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

1: If Purported Ansel Adams Photos Earn Big Money, Their Discoverer May Not Get to Keep It

First off today, a wall painter who claims to have discovered glass plate negatives of famous photographer Ansel Adams’ unpublished work may not get to keep the revenue from the prints he has sold. The reason is that, since the works were unpublished, they may still be protected by copyright and Adams’ heirs, if they agree that they are indeed his photographs, may be able to claim the money. Currently Adams’ estate says that the evidence offered up by the wall painter who claims to have discovered the negatives isn’t sufficient and disputes their authenticity.

2: Troy Classifieds Business Awarded $6 Million in Copyright Case

Next up today Want Ad Digest, an advertising company specializing in classified ads, won a $6 million judgment against local magazine Classified Advertiser. According to the plaintiffs, the magazine copied many of the company’s ads but initially had much of its claim thrown out, saying that design and layout of the ads was not infringing. However, according to Want Ad Digest, the company had used text from some 8,000 ads and the jury agreed. Collecting on this judgment may prove impossible as the Advertiser is now out of business, largely due to the expense of this trial.

3: ‘Fela!’ Producers Sued Over Image in Show

Finally today, photographer Marilyn Nance is suing the producers of the of the Broadway musical Fela! claiming that a photograph projected during part of the performance is an infringement of her work. According to Nance, she took the photograph of the Nigerian nightclub of musician Fela Kuti which was used for the performance and is seeking some $150,000 in damages. That may prove difficult as, by her attorney’s admission, Nance only registered the work after discovering the infringement, eliminating the opportunity to collect statutory damages.

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.

Note: I will be discussing this further with Patrick O’Keefe on the Copyright 2.0 Show. You can listen to the live recording here at 6:30 PM ET Wednesday and catch the recorded version on this site Friday.

If you missed the dust up over WordPress, Thesis and the GPL last week, you were probably offline completely.

To make a long story short, WordPress, the popular blogging platform, is released under the GPL, an open source license that requires all derivative works to be licensed under the same terms.

However, Chris Pearson created a theme framework for WordPress called Thesis that he sells but does not license under the GPL. Many in the WordPress community, including Automattic founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg,says that this is a violation of the license themes are derivative works of WordPress. Pearson disagrees and the tiff ended with the two threatening to take matters into court.

The recent war of words took place on an audio call on Mixergy and was followed by a Twitter debate between the two. Now the entire WordPress community is debating the issue and, try as I might to stay out of it, I am constantly being barraged with questions.

So, very briefly, I want to talk about these issues and offer my rather scant thoughts on them. I don’t expect to bring any clarity to the issue (one of the reasons I’ve avoided it) but perhaps offer something nonetheless.

Seeing Both Sides

I won’t bother restating both sides of the argument. Mark Jaquith does a great job restating the WordPress/Automattic viewpoint and lawyer Michael Alex Wasylik covers the opposing view on his site. Furthermore, there may be a fair use issue involved in the creation of premium themes and a special code-copying problem for Thesis specifically to further muddy the waters.

What is clear is that the issue as to whether or not Thesis, or any WordPress theme for that matter, should be licensed under the GPL, upon distribution, is becoming much more complex. In 2009, I wrote about this topic for the Blog Herald and largely sided with the Software Freedom Law Center, which said that WordPress Themes are GPL protected but CSS files and images are not as they are separate from WordPress completely.

However, I am less certain about that today than I was a year ago (almost to the day). The reason isn’t because I feel the SFLC’s analysis was flawed but that there are many different potentially valid viewpoints on the issue, without a court weighing in, it is virtually impossible to predict the ruling one would see in such a case.

In short, you’re dealing with a derivative works issue, a notoriously muddy area of copyright to begin with, throwing in relatively new technology that is untested in the courts and raising in fair use arguments to create a near-perfect storm of copyright confusion.

Simply put, if Matt does go forward with his threat to sue Pearson over this issue, I do not envy any judge this case winds up in front of.

Why No One Wins

While there is a very legitimate legal issue at hand here, as Ryan Hellyer from WPTavern put it succinctly, “whether direct function calls are considered to cause a violation of the GPL license or not,” it seems that the battle lines are drawn less on legal grounds and more on philosophical ones.

This isn’t a surprise, open source and the GPL in particular are deeply philosophical things for many, part of a view on technology and even life that goes beyond software. It is widely seen that what Pearson is doing is an attack on that philosophy as much as it is an an attempt to exploit WordPress for his own gain. Pearson and his supporters view the actions of Mullenweg and his supporters as an attempt to tell him what he can do with his own code and how to run his business.

But while these philosophical issues are important, they are causing a tremendous divide in the WordPress community, especially among those who develop for it. Resources, time and energy are being spent on this debate and, if it continues, it will inevitably result in some talented developers leaving the community.

In short, this war is like all other wars in that, no matter who “wins” there are no “winners”. It may be necessary and, at this point, probably is but war rarely makes ill feelings go away and only causes the living to mourn the casualties.

Unless things die down and blow over, the WordPress community will never be the same and, unfortunately, not changed in good ways. However, we’re likely past that point already and, if this case does go to court, it will certainly be beyond the tipping point.

This makes me sad to say, but it is the truth.

Bottom Line

If one were to corner me and demand that I choose sides, which I know someone probably will, I would say I still feel the SFLC analysis is the best available. That being said, there is a great deal of legitimate uncertainty as to whether or not the calling functions constitutes a derivative work and a strong potential fair use argument that casts a shadow over that analysis.

In short, my most honest answer is “I don’t know” and I don’t believe anyone does. We’re all guessing here and legal minds I respect highly have come down on both sides of the issue. Until the courts have ruled (emphasis on “courts” as there will be appeals of any ruling) we really won’t know.

In the meantime, I think it is more important that this issue not rip apart the community and, instead, resolve this as amicably as possible while still working together toward common goals.

It may seem to be impossible, but I think it can be done and it has to be done.

Eugene Driscoll is a journalist and horror movie-buff turned blogger that runs the Hollywood Chainsaw Blogger site. He made a very common mistake in that he let his domain name, which forwarded on to his blog, expire.

Whether intentionally or accidentally, many webmasters lose their domains. While some are purchased by other webmasters wanting to set up a new site, it is seemingly more common for them to be purchased by domain speculators who turn them into garbage domains with lots of advertising hoping to profit from residual traffic and/or resell it at a higher price.

However, Driscoll’s case was a bit unique. The purchaser of the domain, a Russian using a host in Germany, wasn’t content on merely getting the domain itself and also copied all of Discoll’s site, including all the content and the template, and set up a mirrored version of the blog at the domain.

At first glance, the two sites appeared to be the one and the same but the new domain version had made slight alterations to the layout, such as removing the blogroll and changing the content in the sidebars, mostly to remove unwanted links. The site had also inserted advertising not present in Driscoll’s site, turning it into a for-profit venture.

Though Driscoll’s story has a happy ending, I was able to secure closure of the site via my new DMCA takedown service (though the EDEC was used in this case), it serves as a warning to bloggers and webmasters everywhere, be careful to not let your domains expire as they can be used against you.

The Importance of Domains

Many new blogging services like Tumblr, Posterous and WordPress.com make it easy to integrate a domain into your site even though they really aren’t necessary. Many of these bloggers buy domains for their sites for convenience but get most of their traffic directly to their their username from other users of the service.

This may make it tempting to let those domains lapse when renewal time comes as the lack of traffic and use can make them a bad deal. However, where it might not have a great deal of value to you, it could be very valuable to someone else.

Not only do domains have residual traffic, but they also have residual links. The links that went to the domain don’t disappear and that means both the people who click them and the search engines that see them will continue to visit them. This gives the domain weight.

When most spammers get a hold of such previously used domains, they just upload garbage content and ads in hopes of riding that residual traffic. However, as Driscoll’s case shows, some are getting much more aggressive and are swiping the domain for the purpose of creating a duplicate site.

This is considerably more dangerous than regular spam blogging as the domain was previously associated with the site, is a TLD and has inbound links. This means that search engines, very likely, will give it higher ranking than the source, trusting it over the original.

Though this case is fairly unusual in my experience, most cases of expired domains being bought involve garbage content or wholly different sites, it is easy to see how this problem could grow to be more common.

But even if it doesn’t the fact at least a few spammers are trying it is a clear sign that webmasters need to be extra careful with their domains, even if they aren’t actively relying on them.

Avoiding Trouble

The obvious solution to this problem is to keep up on your domains but this can be difficult even for very careful webmasters. Contact information often gets old, especially when one owns many domains, and reminders to renew often don’t make it to their destination.

The best thing you can do is use one registrar for all of your domain purchases, if possible, and be sure to whitelist your registerar’s domain in your spam filters. This makes it so that you only have one set of contact information to maintain and you know all correspondence from them will not be sent to your spam folder.

If you have to let a domain expire and have some time to plan for it, point the domain away from your sites before it goes belly up and try to get those linking to it to change to the new URL. This will make the domain a less appealing target for spammers. However, if you have enough time to do that, you would likely be better off selling the domain yourself, and setting the terms of the sale while reaping some profit.

But even with every precaution taken, this is a very difficult mistake to avoid and one that many, many bloggers make (including myself at least twice). What’s changed is that, where once it was a fairly minor mistake, especially if the domain wasn’t in active use, now spammers are using it as an opportunity to try and completely replace the original site, using their own domain.

That should give most webmasters at least a brief pause to think and perhaps work on a new domain strategy.

Bottom Line

Sadly, there is no easy way around this one, we will all just have to be more careful with our domains moving forward. This case indicates that at least some spammers are getting more aggressive about buying expired domains and building them into replacement sites for the original.

If you use your domain as your primary URL, you probably don’t need me or anyone else telling you how important it is to hold on to it. However, if you use it as a secondary URL, such as many people on blogging network sites, the danger is less clear.

In the end, if you purchase a domain and connect it with your site, you need to protect it and make a commitment to it. In the wrong hands it could be a very powerful and dangerous tool to replace you and eradicate the position you’ve worked so hard for.

The days in which one can let domains come and go without consequence may very well be coming to an end.

So be careful with your domains and, if you do let one expire, watch it carefully to see what is done with it so you can respond if needed.

Special Thanks: This story was retold with the permission of Driscoll, thank you for letting me share the case to help warn others.

As the operator of this site and as a copyright and plagiarism consultant, one of the most common scenarios I face is that people, when confronted by a copyright infringement, just want someone to take care of the case for them. Though I typically try to help people resolve the case themselves, and offer an entire series on how to make it happen. Many would prefer to be “hands off” and have me do it for them.

With that audience in mind, I am partnering with Who Is Hosting This to offer a streamlined service for handling DMCA takedown notices. The service, which costs $99 per case, uses CopyByte, my copyright consulting firm, as an authorized agent and sends notices on behalf of individuals and companies.

Click Here to File a DMCA Notice

To be clear, all notices are reviewed by myself and, if needed, an attorney before being submitted to ensure that the notice is valid. We have no qualms about turning down and refunding bad notices and I have routinely done so throughout my practice. Furthermore, I only recommend use of this service, or any DMCA takedown for that matter, AFTER working directly with the infringer or plagiarist has failed.

Finally, as with any services I provide, I am not an attorney and this service is not intended to be legal advice. Rather, we file the notice on your behalf and can not provide any further representation.

In addition to the one-off notices, we also offer monthly contracts a discounted rate.

For those who still want to do it themselves, which I prefer for many reasons, there will continue to be a wide selection of freely available and up-to-date information here on PT, including the DMCA Contact List, the Stock Letters, which includes DMCA notices for search engines and hosts as well as the entire Stopping Internet Plagiarism section, which includes key chapters finding and contacting the host.

Also, as always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me and I’ll do my best to assist.

Last week, @melebeth introduced me to CPedia, a new “encyclopedia” by the makers of Cuil, a search engine that was initially greeted with much fanfare before seemingly flaming out.

Cpedia is not an encyclopedia in the strictest sense as it is not written by human beings. Unlike traditional encyclopedias, which are written by paid experts, or Wikipedia, which is written largely by volunteers, Cpedia is written automatically from the search result pages creating an automated, and often wildly inaccurate encyclopedia-like page.

For example, I have a Cpedia, page as well as one for this site, though my personal page doesn’t actually say anything about me and the one for PT seems to discuss random people/items only tangentially related to the site.

However, the concern Melebeth approached me with was not just about the accuracy of Cpedia, but about the way it used content from other sources. According to her, the search engine was lifting text directly from third-party sites but not properly quoting or citing it.

So, I delved into Cpedia and found, unfortunately, that her fears were largely founded.

How CPedia Works

The basic idea behind CPedia is that it combs through the search results for a relevant term and tries to build out an encyclopedia entry automatically. The results, visually, are very similar to Wikipedia but the content is generally more jumbled and difficult to read.

Cpedia does attribute the content it uses, but in a very strange way. If you click or hover your mouse over the text within an article, but not the link, you will be given a sidebar that shows the text that’s been quoted and a link to the source in the sidebar. If you click the inline text link, you are instead taken to a references page that then links to the original source.

Usually, the individual copied passages are very short though, sometimes, the word count of the passage approached 100 words, especially when the source package was broken up into multiple parts.

CPedia seems to have a nearly unlimited number of topics covered, likely aided by the fact it is automatically generating results, and has many pages that Wikipedia does not, including one for me.

All in all, CPedia is fairly straightforward but that does not mean it isn’t a problem. In fact, in this case, it means quite the opposite.

Problems With Cpedia

Apart from the questionable accuracy of Cpedia, the entire operation, to me, seems highly suspect. The idea of creating new pages of content using snippets from dozens, even hundreds of other pages seems to be a very poor way to do business.

But even discarding the way the content is created, there are several issues with the attribution issue alone. Consider the following two problems:

1. Always One Step From Source Link: Whether you hover over the text or click to the references page, you are always one action away from the source link. This means users and other search engines alike are always two steps from the source site even though it would be trivial to make it one.
2. Lack of Clear Quotes: The entire entry is made up of short verbatim quotes from various sources but it is not clear where the quotes begin and end without hovering over the text. The goal is to make the entire work seem like an original creation, an actual encyclopedia entry, without much in the way of visible quotes, just traditional footnote citations.

However, the bigger problem is actually very simple. There are already many sites that build thousands and thousands of entries using snippets from various other pages. They’re called spam blogs and they use a variety of article generation and spinning technology to build new articles out of hodgepodges of existing ones.

And Cpedia is acting very much like a spam blog. Entries from CPedia are appearing in Google, which currently has about 177,000 entries indexed, and though, Cpedia’s robots.txt disallows the wiki directory, it doesn’t seem to be stopping search engines from indexing the entries.

When you factor all of this together, it becomes clear that Cpedia is acting exactly like a spam blog and less like an encyclopedia. Was the intention? Probably not. But it is how the site is functioning, pumping thousands of pages of poorly-written duplicate content into the major search engines.

If that is not the hallmark of a spam blog, I’m not sure what is.

Making it Stop

To be clear, what Cpedia is doing isn’t, most likely, illegal. Fair use would likely protect their very limited use of the content from each individual source. This is one of the reasons this technique is so common among spam blogs is that it makes them almost immune to copyright disputes as a means of closure.

In short, even though the ethics of Cpedia can be hotly debated, most likely they are on the right side of the law.

That being said, if you want your work removed from Cpedia, all you have to do is remove it from Cuil and that can be done by using robots.txt to block “twiceler”.

Also, you can block the IP range that Cuil uses for crawling, which is also listed on the link above.

It is a fairly simple change to make and one that is relatively easy to make. (Note: I have not and will not make it on PT, I keep my robots.txt open intentionally to help observe various issues, like these).

All in all, though I disagree strongly with what Cpedia is doing, they do have the right to do it. This makes fighting back trickier, but far from impossible.

Bottom Line

What Cpedia is doing, in my opinion, is unethical. They are using quotes from various sites without adequate clarity or attribution. They are pumping thousands of pages of admittedly duplicate content into other search engines and are producing and encyclopedia that, by their own admission, is wildly inaccurate.

Though copyright may not be a viable litigation route, I have to wonder how libel will work in this case as repeating libel is, generally, the same as making the libelous statement. In short, those admitted inaccuracies in Cpedia could, in theory, come back to bite the company at a later date.

Considering that search engine liability in cases of libel is still being settled around the world, Google won such a claim in the UK but republishing this information on your own site and admitting it is inaccurate seems to be opening up new avenues for liability.

Would this be a likely claim against Cuil/Cpedia? Probably not. But only because the audience for the site is so small that it seems unlikely many will care. The fact that Cuil/Cpedia has seen so little success is a big part of why webmasters haven’t noticed the spammy nature of the issue and taken up arms.

To be certain, Cpedia flew under my radar until Melebeth asked me about it. I can imagine it is doing the same for many others right now as well.

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.

1: File-Sharers Safe Until Music Biz Change Laws

First off today, Norwegian file sharers can breathe a sigh of relief though maybe not for long. The IFPI and Norwegian rights group TONO have announced a shift in their strategy away from litigation to lobbying for stronger laws and enforcement. This comes after a series of legal defeats in trying to force ISPs in the country to block The Pirate Bay. The groups are looking toward the UK and the Digital Economy Bill there as an example of how future action should be taken.

2: Copyright Violation Alert Ransomware in the Wild

Next up today, malware is now using piracy to extort money from unwitting victims. Pretending to be from the imaginary ICPP Foundation, the alert states that pirated content has been found on the PC and offers a “settlement” offer of about $400. The ransomware doesn’t lock up the computer but any attempts to close the fake warnings produces other warnings stating that this is viewed as a rejection of the settlement. The malware is also location-aware, changing language and names as appropriate.

3: Copyright 1710-2010 “For the Encouragement of Learning”

Finally today, April 10 marked the 300th anniversary for copyright law. The world’s first modern copyright law, the Statute of Anne, was signed into law by the British Parliament on April 10, 1710. Though not the absolute first copyright law, it was the first modern one to focus on authorship of a work. The British Council is using the anniversary to strike a debate about the past and future of copyright.

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.

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

1: Verizon Tests Sending RIAA Copyright Notices

First off today, Verizon, the United States’ second largest phone provider, has, according to sources, begun working with the RIAA to send out infringement notices to users who are accused of illegally sharing files. The notices, which will likely be similar to ones already passed on by AT&T and Cox, are sent by the record labels to the provider and are passed on by the company, in order to keep the customer information private.

This follows a similar deal from Disney in 2005 but, in that case, it was an exchange where Comcast received the rights to stream some 12 of Disney’s channels over its broadband network.

There is no word, as of yet, as to how many notices the RIAA plans to send and how, or if, it will follow up with those who do not comply with their notices. The test, however, began yesterday and marks a significant turn for Verizon, who had been known as one of the least cooperative ISPs in the RIAAs campaign to recruit their help in fighting piracy.

2: Pre-Release Music Piracy: Further Arrests, Exec Loses Job

Next up today, Torrentfreak has an update on the DV8 case. DV8 was a famous “scene” group of music pirates who were known for obtaining albums before they had been released and leaking them to the larger file sharing networks. Earlier this year, they were the subject of a police investigation and many of its members, including its alleged leader, were arrested.

The leader kept having his hearing pushed back, reportedly because investigators needed more time to build a case. He, however, has now been formally charged with “defrauding the music industry” though a related conspiracy charge appears to have been dropped.

Also, two more alleged members of the group have been arrested, including a writer at a music publication and, perhaps most surprisingly, an executive at a music company. Neither has been charged yet but the writer had his home raided some two weeks ago and the executive has, reportedly, been let go from his job.

All in all, it is just another chapter in the ongoing saga that is the DV8 piracy group.

3: Illegal Movie Download Forces Shutdown of Free Wi-Fi

Finally today, Coshocton County in Ohia has disconnect part of its municipal wifi after accusations that it was used to illegally download a movie. The county, as part of its larger wifi efforts, had provided free wifi on the block surrounding the county courthouse. However, after being notified by Sony pictures that someone had used the connection to download a movie, the county disconnected the service.

“It’s unfortunate that one person ruins it for those who use the service legitimately,” said Commissioner Gary Fisher.

The country had said that it had considered installing filtering technology to block illegal sites and certain services, but simply found the price tag, an estimated $2,000 for the equipment plus a $900 annual fee too much for the cash-strapped government.

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: Porn Studios Set To Target 65,000 Movie Uploaders

First off today, we previously reported on action being taken by U.S. and Japanese pornography studios in South Korea, which saw them send out some 10,000 complaints to alleged file sharers. The studios were upset when prosecutors decided to go after just 10 file sharers, making the odds 1-1000 of being successfully prosecuted even if you were on the list.

Well, the studios have upped the ante and have sent 65,000 notifications and are demanding action on them. They are also filing lawsuits against 80 Web sites they accused of aiding in the infringement.

The studios have also reported to have gathered IP addresses for some 100,000 users downloading pornography illegally within the country but have not indicated if any of them will become targets.

2: Music Rules!

Next up today, the RIAA announced the launch of its new education campaign, “Music Rules!”. Targeted at teachers and parents of students in grades 3-8, the course offers tips for respecting intellectual property and online safety.

The course deals with a variety of intellectual property issues but is targeted mostly at music, as one might expect from the name and organization behind it. However, the course has already been widely panned as “propaganda” with many feeling that it is an attempt by the RIAA to indoctrinate children on copyright matters.

It remains to be seen if schools will actually teach this plan though the RIAA claims to have reached out to over 55,000 schools and is working to reach out to 30,000 additional teachers.

3: The Libertarian Case against the Google Book Search Deal

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.

With the launch of Microsoft’s new Bing search engine, there has been a lot of talk about which site produces the best results. Though Google is far and away the king in terms of popularity, Yahoo! still holds onto sizeable minority and, with Microsoft’s new offering, there is a promise of a three-way horse race.

But for readers of this site, one of the critical questions when choosing a search engine is which does the best job of finding duplicated content? Whether one is looking to verify that a work is original or track down plagiarism of their own work, this is an important question.

So I decided to take the three search engines and put them head to head in what I am calling the “5 Round Search Engine Deathmatch”. The goal is to find which search engine performs the best and detecting plagiarism and, if possible, find the strengths and weaknesses of the three.

Without any further ado, here is how it went down.

The Test

The goal of the test is not to be exhaustive, but to provide a quick overview of the various capabilities of the three search engines in this area. To do that, I chose five different works and ran unique phrases of those works through the search engines.

The first two works were poems of mine that had seen widespread reuse but had limited enough copying to be useful. The next two were two prose works, both with very limited reuse. The last was the Declaration of Independence, to see how many matches the search engines reported for that.

With each set of results, I went through by hand and counted the number of clear duplicate entries (matches where it was the same content, but at a different URL) and created a new total. The results of the five rounds are below.

Round 1

For this round a poem with widespread copying was used.

The first test was a big win for Yahoo!. It not only found more results initially but also had fewer duplicates. Cast both a more broad and a more fine-tuned net. However, Google’s results were still respectable, catching most of the worst infringement despite having barely half of Yahoo!’s results.

Bing, on the other hand, brings up the rear. With barely a fifth of Yahoo!’s and a third of Google’s results, it didn’t perform up to any standard.

Round Winner: Yahoo for both better detection and better duplicate filtering,

Round 2

For this round, another widely-copied poem was used.

In this round Google turned the tables, doubling Yahoo!’s efforts. It found 80 non-duplicate results to Yahoo!’s 40. However, both had comparable duplicate filtering, both with approximately 7% duplicates. Not a bad percentage.

Bing, on the other hand, only found four results, just 5% of Google’s results and 10% of Yahoo!’s. It also had a much higher duplication problem with 33% of its results being duplicates.

Round Winner: Google. Though and Yahoo! had identical duplication filtering, Google produced twice the results.

Round 3

For this round, a prose piece with limited reuse was used.

Google has another solid round, with 6 copies found and no duplicates. Yahoo!, on the other hand, only found four sites and one was a repeat. This is a clear case of Google finding more copies of a work, three to be specific.

Bing, on the other hand, found nothing. It didn’t even find the original site, which would have been good for one point. In short, Bing flat out failed in this test.

Round Winner: Google for both finding more matches and providing more accurate results.

Round 4

For this round, a prose work with a modest amount of known copying was used.

The results of this test were interesting. Google picked up the most results but its initial find of 27 results was complicated by an enromous duplication issue. A full 22 of the results were obvious duplicates, including over a dozen results pertaining to the same forum posting. This pushed the real infringements to the last page of the results.

Yahoo! and Bing both found two results, both on my site. One, in both cases, was a duplicate.

Round Winner: No one. I thought long and hard about this one and have decided that no one deserves to win this round. Google found infringements but the results were so buried as to be useless. Yahoo! and Bing failed to find anything.

Round 5

For this round, a line from the opening of the Declaration of Independence was used.

171700

For these results, due to their length, I am forced to take the search engine estimations at face value. However, I am having a very hard time believing Bing’s Results.

This would indicate that Bing, the out and out loser up until now, somehow found some 28x more results than Google and Yahoo! combined. This seems outrageous on multiple fronts and likely points to a flaw in Bing’s URL counting system (Note: Neither Yahoo! or Google have extremely reliable systems but I was able to hand check the results up to this point.)

As such, I am tossing Bing’s results for this round. Of the two that are within the realm of possibility, Yahoo has a definite edge with nearly double the results. Still, I don’t put too much stock in this test due to the unreliable nature of search engine self-reporting.

Round Winner: Yahoo found more results and takes the test, though this really is not a definitive test, even less of one than the others.

Final Results

Of the four rounds that had winners, Yahoo! and Google split them 2-to-2. However, Yahoo!’s victory in the last round is both less compelling and of less use to most copyright holders than the other rounds so I have to declare Google, by a hair, the overall winner in this deathmatch.

But while this probably will not soothe the debate about Yahoo! vs. Google, it does indicate one thing very clearly, for the purpose of plagiarism detection, Bing is a wash. Not only did bing place or tie for last in every test (save the dubious results in the fifth one) it failed to detect any copies of the content in one.

To make matters even worse, Bing also makes it very difficult to filter our duplicate entries. Where Yahoo! and Google both attempt (somewhat unsuccessfully) to group likely duplicates together, Bing, it seems, does not. In many cases duplicate pages were spread across multiple pages rather than being indented under the original or clustered together.

Whether or not you make Bing your search engine of choice is your decision, but it probably should not be your search engine of choice for finding copies of your content.

Bottom Line

I’ve said it before and I will say it again. Don’t rely on any one search engine for your plagiarism detection. Both Yahoo! and Google found results the other missed. It is that simple.

However, if we’ve learned anything from this test it is that Bing, at least right now, is not ready to be relied on for plagiarism/copy detection. Whether one thinks its regular search results are solid or not, its phrase search results, the ones used to detect this kind of copying, are very weak.

This may be a bit unfair in that both Yahoo! and Google are established search players while Bing is just a preview release. However, since Live.com search results are already being forwarded on and users of IE6 are having it forced on them as their default search engine, it seems fair enough to put it to the test.

Right now, Bing is not up to this challenge though my hope is that, as they work on the search engine and improve it, that they may grow to become a viable third competitor.