if successful, could bar Apple from enforcing portions of its license.

It is the first victory, major or minor, for Psystar since the beginning of these legal wranglings and may not be as big of a victory as some think as Psystar is yet to actually prove the allegations, they just earned the right to try.

2: Torrent Site ‘Franchise’ Eliminated by BREIN

Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN (pronounced “brain”) has successful shut down over 90 Bittorrent sites hosted in the Netherlands. All of the sites involved had the same owner and came down in a pair of takedowns, the first removing 75, the second another 19.

This follows other, better-known actions by BREIN, including the pushing of Bittorrent sites off of LeaseWeb, a popular Dutch ISP.

3: Why Are Music Bloggers’ Posts Disappearing, and Who Is Deleting Them?

Finally, music bloggers using Google’s Blogger platform have found themselves in the midst of a “whodunnit” as their posts new and old, have begun disappearing from their site without any notice or warning. Though many suspect the RIAA and Google’s DMCA takedown procedure, the lack of notification is out of character for Google.

An interesting side note in this article is that Copyright 2.0 Show whipping boy Web Sheriff is apparently preparing to open a U.S. branch of its business. Meaning we’ll probably be talking about them a lot more in the coming weeks.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today, we’ll be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment below or send me an email using the contact form above. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Saturday morning for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Monday morning right here on Plagiarism Today.

Whether it is a matter of using Copyfeed to stop scrapers, Digital Fingerprints to track them or Feed footer plugins to turn them into advertising, self-hosted WordPress users have had a slew of options

Blogger users, however, have not been so fortunate. The hosted nature of the service makes it impossible to block spammers and the limited formatting options has, historically, made it very difficult to manipulate the feed.

However, I was recently tipped off to a little-known feature of Blogspot that enables users to insert any HTML they want into the footer of their feed, thus giving them opportunities for protecting and tracking their feed that may not exist otherwise.

Editing the Feed Footer

Editing the contents of your feed footer is surprisingly easy, if one knows where to look.

First, visit your dashboard and, for the blog you want to edit, click on “settings”.

Once in that tab, click on the “Site Feed” subtab.

After that, you’re taken to a series of options for your feed. In addition to being able to set your feed to full or partial and redirect it to a Feedburner account, you also have the option of adding a footer to each post in your feed.

There, you can insert any text or HTML that you want to appear at the footer of every post in your RSS feed. It is important to note though that this is strict HTML, meaning you need to close your tags, including slashes after line breaks, in order for this to work correctly.

However, this has the ability to be one of Blogspots most powerful features and, to those worried about scraping and spamming, one of the most useful.

Things You Can Do

There are many great ways that you can use this feature and at least three ways you should consider making it work for you.

1. Digital Fingerprint: Place a unique string of letters and numbers, between 8 and 16 characters long, in the block and then set up a Google Alert to monitor it. Google will email you when it detects a site on which your fingerprint appears, thus pointing you to a likely scraper.
2. Copyright Footer: Put a copyright notice in the box with your site’s information and licensing information in the footer so that any sites that scrape your feed will also carry with it correct attribution and information.
3. Advertising: Use the footer to place links back to your site or any services you provide so that spammers will be helping to promote you. This may not work in many cases though as a lot of spammers strip out links and other HTML.

Though what step or steps you choose to take with this feature is up to you, using any of these techniques would be more productive than leaving it blank.

After all, this is a feature that requires almost no time to use and places no meaningful burden on your readers, it is clearly worth doing something with it, even if it just using it as promotion.

Some More Good News

Many will be quick to point out that these exact features can be achieved by using FeedBurner FeedFlare. While this is true, FeedFlares are very routinely stripped out by spammers as they contain code that aids in the tracking of RSS usage as well as links that can harm the usefulness of the site for search engine spamming.

However, according to the tipster that let me know about this feature, he sees these footers being removed far less than the FeedFlares, which he also uses.

While this is far from a scientific study, it would make since considering that FeedFlares are more common and share similar code elements, giving spammers both the motivation and the means to filter them out when doing automated scraping.

Conclusions

Users of Google’s Blogger service still don’t have a lot of the features that self-hosted bloggers do when it comes to protecting their content. For example, this will not do anything to block spammers, just add content to what they scrape.

Still, this feature might do something to help track scrapers and mitigate against the damage that they can do, helping to level the playing field a little bit.

Even if you have no intention of using this tool to protect your content, it has many other applications that should be considered.

In short, no matter how you feel about scraping and spamming, if you’re a Blogspot user, there is no reason to leave that box empty.

Video

The video below is from a marketer who is using this feature for promotional purposes. However, it still provides a great overview of how the feature works.

Related Links

• Bloggingtips (Another neat idea, adding subscriber-only content)

Further Discussion

• What further steps can Blogspot take to prevent scraping of its legitimate users?
• If you are a Blogspot users, does this make you feel better about the service?
• How does Blogspot stack up against other hosted services, including WordPress.com?

Hat Tip

• Rawsumer