That being said, I would love for you to reach out to me and get me to review your site, service or product. I’d be more than happy to do so. I actively encourage you to write me and let me know what you’re doing because, especially if you’re working as a stealth or semi-stealth startup, I likely have no idea about you and could use the information.

However, of all the companies that write me very few actually get a mention on this site. While some companies, like PlagScan, actually run the gamut and get both a mention and a screencast, most don’t even make it to a blog post.

So, if you’re thinking about contacting me to seek a review of on this site, I want to tell you what to expect and how to increase your chances of getting a writeup on PT.

Step 1: Making Contact

Making contact with me is very easy. Simply visit the Contact page on this site, and drop me an email either via the contact form or via my email address.

Bear in mind though, I usually like to only talk about products and services that others can use, meaning that they are at least in the beta stage of development. If you want my feedback on a project that is in an earlier stage, you may want to check out my consulting services for developers as that may be a better fit.

Basically, any review I do on PT, ideally, will be a chance for the site’s readers to use your offering, not a sneak peek at what it will be.

Step 2: The Grilling

Once you reach out to me, I will be in touch with you soon, usually in about 2 business days and I’m going to come armed with questions. The first round, usually, isn’t that difficult as I’m just asking about the basics of the service and anything I’m unclear about.

The second round, however, is usually much more difficult as I ask pointed questions about the service, who it’s for, its costs, it’s competitors, etc. I’m not out to get inside information, but I’m seeking response on potential issues that I see when I do a review.

The best advise I can give to survive this admitted assault is to know the limitations of your product, know who your competitions is, how you stack up against them, and be able to easily explain what makes your offering better.

Step 3: The Trial

At this point, I then try to give your product a trial run. My goal is to create as close to a real world test as I can. This test will be designed not just to give users an idea of how it works, but also to find any potential flaws in it. In short, it’s usually not a completely fair test and isn’t meant to be.

If your product is relatively inexpensive, I’ll usually ask to pay my own way, but if it’s more costly, I’ll likely need some kind of test access to it for the review, which will be disclosed in the write up.

Often times, after the trial, I’ll have more questions to ask at the end of the test, usually related to the product itself. However,I generally try to keep my actual results under wraps until I write the review.

The reasons is to simply make the review as honest as possible, though if there is anything too extremely bad, such as the product simply not working, I will give you a chance to respond and rectify if appropriate.

Step 4: The Writeup

Finally, after all that admitted headache, I do the write up. Sometimes the test is done the same day as the write up though often times it’s done weeks before. I work off of an editorial calendar that plans posts out two weeks in advance or more. So, it might be that long before it appears.

All in all, the time between first contact and the final article is often three weeks to a month, largely because I try to be extremely thorough about my analysis and make sure that the company gets a chance to respond to any issues I find.

Bottom Line

Is this process long, drawn out and a major headache? Yes. The reason is that I only want to recommend/feature products and services that are both legitimate and useful, at least to a certain group.

However, I’d like to see more products and services featured on this site and that means more companies making it all the way through this, admitted, unfair and difficult process.

So, if you have a product or service that I haven’t featured on PT before and would like me to do so, head over to the contact page and drop me a line. I’d love to hear about it and I’d even be glad to feature it here, just bear in mind what you’re getting into.

I know I can be difficult to work with, but I think it’s for a good cause and that, in the long run, it produces much better-quality reviews.

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.

Email, however, has a very perilous journey around spam filters and less-than-reliable connections and, even if everything goes perfectly, we may never hear back about it. Though you can sometimes ask for delivery confirmation or return receipts, those don’t work consistently and most email services have abandoned them for a variety of reasons.

So when you send an email with an important notice, whether it’s a cease and desist letter, a DMCA notice or something else altogether, how do you confirm that it got there? There’s no easy way to do that, but you can certainly improve your odds and make sure that your messages at least make it through most of the time.

With that in mind, here are a few tips I’ve learned to improve your email’s chances of getting through during a critical time.

1. Use a Good Email Provider

Where you send your email from matters a great deal. You’re best off using a major email provider such as Google, Yahoo! or Hotmail and not your hosting company. These systems have a better reputation than your server will be able to build up and are widely trusted.

It’s best to have accounts on these services, even if you don’t use them as your primary email address, just to ensure that mail is able to pass back and forth without trouble.

2. Choose the Right Address

When sending mail, where you send it to also matters. The older an email account is, the more likely it is to be inactive. Email may not bounce, but it won’t be read either.

When trying to find an email to contact a person, company or a site, favor the newest email address possible. If you see an account is more than a few years old, sending to it blindly is not a good idea. If you have to send to an older address, also CC to a newer one or an account that you know will be active, such as the general info account if the company has one.

It may be annoying for them to have to forward the message along, but it may be necessary in some cases.

3. Ditch Attachments

I’ve done some pretty interesting side-by-side response studies and found that you improve response rate by a good deal if you just stop using attachments. Though it might feel nice to have an attractive letter on PDF with your email, save it for fax.

Many email filters automatically discard messages with attachments from untrusted email addresses. If the host asks for a signed PDF, you can provide it then, however, don’t waste your time sending one before then as it reduces the chances of your email making it.

4. Avoid Using Too Many Links

Sending links may be unavoidable when sending out DMCA notices, but try to avoid adding in any unneeded ones. Trim out the ones in your signature and generally try to reduce the links you send in a single email. Emails with too many links are frequently thought to be spam and are likely to get filtered out.

5. Use DKIM

If your email provider is separate from your hosting provider (See: Item 1), such as with Google Apps, you will probably want to use DKIM to prove that the email is not a forgery. If your email provider offers it, setup is usually fairly fast and only involves getting a key from your email provider and editing your site’s DNS to include it.

Google recently launched this feature for Google Apps and that has greatly reduced the amount of my mail filtered as spam. If you are a Google Apps user, you can learn how to use DKIM here.

6. Use Forms When Possible

For those who need to send a lot of email, forms can be a major headache but when sites and companies offer forms, they are pretty much a guaranteed way to bypass any spam filters.

Though, for many reason, you should likely send another copy of the email via a more traditional method, sending a notice via a form is a good backup method to ensure that it makes it there in one piece.

Bottom Line

In the end, will any of these things guarantee that your email makes it there? No. There’s a good reason we still have process servers, certified mail and faxes still being used for most critical legal communication. They are much more reliable ways to confirm that a message got to its recipient, much more so than email.

That being said, many times email is the most efficient way to send a message and, in those situations you will want to maximize your chances of the message getting through.

The methods above are a good starting point, all based upon my experience and good email common sense, but they are still no promise.

Considering all the links that must come together for an email to go form A to B and be read, it’s amazing that as many messages get through as they do.

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

1: Blizzard Sues Group Selling StarCraft 2 Hacks

First off today, video game publisher Blizzard has sued ten “Does” that it accuses of making and selling cheating applications for the company’s new and popular Starcraft 2 game. According to the complaint, the cheats not only violate the game’s terms of service but are also copyright infringements as they involve making copies of the game, creating derivative works and coping game portions into system RAM while playing, all outside the scope of their license. This follows closely a similar pattern Blizzard followed with World of Warcraft, where they targeted bot makers and private hosts.

2: Porn Studio a Step Closer to Revealing Pirates’ IDs

Next up today, porn studio Third World Media has file a new lawsuit, this time naming some 1,500 “Does” that it accuses of illegally downloading and sharing one of its films. This lawsuit comes after a similar complaint sought to reveal the identities of some 1,200 accused file sharers. Most likely the studio is seeking a subpoena for the names for the defendants, of which it only has IP addresses at this time, and send them demand letters, following closely the method of the U.S. Copyright Group and others.

3: Movie Rental Outfit Hacked, Emails Leaked, Redirected to The Pirate Bay

Finally today, in a move that is eerily similar to what happened to ACS:Law, Portuguese movie rental firm ACAPOR, which had lobbied for stronger copyright laws within the nation, had their server hacked and their emails leaked on The Pirate Bay. The leak seems to be not as major as the ACS:Law one as the firm was of a lower profile and the emails are in Portuguese, however, many are eager to see what information is contained within that file.

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.

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

1: DDoS Takes Down Aussie Anti-Pirates and 8,000 Other Sites

First off today, the DDoS attacks against anti-piracy organizations by members of the Internet forum 4Chan is continuing, this time targeting the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft. The group successfully took down the site for several hours but this time there was a great deal of collateral damage as 8,000 other sites hosted at the same location were also shuttered during the attack, including business and government pages. No word yet if another attack is being planned.

2: Adult Video-Sharing List Leaked From Law Firm

Next up today, the law firm ACS:Law is feeling the fall out of its own denial of service attack after a server flaw caused it to publish thousands of otherwise private emails after the attack. The emails included financial information about their letter campaign against file sharers, similar to what the U.S. Copyright Group is doing in the states, and showed the amount of profit that the company made from its campaign as well as several personal emails of staff at the firm. ACS:Law has said that their business is unaffected by the leak.

3: Pirate Bay Appeal Trial Lacks Fanfare

Finally today, in stark contrast to the protests and campaigns for the first trial, the appeal of the four Pirate Bay admins kicked off in Sweden with little fanfare. The four men, who were sentenced to a year in prison and ordered to pay a total of $3.6 million in damages at the lower court are appealing their convictions. However, one of the four, Svartholm Warg, was not there at the beginning of the appeal and none of the other three seem to know his whereabouts.

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.

photo credit: akeg

Whenever I am answering questions about copyright or plagiarism issues, it is almost inevitable that someone asks me this question:

“Is it OK for someone to publish an email they get on the Internet?”

This seems to be one of the most common issues people have on the Web. Whether they are someone who has had their email published or are considering publishing someone elses, the legal questions about whether or not it is acceptable to post an email sent to you are constant.

Those questions have only ramped up since the recent hacking of Sarah Palin’s personal email account, resulting in the posting of many of the messages.

Is it legal to publish someone else’s email? It is a tough question. For the sake of time we’re going to assume that the two parties were the sender and recipient of the email respectively, thus avoiding the issues of unauthorized access.

With that in mind, I’m going to provide this in a point/counterpoint fashion to highlight some of the complexities of the laws involved.

Point

Email meets all of the criteria for copyrightability. It is an original work of authorship fixed into a tangible medium of expression. The act of hitting “send” writes the content to a server somewhere, thus qualifying it as being fixed.

The application means that the copying and pasting of it into a Web site, without permission, is most likely a copyright infringement.

Counter-Point

However, when you send out an email, you are likely providing an implied license for many things to happen with it. Automatically, the email is copied multiple times as it makes its journey and there is no case against any of those copies.

Further more, it is a foreseeable consequence the recipient may forward the email to friends and family or even to a large mailing list. That is a form of republication in and of itself and posting a work to the Web is not far beyond that.

Many might argue that, by sending an email to someone, especially someone who is a known reporter or blogger, that there is an implied license to publish it.

Point

The implied license argument is weak at best. Forwarding an email to people you know is different from posting it on the Web the same as forwarding a letter to another office is different from tacking it on the bulletin board.

Implied license issues on the Internet typically deal with works that are already posted on the Web, such as blog posts, and not emails that were intended for one viewer. Despite the ability to forward a message most, when they send an email, only intend the recipient to read it.

An email being republished on a blog is not a foreseeable consequence in the vast majority of cases. That makes an implied license argument very difficult to make.

Counter Point

Even if the implied license argument does not hold, there are still many other exemptions to copyright law that can apply.

First and foremost, facts and information, by themselves, are not copyrightable. Copyright law protects the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. If one does not copy verbatim but only expresses the facts, it is most likely not a copyright infringement.

Second, fair use allows the use of small portions of copyrighted material for the purpose of commentary, criticism, etc. As long as the use is reasonably transformative and does not use more material than is necessary, it is very likely that the use would be deemed “fair”.

Point

The fair use argument is an uphill battle. An email would not be considered a published work, thus, it is much harder to make such a claim. Furthermore, remember that fair use is an affirmative defense and, even if you did win, you would still be sued and likely be dealing with court expenses. Relying on fair use is risky at best.

However, there are still other laws that deal with email republishing such as privacy, defamation and trade secrecy. Copyright is just one possible angle.

Counter Point

In the U.S., there can be no invasion of privacy without there first being a reasonable expectation of privacy. An email, when sent unencrypted, can be easily read by anyone looking at it in transmission, it is essentially a postcard working its way through the mail system, easy to open and read.

Unless additional steps are taken, there is almost no expectation of privacy. Furthermore, if you send the email from work, where you likely sign away much of your privacy rights, you might have even further restrictions.

The other issues don’t directly pertain to republishing email. Defamation and trade secrets are both problems with republishing email, but the fact that the information came from an email doesn’t add any large new legal questions. You always have to be careful what you publish, no matter where you get the content from.

Point

The “reasonable expectation of privacy” limitation only applies to the United States. Other countries, for the most part, seem to treat email with the same privacy reverence as postal mail.

Furthermore, even though you may feel that there is no “reasonable expectation of privacy”, the courts seem to disagree. This is why the government needs a warrant to access your emails.

If the U.S. government needs a warrant to access your emails, it only makes sense that posting such emails on the Web would be a violation of privacy.

Counter Point

The case you mentioned deals only with email stored on an ISPs server and not email in transmission. Furthermore, the ruling was very narrow in nature, leaving room for ISPs to trump your privacy expectations in their license agreement.

Most users still have no reasonable expectation of privacy, even on email stored at their ISP, much less in transmission.

However, all of these issues become moot. If something can be deemed to be newsworthy, the first amendment grants broad protections for people to report on the facts, no matter how they got the information. As with the case of Wikileaks and Palin’s email, the site is not liable due to the freedom of press and the fact they were not responsible for the break in.

There are many ways around the privacy issues, especially in high-profile cases, and most privacy rights as they pertain to email are, at best, untested.

Bottom Line

This is just a brief overview of some of the key issues that arise when dealing with publishing email on the Web. This imaginary debate could likely have gone on for days with no real conclusion.

If you are wanting to use an email in a blog post or other article on the Web, the best thing you can do is either ask for permission or approach the person as a reporter and make it clear that all of their replies are on the record.

If you want to protect your email privacy and prevent publication, the best thing you can do is encrypt it, thus ensuring that only the recipient could receive it and establishing an intent to preserve privacy. Failing that, you can use disclaimers in your email though the legal effectiveness of such disclaims has not been adequately tested.

The absolute best advice is to not put anything in an email that you would not be comfortable with it being posted. Though almost everyone does, with the laws where they are, it is a risky activity.

Conclusions

The purpose of this exercise was not to reach any kind of conclusion about whether or not republishing email is legal and, if so, under what circumstances. With so many laws and issues in play, this is clearly a legal minefield no matter how you approach it.

The best thing you can do right now is be smart about how you use email and what you send through it and to also treat other’s email with respect.

If you do that, you can skirt these issues completely because you can avoid misunderstandings. If you don’t, there’s almost no telling what can happen legally as so much of this is untested.

Step six specifically instructs you to “sign the paper” and step seven only provides two means of sending it in. The first is via postal mail, the second is via fax.

The problem with these steps is that the vast majority of hosts accept, and even encourage, DMCA notices via email. Email is by far faster and easier to send for such complaints and, according to the ESIGN Act, should be able to deliver a perfectly acceptable electronic signature.

However, Google’s limited contact information and requirement of a physical signature seems to turn a digital matter into one that needs pen and paper to resolve. This has caused many to give up on sending notices to Google and just tolerate any misuse that takes place on Google’s servers, including Blogger.

Fortunately, there is a way around this and a means to successfully email your DMCA notices to Google. All one has to do is be a little bit creative.

Step 1: Scan Your Signature

The first step is to get your handwritten signature into your computer some way. This is because Google, even when accepting notices via email, still requires a handwritten signature most of the time.

There are several ways you can get your signature into an image file. First, you can simply sign a sheet of paper and scan it. Second, you can use a program such as Paint and draw your signature (best done with a stylus). Finally, you can take a picture of your signature with a good digital cam.

The end goal is to get your signature in clear black lettering on a white background.

Step 2: Get your DMCA Notice Ready

Next, obtain a copy of a good DMCA notice. If you wish, you can use the stock letters available on this site.

Once you have your notice, paste it into a word Processor that is capable of both importing images and exporting to PDF. You can use Microsoft Word, OpenOffice or many other applications for this purpose.

Then simply fill in the needed information as if you were just emailing it out and make sure that all of your information is accurate.

Step 3: Import Your Signature

Once you have the notice in your word processor, scroll down to where the signature goes and import your handwritten signature as an image file into the document.

Take a moment to make sure that it looks right and is ready for export.

Step 4: Export File to PDF

Export the file to a PDF using the best tools available. Though most word processors can do this export directly, if you need to print the file to a PDF you can use a free PDF creator.

Most of the details about the quality of the PDF are unimportant, just make sure that the PDF is clear enough to be read and small enough to be emailed.

Step 5: Email the PDF

Though Google does not advertise their email address on their site, they did file a designation with the U.S. Copyright Office that provides an email for submitting DMCA notices.

You can send the PDF to that email address. Simply include it as an attachment and paste the text of the notice into the email.

There is no word if that email address will work after the designated agent returns to the office.

Conclusions

For most Web hosts, sending a DMCA notice is simply a matter of having a good stock letter, dropping it into an email, filling out the necessary information and then sending it on. It is only Google, to my knowledge, that requires this kind of effort.

However, Google receives such a large number of DMCA notices that it is important to be prepared to work with them. Not only do they host Blogger, which remains one of the most common hosts for spam blogs, but they host Google Groups and other services that could host infringing content.

They are also one of the top advertising networks with Adsense and their policy for reporting infringers using Adsense closely mirrors the one for Blogger. This technique should also work for that.

Most importantly though, they are also the number one search engine in the world and the search DMCA policy also closely mirrors the other two, complete with physical signature requirement and fax/snail mail only filing. This technique should work with it as well.

Until new systems come online to help us report spam and copyright infringement to Google, this is the best technique to file a DMCA notice via email.

It is a bit complicated and convoluted, but it is certainly preferable to the delays of postal mail and the hassle of a fax.

The products advertised, methodology used and intended target are almost identical in both cases and it makes sense that a spammer typically involved in email spamming might want to diversify as email filtering improves and less junk mail gets through.

However, a recent article on The Red Tape Chronicles on MSNBC seems to lend more credibility to that theory as a new email spam wave uses the search engines, especially Google, to direct users to their site and bypass email filters.

Though, in the big picture, it is just a slight escalation in the war between spammers and anti-spammers, it signals a growing importance in Web spam and likely marks an upcoming wave of spam blogs and junk content, including scraped material.

Webmasters and Internet users alike need to be alert.

How it Works

The idea behind this kind of spam is fairly simple and requires only three steps.

1. Get your desired spam site to #1 in any Google search result.
2. Locate the “I’m Feeling Lucky” link for that result.
3. Sent massive amounts of spam with that URL instead of your home page and those who click land directly on your site.

Doing this prevents spam filters from simply detecting the URL of the spam site and blacklisting junk domains, a common technique for spam applications. Since Google links are frequently included in legitimate email, blocking letters containing google.com is not feasible.

While the technique isn’t perfect, few people send Google results via email and it is reliant on the search engines allowing the exploit to continue, Google does have a high amount of trust and few will suspect a Google.com link of being spam.

This is in stark contrast to other URL redirection services, such as TinyURL, which have much less trust among users and are often blacklisted by email filtering applications.

Though it will likely be a short-lived technique, it certainly points to a growing cooperation between Web and email spamming efforts and this is something for Webmasters, especially bloggers, to be concerned about.

Effects on Content Theft

An obvious limitation of technique is that, for it to work, the site has to be indexed into Google and has to achieve a number one result. With Google already filtering search results, that could be difficult for many would-be spammers.

However, the current best way for a spammer to get their site indexed well by Google remains the use of spam blogs and comment spam. That makes it likely any spam push using this technique will be accompanied by at least some push on one or both of those fronts and will likely become an annoyance for bloggers.

The good news is that such a push is likely going to be very small. Though achieving a number one search result for a major keyword is a difficult task for just about any Webmaster, this particular spam attack can use any search term, no matter how specific or targeted. For example, if you search for “Plagiarism Today” you will find this site at number one pretty comfortably.

Since the attack can use any keyword, finding a term that is unique to your site should not require too much work, just imagination in coming up with keywords.

The bad news is that it likely signals increased frustration with the effectiveness of email spam and could cause spammers to turn even more attention to their Web spamming efforts. This could mean, over the long run, more scraping and other content theft.

It seems as if email spam is taking the back seat to its Web-based counterpart and that is due in large part to the effective efforts of spam filtering services. Though that is great news for our inboxes, it is going to lead to more comment spam, more scraping and more spam blogging in the months and years to come.

Let us hope that technology catches up on those fronts as well.

Conclusions

The good news is that, according to the original article, Google is planning on plugging this hole shortly. The details of how they plan to do it remain to be seen. However, they certainly are the ones in the best position to put an end to this particular attack.

However, this doesn’t mean that there won’t be future attacks. Spammers could, theoretically, just link to search results they control or use a site search link to display only their results.

Though the extra step might dissuade most users from visiting the spam site, if the email is able to pierce the spam filters, it might be a worthwhile trade.

The bottom line, however, is that spam is both becoming more unified in nature and more multi-dimensional. It is no longer a game of shooting out millions of emails with an offer, it instead requires a push on multiple fronts including both email and Web.

As such, expect Web-based spam, including scraping and spam blogging, to play a major role in the future of junk and that role will likely only grow larger and larger as time goes on.

So how do you keep the workflow moving and make the process of preparing and sending the letter as painless as possible? The answer is easy, templating.

Not only is it important for sending a DMCA notice or a cease and desist, but it is also useful for any other form of correspondence you send out semi-regularly.

Fortunately, no matter what you use to check and send email, there is probably a system available, for free or very low cost, that lets you easily template and fill out form letters, all without leaving your favorite mail client.

Web-Based Services

Since most email users currently use some form of Webmail service as their primary email service, the Web browser becomes not just a tool for viewing Web pages, but also the most important email client.

Fortunately, nearly every single browser either has a feature or an add on that that can function as an email template system.

Firefox, for example, has the Signature Extension. Signature allows you to paste any block of text into any form field with a right click of the mouse. It was designed for adding signature lines to emails and forum posts but can work with text of any length, making it perfect for pasting in any form correspondence.

Internet Explorer users have to look a little harder, but they have several systems available to them, each of which integrate with Windows. They include Autotext and Textomatic. Though neither solution is free, both are reasonably priced and offer trial periods.

Opera users have the ability to insert blocks of text built into their browser through the “Notes” feature. All one has to do is set up their templates in the Notes panel and then right click on any Web form to insert their text.

Other browsers have similar tools available, though many of them will integrate with the operating system, not the browser, meaning that they are also available to be used with any other email client that is on the system.

Mozilla Thunderbird

Though Thunderbird users have access to their own version of Signature, it isn’t available for the latest versions of the program. Fortunately, QuickText expands upon the functionality of Signature and Thunderbird’s built-in features.

Likewise, the Stationery add-on is an option, however, its HTML formatting tools might be overkill for someone just wanting to send out plan text form letters.

All in all, Thunderbird users have several good options for sending out form letters from their email client.

Apple Mail

My mail application of choice, Apple Mail, offers one of the best mail templating systems available, MailTemplate. MailTemplate not only allows you to create templates for easy insertion, but offers a wide range of variables that can be automatically filled in by the program.

The only downside to MailTemplate is that a full version of it costs $15. However, if it is a program that you are likely to use regularly, it is well worth the price.

If you are using Leopard, you are even in better luck as the latest version of Apple Mail includes a full mail templating system, that you can use to customize your messages.

Outlook

Outlook already has a decent template system built in. You can even download additional templates from Microsoft’s site.

However, if you require more power, Bells and Whistles for Outlook provides more advanced template management complete with autofilled variables.

Overall, those who use Outlook to handle their email are pretty well covered when it comes to templating.

Other Programs and General Tips

Other email applications, obviously, will have different needs and requirements than those listed above. Many will likely have some form of templating built into the program while others will need to use an add on.

However, to simplify the process, the add ons will likely integrate not with the application directly, but the operating system. Windows users may want to look at the add ons listed with Internet Explorer as most of them can be used with any application and Mac users will likely want to look at Typinator.

If your email program doesn’t offer the feature as a built-in option or have a free add on available, you might want to consider working around the problem by saving a copy of the letter to your drafts folder and then copying it as needed. Though not an elegant solution, it is an excellent workaround for those who want to have a notices on hand but don’t use stock letters often enough to warrant a paid application.

Conclusions

As with most things in life, being prepared is half of the battle when dealing with content theft and plagiarism. One of the ways you can be better prepared is to have your letters at the ready and available to send out whenever necessary. This not only speeds up the process of dealing with such matters, but lets you get back to the things you enjoy even sooner.

The good news is that being ready takes very little time and, depending on the approach you take, is completely free or very inexpensive. Best of all, you can easily expand the techniques you use to quickly prepare emails regarding content theft to other areas of your inbox and save time on all of your mail duties.

In short, this is one of the few areas where improving your content theft strategy can help you in other aspects of your life. Though I don’t use form letters on email regarding this site (there are no “typical” questions asked), elsewhere, the amount of email and replies would have buried me without the use of good templates.

If your time for email is short and you find that you are repeating yourself a great deal, either with DMCA notices or just thank you letters, this is something to look into.

First, I modified the "Contact Plagiarism Today" page to use a new, much more simple, form. The form is still CAPTCHA protected, at least to a degree, but doesn’t require all of the information that the former contact form required.

This form was probably the number one complaint users had about the site and, hopefully, this will take care of it.

Second, I’ve added a plugin to include MyBlogLog icons in the comments. This comes along with a slight redesign of the comments themselves.

Let me know what you think of that feature. You can test it on any post with a decent amount of comments.

Finally, in a brief update to my previous posts about the trackback and comment spam attack. The attack has seemingly subsided some but I have had to remove Defensio as a plugin. It was causing reCAPTCHA to fail and that was resulting in at least a few comments escaping the spam filters.

For the moment, I am back using Akismet.

Let me know what you think of the new features and anything else that you think can be improved!