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.

One of the most common questions I get asked is not about plagiarism or copyright, but about my site and my business, CopyByte. Generally, people, especially other bloggers, want to know how I got started, how I grew the site and, most importantly, how it became a business.

Though I don’t consider Plagiarism Today a smashing success, it only receives a modest amount of traffic and certainly hasn’t made me rich. It has gained me a great deal of mainstream media attention, a chance to speak all over the world and, most importantly, the ability to work full time for myself.

So, if you’re interested in how this site got started and how it got to where it is, the basic story is below. However, if you’re wanting a story about copyright or plagiarism, you’ll probably have to wait until tomorrow.

How I Started PT

Before I wrote word one for this blog, I had dealt with plagiarism for nearly five years and had resolved over 500 cases of plagiarism of my work (that number now sitting well above 700). Prior to running Plagiarism Today, I ran a moderately successful literature site where it seemed many others felt it was acceptable to reuse my work with their name attached.

To be clear, I was never bothered with attributed use of my work. Many sites featured my poems, stories, etc. with attribution and received nothing but thanks. But those who claimed it as their own were dealt with as swiftly as they could.

During that time, I tried many techniques but ended up focusing my efforts on effective detection and resolution of such matters, something I quickly became very good at.

In 2005 I set up a Google Reader account and became interested in blog reading. I realized that plagiarism fighting, though not a particularly large part of my life at that time, was something I wanted to stay on top of and sought a blog on this topic. However, after days of searching I failed to find one that fit my needs.

So, at the encouragement of my better half, Crystal, I decided to create one. Viewing it more as a side project, I set up a blog named Plagiarism Today as a hidden subfolder and planned to blog in private for a few weeks to see if I had the interest to keep it going.

My original plan of three months private blogging was cut short. Not only had my interest in the topic only grown as I continued to write, but, being unfamiliar with WordPress, I had been pinging out all my posts meaning that the “test site” was getting real visitors (and even a surprise link on the USA Today website).

So, after a month of private blogging, I moved everything over to the domain and published it live. On August 2nd, 2005, Plagiarism Today became full site.

However, in that post, I would come to rue saying “the hard part is already done” because, as I would find out, the hard part was just beginning.

The Growing of PT

PT’s launch was very unfortunately (or fortunately) timed. It was launched a mere 27 days before Hurricane Katrina made landfall near New Orleans, my home town, flooding the city. Though my home was spared in the storm, my life was tossed into upheaval. For weeks after the storm I had little else to do but work on Plagiarism Today and work I did.

During this time, Plagiarism Today became a good catharsis. I had lost my job to the storm, feared for my home and was worried about friends who had stayed behind. Focusing energy on PT was a way to put that out of mind for a bit, since there wasn’t much that could be done about it, while still building something good.

This time and energy did begin to pay off. Traffic to the site was starting to grow and interest was trickling in from the outside. However, the real explosion was yet to begin.

Gaining Traction

In the early days and weeks of Plagiarism Today, I had a pretty simple means of reaching out, I would do it myself. I had several RSS feeds and blog alerts letting me know when other bloggers were talking about copyright and content theft issues and, if it was something I felt I could help with, I’d chime in with a comment or an email to see if I could help.

There was never a charge for this but it started getting me a decent amount of attention and more than a few blogroll mentions. Still, traffic was just a trickle and it remained there for almost a year.

Then, just shy of a year of when I started work on the site, it received its big break. One of the people I had helped had her case featured in the Boston Globe and the writeup included a lengthy mention of me and my site. A flurry of media attention followed, including several other major publications, and traffic went through the roof, nearly shutting down my server.

Traffic has continued to be strong since then, growing steadily over the years. Though the site is easily eclipsed by other blogs, it easily became one of the most popular in the niche.

However, I never really expected to earn any revenue from Plagiarism Today and making it so that I did, much less make it a full-time job, took a great deal of time and more than a little dumb luck.

Going from Blog to Business

At this point I was still looking at Plagiarism Today as a side project and I never charged any money for it. Though I did some experiments with monetization, mostly through advertising, they failed miserably and were all stopped after just a few days or weeks.

Through all of this, I was working on Plagiarism Today while maintaining full-time jobs, sometimes with up to 70 hours per week.

However, in early 2007 I started to get emails and eventually phone calls from companies who were interested in what I was doing online and wanted my advice in making their products and services better. Specifically, two companies started emailing at about the same time and both brought me on as consultants, one even flying me out to San Francisco to meet with them face to face.

This was the genesis of a part-time consulting career. I would do work in the evenings and sometimes, with my boss’ permission, take calls on my lunch break or during down time at work. However, as was the nature of post-Katrina New Orleans, I spent my time bouncing from short-term job to short-term job.

However, after having settled down into what I thought was a more permanent position and then having it swept away very suddenly (and early into the job) I was, in a word, crushed. It was then that Crystal pulled me aside and convinced me to try going full-time with my consulting.

With nothing better to do, I sent out an email to my clients telling them I had more hours available and, sure enough, most came through with a need for more services.

All in all, the rest is history. There’s been good and bad, mistakes and triumphs, good times and bad times since then, I’ve remained full-time working as a copyright and plagiarism consultant.

The line of offerings for what I do has been expanded as needed by my clients. My background in English combined with my skills with plagiarism detection tools prompted me to add plagiarism analysis to my line of services, including expert witness and related work. I also do public speaking and have begun to branch out into speaking at schools and universities on the topic as well.

However, the primacy focus of my business, or at least what has made the most money, has been content enforcement and content strategy. Tracking content, understanding how it is being used, getting unwanted copies removed from the Web and then monitoring for results. I’ve focused my efforts on small to medium-sized creators because it’s who I want to work with and where I get the greatest amount of personal satisfaction, though I could almost certainly find more money by chasing larger companies and organizations.

Bottom Line

In the end, I am eternally grateful for everything that this site has brought me over the years. Because of it I’ve been able to quit working full-time, travel all over the world, do something I’m passionate about for a living and spend my days helping people.

And for that I want to thank everyone who has helped me over the years including my family, in particular Crystal, who without their support I would never have had the courage or the endurance to go this route. I’d also like to thank all of my friends for their encouragement and for enduring my babbling about copyright at parties and other events.

Most importantly though, I want to thank all of you, the readers, friends and clients who have made this site great. Whether you’ve been a visitor, left a comment, became a client or participated in any way, I appreciate your time, your attention and your support. Without you, this would not have been possible.

With that in mind, I’m looking forward to what the future holds. While this look back has been nice, it’s time again for me to look ahead and to whatever might be in store for Plagiarism Today, CopyByte and myself.

It’s very exciting stuff.

Specifically, several posts on the blog appeared to be lifted verbatim from various news sources, including several mainstream media sites including CNN, MSNBC, ABC News and Oprah as well as larger blogs, such as WalletPop among others. None of the articles included attribution though some did have very brief introductions before the copied content.

Likely as a result of these allegations, the blog is down at this time though, if you act quick, you can find some of the content in the Google Cache.

The allegations seem to be about as cut and dry as possible, using the cached copies and performing a few simple Google searches, I was able to quickly and easily find about four or five examples of content lifted directly from other sites. Going back through the dates, I was able to find examples of copied works as far back as July, as far as the cached copies reached.

Here’s just one of the example Google results.

And another one.

Though the evidence is about as clear-cut as you can get, it seems unlikely to me that Tesh himself was performing the plagiarism. Almost certainly it was someone under his employ that was managing the blog. However, since it was his blog it is ultimately his responsibility.

Tesh has not commented on the allegations and his blog is simply down at this time, listed merely as being a broken link.

Interestingly, the only original articles I could find were cross-posts from the regular tesh.com site, indicating that the author of the articles on the main site was using authentic work that was being brought into the blog.

Hopefully Tesh will provide some insight as to what happened and how it was able to continue for as long as it did.

In the end, it seems unlikely that any of the entities the blog plagiarized from will sue, especially given the quick action to remove the content, but the potential for a lawsuit is going to make it so that Tesh isn’t likely to say much or shed any light on the incident unless forced.

All in all, it’s just another example of how a plagiarist, if unchecked, can create serious problems for his or her employer and why it is important to verify all works posted for authenticity.

While I could probably fill a dozen posts like this with great blog recommendations on copyright an intellectual property blogs, I’ve decided instead to simply 10 of my favorites in this field.

If you keep up with the Copyright 2.0 Show, there is a good chance that you recognize many of these sites from my show notes these as many make repeat appearances.

To be clear, this isn’t a definitive list by any stretch nor is the list in any kind of order (other than it flowed well), this is just a list of some of the key copyright blogs that make up my daily reading material.

Copyfight is authored by a veritable who’s who of copyright thinkers including Ernest Miller and Wendy Seltzer among others. Alan Wexelblat, who has been doing the blogging lately, has a knack for presenting very interesting and at times quirky stories from the copyright world, all presented in a very easy-to-digest, if sometimes whimsical manner.

As the name might indicate, the blog is somewhat left-leaning but there is clearly a lot of good research and thought that goes into this blog.

Penned by Chicago Attorney Evan Brown, Internet Cases is not a pure copyright blog but more focused on law and the Internet. However, there is more than just a little coverage of copyright news to be found and the blog focuses on covering the facts of the case and providing analysis.

With no obvious political slant, Internet Cases is a great blog for get straightforward but well-thought out analysis of copyright issues on the Web.

The always-controversial Techdirt is a must-read for those who take copyright issues seriously. Penned almost entirely by Mike Masnick, the blog discusses copyright from a very extreme copyleft, some have even said anti-copyright, viewpoint.

Whether you agree or disagree with Masnick’s views, his commentary is crucial and the links he provides and stories he covers are often interesting and unique.

Written by Ben Sheffner, Senior Counsel in the NBC Universal Television Group, Copyrights and Campaigns covers the latest copyright news while striving to offer deep analysis and commentary. Though Sheffner doesn’t get on his soapbox as much as many bloggers, he is one of the few unabashed supporters in the current copyright system, making him a valuable counter-weight to other sites.

The posts at Copyrights and Campaigns may be, at times, a bit to legalese-intense for average readers, but it is still a blog I am always eager to read.

Though one would expect a site called “TorrentFreak” to take a more copyleft stance, and they would be right, TorrentFreak is also the first to break news in the English language from countries such as Sweden, where many of the current copyright firefights are taking place.

Agree or disagree, TorrentFreak has a lot of great news that other sites don’t, making it a valuable resource.

Though Peter Friedman may not be the best-known name in copyright circles, he is an associate professor at the Case Western Reserve Law School and runs a blog where he covers copyright news, with a focus on things that affect academia and creativity in general.

Though at least somewhat left-leaning, Friedman has a way of finding stories that other outlets miss and regularly finds interesting YouTube clips that don’t get much attention elsewhere.

A news digest blog, IPKat doesn’t have much in the way of commentary but provides a slew of interesting links and summaries, much like the 3 Count here but with a much broader focus and a lot more links.

Presented in from the perspective of fictional “kats”, the blog is a very easy one to read with lots of great information about copyright, trademark, patent and other technology law issues.

Copyright Litigation is exactly what the name sounds like it should be, a blog about copyright litigation. Written by attorney Ray Dowd, Copyright Litigation focuses on rulings, filings and legal threats involving copyright.

Though the site may be a bit too legalese for laypeople at times, even using sections of the copyright act as categories, it is a handy reference and useful site for those who are willing to wade through and most of the posts are more than approachable.

Describing itself as a non-profit independent news organization, IP Watch focuses primarily on public policy issues and not on individual cases. You can read a great deal about ACTA and the WTO, but less about Google and Viacom.

In short, if there is copyright news on an international scale, you’ll probably read about it in their “Copyright Policy” section>

Though the Copyright Alliance, a group representing a variety of large copyright holders as well as many smaller ones, has caused some controversy of its own, its blog is a mixture of both individual stories of dealing with copyright and piracy on the Web, usually from the creator’s perspective, and news related to copyright.

Written, obviously, from a pro-copyright stance, the blog actually picks up on a lot of the smaller stories that don’t get coverage or attention elsewhere.

Bottom Line

Once again, this is not a definitive list (I’m already thinking of sites I’ve missed) and it isn’t meant to be a “top ten” either. All of these blogs have a prominent place in my RSS reader and are sites I visit regularly.

However, I did try to provide a mix of political viewpoints, prominence and other factors to hopefully include some big names, some relative unknowns and some people from all viewpoints.

So, if you’ve got a few moments, definitely give these blogs a look,you’ll be glad you did.

Blogging, microblogging and social networking have given more people than ever the ability to set up their own corner of the Web. By lowering the time and knowledge barriers to setting up a page for themselves, anyone can do it in just a few moments.

While this has mostly been a power for good, giving a voice to content creators who otherwise wouldn’t have a means to reach a large audience, it has also had its share of drawbacks. Though this site has well-documented how this growth has caused a rise in plagiarism and deliberate content misuse, it is also causing a rise in “friendly” infringement, bloggers and social networking users infringing copyright without meaning any harm.

These infringements are tricky to deal with. While spammers and plagiarists can be handled brutally without any issues, treating these cases in a harsh manner is rarely the correct way to solve the problem. Not only does it open the door for new drama, but can actually backfire and hurt legitimate sharing of your work.

So how should you handle these cases? Here’s a quick look at my suggestions.

The Problem

The problem appears to be the most apparent with images or shorter text works. Many people create blogs or profiles for sharing content they find interesting. While this is great when they link to works they like, it becomes a problem when they start copying and pasting. There are many blogs, in particular on Tumblr and Posterous, that seem to focus on sharing findings on the Web repurposed in just such a way.

While some of these blogs do a great job of obeying Creative Commons Licenses or, at the very least, providing proper attribution. Many do not. Some simply have a blanket statement saying that the works are not theirs and are owned by the respective copyright holders. Others still just simply label themselves as a blog about things the owner found and make no mention of copyright or ownership at all.

To be clear, these sites can be great if they link to and excerpt content, both creating great blogs and helping content creators out, but the widespread copying and pasting does nothing to support the authors, especially when it comes without attribution. The problem is that the creators of these sites don’t see anything wrong with their blogs, they see it as merely sharing what they like, but they are hurting the authors and artists by competing with them for search engine attention, causing confusion on authorship and doing nothing to drive viewers to the people who made the work.

The most vulnerable content seems to be either photographs/images or short-form text works such as poems. It seems the longer the work or the more effort required to copy it, the less it fits in with these kinds of blogs and the less likely people are to feel good about copying it. Videos are rarely copied as it is easier to embed them legally, but there is a burgeoning use of audio on these sites as music blogs become more popular. Some of the content is embedded legally though much of it is not.

As the recent Blogspot cases have shown, sometimes labels and blog hosts have a hard time telling the difference.

That controversy further highlights why these cases are so tricky to deal with.

Why It’s Tricky

These situations are tricky because, unlike spammers or plagiarists, these sites are not trying to deceive anyone. Though they are infringing the copyright of and hurting original artists, at least in many cases, treating them the same as a spammer creates some serious risks.

There are three risks in approaching these cases to consider:

1. Backlash: Responding too harshly may result in a backlash from the blogger. Though this will not create a problem in most cases, it does create new drama and may result in you being put in a less-than-favorable light. These sites often do a great job making themselves out to be the victim.
2. Fear of Legitimate Reuse: If you earn a reputation for handling reuse too harshly, those who want to make legitimate use of your content, if you allow it, may be frightened off. This can hurt your marketing and other efforts.
3. Burning Bridges: Many of these bloggers can be great promotional engines for content creators. Responding too harshly to misuse can burn some important bridges before they are built. As such, it is important to find ways to encourage legitimate use while remaining at least somewhat cooperative.

In short, when you are dealing with these types of sites, you are going from a world where the sympathies are solely on your side to one where the loyalties are at least slightly more divided. This may or may not be right depending on your viewpoint, but it is the reality of the situation.

How to Handle Them

As is probably becoming clear, you need to approach these cases with a more gentle hand when possible, especially if you allow and encourage reuse of your content with attribution.

Though stern cease and desist letters or DMCA notices may be right for spammers and confirmed plagiarists, it’s a dangerous approach to take in these cases for the reasons above. Instead, I recommend a more personable one.

1. Contact the Blogger Directly: Send a personal letter to the site admin, if possible, and ask them to either attribute the work, excerpt it and/or remove it. This letter doesn’t have to be threatening, but can remind the person that it is a violation of copyright law and not within the bounds of your license. The emphasis, however, should be on being polite and cooperative.
2. Get More Stern: If you don’t get a reply or the response isn’t satisfactory, get more stern if needed. In most cases, this isn’t necessary but give peace a chance to work even if things are off to a rough start.
3. File a Takedown if Needed: That being said, don’t get bogged down. If the person becomes combative or a few emails don’t solve the problem, don’t waste your time and simply file a takedown notice. In my experience, only a tiny fraction of these cases reach this point but if a case does you should not get bogged down with it.

If you try this approach and can honestly say that you gave the person every chance to rectify the situation, then it is unlikely anything too bad will come of it.

If you do your part and try to be the better person, even if things do go sour, you’ll be in a stronger position and the other person is much less likely to create problems down the road.

Bottom Line

In the end, there’s nothing in this that isn’t what one would consider good conflict resolution in general. It’s best, when possible, to try to resolve disputes face-to-face and amicably when possible. Though some injustices need a harsher response, it is usually better for everyone when they can be avoided. Sites and profiles such as these, are cases where avoiding conflict is both possible and, usually, the best approach.

Basically, what you have to do is tailor your response to every situation that you face and drop the idea that one-size-fits-all when it comes to copyright disputes. Not all infringements or infringers are equal, making it important to not use a nuke when a handshake would do just fine.

If you can avoid that, you’ll find yourself with a great deal less copyright drama on your hands and that even people with different copyright views will respect your actions. That, in turn, can go a long way to healing the much deeper divides on the Web and start bringing about real solutions.

However, this has given me a strange chance to monitor and track Myspace’s responses to DMCA notices and I’ve found it to be both worrying and interesting as it seems much of the response has been far from traditional.

In short, rather than simply taking down the infringing content or suspending users, especially those that repeatedly infringe, Myspace is marking their blogs or profiles as private and thus blocking them to all but the friends of blogger, making it unclear if the work has been removed or what other reprimands the person involved has received.

This new tactic is very disconcerting both from the perspective of a copyright holder seeking removal of the work and the user, who could be censored far beyond what is needed.

It is a bad policy for everyone and it has already ensnared at least one major Myspace user.

What Happens

If you file a DMCA notice, or likely an other abuse request, with Myspace, the reaction to it is inconsistent. Though this is somewhat expected given that the site seems to have many dozens of agents working on these issues, at least some of the responses are very frustrating.

Generally, you can break down the responses into one of three categories:

1. No Response: A few notices seem to fall through the cracks and receive no response at all. This is to be expected to a small degree and resending the notice almost always fixes the issues. The number is higher than I would like, but not so high as to frustrate me.
2. Remove the Work Directly: Myspace typically removes the work surgically, neither disabling the account nor the page itself if there is any non-infringing material. Photos are removed from galleries, individual blog entries are removed, etc.
3. Mark as Private: Finally, and most worrisome, is that Myspace will frequently mark blogs and profiles that have been the subject of notices private, thus removing them from the public view and making them only visible to the friends of the person.

Of the three outcomes, it can be difficult to predict which will happen and I am yet to find anything that seems to be an indicator of which will happen. Whether this is a case of individual agents having a wide amount of leeway in making decisions or me simply not having a large enough sample is hard to say.

Why this is Worrisome

This is a DMCA strategy where nobody wins. Though setting a blog or profile to private might seem like a great way to quickly remove an infringing work, it actually hurts both the complaining copyright holder and the person who is the subject of the complaint.

Consider the following:

• No Confirmation of Removal: If you’re the copyright holder, there is no confirmation that the infringing work has been removed and you are actually barred from seeing it for yourself (unless you can trick the other person onto “friending” you). If the work has been removed, there is no way to prove it.
• Doesn’t Resolve the Issue: If the work has not been removed, setting the blog to private does not resolve the issue as many Myspace members have hundreds, or even thousands, of friends that can still see it. Though search engines won’t be able to access it, many of the other dangers of plagiarism remain intact.
• The “Censorship” Factor: If you are the member that had the notice filed against you, this can turn what would usually be a very simple removal of infringing material into a censoring of everything posted. Where removing a single image or blog post might have sufficed, this censors all material posted, including that which is not infringing.

In short, it does not matter if you are the copyright holder or the user, this system has potential to backfire and backfire it has.

The PostSecret Debacle

Earlier this month, PostSecret, the popular blog and art project, had their Myspace blog shut down by the admins. At the time, the Postsecret Myspace blog was the most popular blog on the service but the Myspace admins set the blog to private, making it so that only friends of the PostSecret account could see it.

Though there was no clear explanation as to why the blog was set to private. The operators of PostSecret have since reposted the controversial postcards and have published a response from the Myspace admins saying the following:

As you may know, MySpace currently has nearly 118 million monthly active users around the globe. As we continue to grow we stay focused on keeping our online community safer, comfortable, entertained and informed.

While we welcome self expression and the ability for users to connect and share their offline lives online, we think it is important to keep you informed of how to have a safer and more secure online experience. And that is why we encourage you not to post personal information such as your cell phone number.

Though the matter seems to be resolved, the incident has left the PostSecret community, along with others on the Web, with a very bad taste in their mouth about how Myspace handles questions of abuse.

Conclusions

Dealing with abuse is difficult. Companies like Myspace and Facebook have my sympathies as they have millions of members, many of whom spam, post inappropriate content, use the service for copyright infringement or generally create trouble for the community. It is hard to create good abuse guidelines, even harder to find good abuse personnel and still even more difficult to implement those policies effectively.

However, it is important that users and copyright holders alike keep on top of companies to insure that their policies are both fair and effective. The reason is simply that it only takes one or two negligent hosts to create headaches for millions and a host with a bad policy toward its users can create a hostile environment for creativity and posting works.

Balance is the key but the current Myspace solution seems to injure both sides equally. In that regard, it needs to be stopped, if for no reason than to avoid future incidents like the PostSecret one.

I’m very excited about the trip and looking forward to meeting a lot of you there. I know several long-time PT readers will be attending so this is going to be a very big trip for me.

As a result, I won’t be around Thursday or Friday but I will be back Saturday in the morning. I should be able to do the linkroll as usual on Saturday and record the Copyright 2.0 Show on Sunday (I originally thought I was returning later but am glad that is not the case).

In the meantime, I encourage everyone to follow me on Twitter as I will be liveblogging the event (the best that wifi and battery life will allow) and should have regular updates there.

I’m looking forward to ConvergeSouth though I am definitely going to be glad when it is over. It should be my last conference for a while. Though I’ve enjoyed the traveling, I’m looking forward to spending a few months at home.

See you there and, if not, I’ll be back next week!

There are specifically three changes worth noting:

1. New Page Order: I’ve gone through all of the pages and reordered them, basically moving “Press” and “Contact” to the end of the line. This groups the related pages, “DMCA Contacts“, “Stock Letters” and “Stopping Internet Plagiarism” together in the list. Hopefully this will make the list overall easier to navigate, though it might be confusing to those used to the old layout.
2. New “Other Sites” Page: I’ve added a brand new page under the “About” heading that links to all of the other pages and sites that host content related to this site including the other blogs, microblogs and social networks. It was an attempt to unify all of the different “announcement” posts I’ve made over the past few years.
3. Removed “Host Report”: The Host Report page had not been updated in far too long so I have unpublished it for right now. I plan on reintroducing it soon as something completely different but that project is likely a months off.

It is important to note that, other than the Host Report, everything is still there. I’m sorry for the shuffle but I wanted to make things easier on new readers and may make more adjustments based upon feedback I get.

Thank you for your feedback and your understanding, please keep the suggestions coming!

I have emailed the owners of the site but all messages have bounced.

RightsAgent was a licensing service based upon CC+ that allowed content creators to license their content both for free and paid credits. Its system connected with Creative Commons licensing, allow the automatic selling and distribution for commercial use when such use was not directly allowed under the license.

As I reported back in July, RightsAgent has been slow to find traction. Though it remains to be seen if this is just an extended temporary outage or an abrupt closure, it is definitely a sign of trouble at the company.

In the meantime, all of the buttons for the service, including the one that was on this site, have stopped working. If you are using the service, I strongly recommend that you remove the button and only consider putting it back should it come back online.

I will report any additional information when I get it.

Patry cites two reasons for closing the site down. The first being that many have refused to accept that the blog was a personal one and not one representative of his employer, Google.

To this effect, I personally have seen his blog quoted many times in the press and almost always associated with Google in some way. However, he makes it clear that Google did not ask him to abandon his site and, instead, encouraged him to write.

His second reason, that he has become too depressed over the current state of copyright, has been the subject of much more conversation. However, once again I am forced to understand his emotions (and often times share them) and respect his decision.

Though he will be missed dearly, I can find no fault in his reasons and can truthfully understand. Instead, I want to take just a moment to bid farewell to him.

A Great Copyright Mind

If you haven’t heard of William Patry, you would not be alone. Though you’ve probably read his writing, seen him quoted and felt his influence at some point, his name is not well known by those who don’t live and breathe copyright news.

Part of this is because his blog was what you might have expected from a 26-year veteran of copyright law, a rundown of the latest rulings, decisions and theories in the field. It was an invaluable resource to those of us who pondered these issues day in and out, but to those with a more passing interest, it was a steep learning curve.

Yet, it was a learning curve well worth taking on. Patry was, and still is, one of the smartest people in the room when it comes to copyright law.

Though his position as head copyright council to Google often put me at odds with his company’s policies, when he spoke on his personal blog, I, as well as many others, listened and we did so with a kind of reverence usually reserved for a teacher. His wise, thorough analysis of ongoing issues were always on the mark and his wisdom came through in every post.

His thorough analysis of current copyright decisions and his balanced, centrist view on the law that made his blog a powerful tool and a must-subscribe for anyone wanting to talk about copyright news on the Web. Both he and his valuable resource will be missed.

Even though it has been several years since I mentioned his blog on this site , save regular appearances in show notes for the Copyright 2.0 Show (I stopped covering most copyright news on this site a few years back), his influence has definitely been felt here and on countless other blogs and in the mainstream press.

William Patry’s blog will be dearly missed and I wish him the best with his future endeavors. I feel certain he has made an incredible difference in this area and leaves behind a great legacy.

Still, in a copyright landscape dominated by extremists, his centrist voice will be dearly missed.

Mr. Patry, thank you for everything.

Other Farewells

Technology Liberation Front
RIAA vs. The People
Patent Law Blog
Rob Hyndman