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This license is for both commercial and non-commercial use.

Please bear in mind that you can do this without asking for permission. Though I appreciate all of you who have written to ask my permission and I understand wanting to be doubly careful when dealing with a site dedicated to plagiarism issues (I know I would be), one of the goals I had with this site was to educate as many people and give out as much information as possible. That is something I believe this license helps me achieve and I wish to encourage the content to be distributed as freely as I can within reason.

The only caveat is that the images that are displayed with the articles are licensed under different terms. Though most are either screen grabs from relevant sites, logos or images from free stock photo sites such as Morguefile and sxc.hu, some are licensed just to Plagiarism Today. So, while the text is available for copying, please use caution with the images. The same is true for comments, which are copyrighted by the people who submitted them.

Bear in mind that I made this choice years ago because I believed it was right for myself and for this content. I don’t believe it is right for all content nor will I use the same license for every work I create. Part of being smart about copyright means looking at your work, your situation and your goals to find the right license for you.

Still, with Plagiarism Today I believe strongly, as I did when I first made the choice years ago, that this is the right move for this site and the goals I have with it.

Plagiarism Today Elsewhere on the Web

Finally, there’s also been some confusion as to where you can get access to Plagiarism Today content elsewhere on the Web, in particular what accounts are used for what purposes.

When it comes to social media, I keep two kinds of accounts, hybrid site/personal ones and strictly site-related ones. The hyrbid ones will include most site news but will also have personal updates from me. Site ones are strictly site-related and will contain no personal tweets or updates.

Here’s where you can find the various accounts:

Hybrid (Personal/Site):

Twitter
Facebook (Subscribe available)
Google+

Site Only

Facebook
Google+

There is no site-only Twitter feed at this time as I’ve had issues in the past with RSS posting. If there’s interest in such an account, I will create it.

All in all, if you want just the site updates, you can add the site-only social media feeds. If you don’t mind my bad jokes and personal postings, you can add any of the hybrid ones.

Hopefully that clears up those two issues and I return you to your regularly scheduled posting on Monday! Have a great weekend!

According to many webmasters, the DiggBar was an attempt to steal search engine benefit by having all outgoing links point to digg.com rather than the source domain of the content. It also created questions about potential advertising in the Diggbar and possible visitor interference by encouraging people to link to the Digg version of the story rather than original page.

After an outcry from webmasters, Digg scaled back the use of the Diggbar so search engines and non-logged-in users wouldn’t see it. A year later, in 2010, Digg announced they were killing it completely as part of an overhaul of the site.

All seemed quiet from Digg on this issue, that is, until last month with they announced a new Facebook social reader that would include a similar frame. While, at first, it was just for logged-in users, a week later Digg announced they were extending it to all users, logged in or not.

However, this time there’s been no great outcry from webmasters. In fact, I only learned about the DiggBar’s return last week on accident when I visited Digg out of curiosity.

The DiggBar has returned but does anyone care? If not, what makes this one different?

The Fall of Digg, the Rebirth of DiggBar

The removal of the Diggbar in 2010 came at the same time Digg was re-launching its site. However, the relaunch, dubbed “v4″ was an unmitigated disaster, wildly unpopular with visitors and regarded as a community killer.

Digg’s traffic and audience plummeted. Though initially the drop was blamed on the removal of Diggbar reducing the number of pageviews, the trend continued well past the loss of Diggbar. Other social news sites, most notably Reddit, rose in prominence at the same time.

According to Alexa (admittedly not the most reliable source) Digg traffic stabilized some in 2011 but has not grown and seems to have continued to drop (albeit more slowly) according to some metrics. Either way, Digg remains well below it’s pre-v4 traffic levels.

Digg is clearly not the poster child of social news that it once was and it appears that this partnership with Facebook, which is from where this new DiggBar arises, is an attempt to right the ship. However, if Alexa is to be remotely trusted, the early indications are that it isn’t helping much, if at all.

However, that doesn’t mean webmasters can or should ignore it as some things simply haven’t changed at all.

Sympathy for the Devil

To put it bluntly, DiggBar was wrong in 2009 and it is just as wrong in 2012. Not only does it raise serious SEO, copyright and trademark issues, but it also comes with ethical problems, namely whether Digg should pad its own traffic stats and extend its feature set at the risk of harming the webmasters they are supposedly linking to?

However, despite the fact the new DiggBar raises all of the same issues as the one in 2012 did, there’s been almost no outcry over it. In fact, the “frictionless” integration with Facebook has been more controversial than the bar itself and even that controversy has been fairly muted, largely because Facebook has many partners other than Digg in the program (though most don’t use frames).

This lack of outcry is due in part to the fact that framing simply isn’t the hot button issue it was three years ago. However, a likely more important factor is that the Digg that existed in 2009 is not the one that exists in 2012.

Webmasters simply don’t care about Digg. The Digg buttons are almost all gone, talk of the “Digg Effect” has died down and no one is paying much attention to what Digg is doing, good or bad.

This is a large part of why, despite Digg doing largely the exact same thing it did in 2009, almost no one has taken notice. In 2009, the DiggBar was mentioned in articles Wired, PC World and Mashable just to name three, the new one has barely been mentioned at all outside of its connection with Facebook.

The question isn’t so much “Why isn’t the world taking notice?” but “Should it?”

Standing Up to Diggbar 2

To be clear, Digg is still a very large site that receives millions of visits per month and is capable of driving a great deal of traffic and search engine reputation to a site. As such, there is still plenty the new DiggBar can do to either harm webmasters or at least limit the benefit they get from what should a great deal of exposure.

However, as the recent SOPA/PIPA protests showed, gathering a large protest against something requires a feeling of importance and Digg, simply put, doesn’t feel important. As such, the best thing concerned webmasters can do is not just write about it, but also contact Digg directly.

We can’t and shouldn’t expect the same level of protests we saw in 2009. The climate, in particular as it relates to Digg, is just too different.

Fortunately though, one way the climate hasn’t changed is in the wider acceptance of framed toolbars. The first DiggBar did not start a trend. Though some other sites do use toolbars in a limited capacity, such as Hootsuite and StumbleUpon, the use isn’t widespread nor does it appear to be growing.

In short, Digg didn’t start a trend in 2009 and it isn’t likely to start one now.

Bottom Line

If I worked for Digg, I wouldn’t be relieved that the new DiggBar escaped controversy, I’d be worried. The ethics and morals around framing have not changed drastically in the past three years, as seen by the lack of growth in the technique. As such, the big change has to relate to Digg itself and going from being the center of the universe to being ignored is not a positive change.

But even though there isn’t an outcry, my hope is that Digg will, once again, do the right thing and kill the DiggBar a second time. It hurts the websites that it links to and it seems to be done to implement a social reading service few want.

DiggBar may be back from the dead, but it’s time to rebury it and, this time, make it for good.

In the meantime, I wanted to let everyone know that, in addition to my presences on Facebook, Twitter, and this site’s Facebook Page I’m now on Google Plus as well (thanks to Google Apps users being allowed in finally).

So, in the future, I’ll be posting updates there in addition to the other sources. Feel free to follow me there and add me to your circles. I know many of you have begun to prefer Google+ over Facebook and it means a lot to me to have a good presences there as well.

If you have any questions, feel free to let me know. However, the best way to get in touch with me is still via email.

Thank you all for being patient with me this Halloween. For those who are curious, it was a great success as we had over 529 people come through the haunted house and collected a lot of money/canned goods for the Second Harvest Food Bank here in New orleans!

Is Facebook creating (or is it already) a culture of plagiarism?

On the surface, Facebook is actually doing a great job creating a culture of attribution. It’s “Share” and “Like” buttons are great tools for sharing content with friends with attribution. If you “Like” this article on Facebook it will be posted to your wall, along with a snippet, a thumbnail and a link.

Clearly, for most content creators, this is preferrable to other systems, such as many of the older blog networks where content was “shared” through wholesale copying, often without attribution.

However, it’s the way that Facebook is actually being used that’s the most disturbing at times. At least one author, back in 2009, noticed the trend of posting poems and stories on Facbeook without attribution. However, at least in my anecdotal experience, the worst issue has been with Facebook photos, where users routinely upload funny/interesting/strange photos, often without sourcing.

In that regard, Facebook isn’t much different than the chain emails that were (and in some circles are still) popular.

Still, with over 100 billion images on Facebook, there’s a lot for copyright holders to be worried about. The the majority are legitimate photos uploaded by the person who took them (or otherwise with permission), given the private nature of Facebook, there’s no way to know how many are original works, how many are licensed and how many are infringing.

Creators have no way of knowing how much their works are being used, who is viewing them and if those uses are attributed.

To make matters even worse, Facebook is drawing fire from teachers and professors who say that the social network is being used to aid in academic plagiarism and that social networking is the most popular source for plagiarized content.

Obviously, there are no easy answers to the question. Personally, I feel that Facebook is doing good work to ensure that attribution is affixed to shared works and that most of the problems with plagiarism it encounters are the same ones that any semi-private service that enables people to communicate would face.

Email, as mentioned above, had (and has) many of the same problems. In fact, if anything Facebook is preferable to email as Facebook comes with attribution-friendly tools and has a greater focus on one’s real-world identity, which discourages plagiarism.

But could Facbeook do more? If so what? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on these questions as they are ones I’ve been pondering for a while now.

However, times have definitely changed. Last year I wrote about how the role of RSS was changing. By most accounts, the use of feed readers peaked in 2008 at about 11% and has been declining since. The broader public found feed readers too complicated and not useful enough for regular consumption.

But at the same time, RSS usage has grown in very big ways. Currently millios of people are reading RSS feeds without realizing they’re doing so. Countless Twitter accounts and Facebook Pages are being fed via RSS and are serving them much like a feed reader was supposed to, sending people near-instant updates and letting them read all of their content in one place.

This shift is changing what RSS is and means, turning it away from being a means to read a site and into the engine that enables sharing and content discovery.

This, in turn, is impacting how webmasters and bloggers use and interact with RSS and is also shifting the ways in content creators protect their works and how users interact with it.

Here are just five examples of how that is happening right now.

1. Fewer, If Any, RSS Buttons

If you go to TechCrunch, you won’t find a single RSS button on their home page. Since their recent redesign, the RSS link has been moved to the footer, three little letters at the bottom of their site.

Meanwhile, their Facebook “Like” box is prominently displayed in their sidebar and Twitter sharing buttons line the entire site. Webmasters have been steadily downplaying RSS subscription in favor of social networking.

RSS just doesn’t have the “cool” factor any more and it’s been moved to a behind-the-scenes player in content distribution. This is why many webmasters, myself included, have been slowly scaling back RSS subscription efforts in lieu of other, more popular alternatives.

2. Better RSS Control

RSS by its nature has historically been completely open. Anyone could be accessing it. A visitor to an RSS feed could be single user looking at it in Outlook or it could be Google Reader preparing to send it to hundreds of subscribers. This opened the door for scrapers and others who wanted to misuse the content in the feed as everyone had to be let in.

However, the number of distribution channels is dropping. This makes it possible to limit who has access to the feed and only let in permitted clients. Though you’ve always been able to block scrapers, this would change the system from one where everyone has access until they’re booted to one where only the permitted users are let in at all.

This could stop scrapers before they start, or at least force them to pull from other channels to get the content.

3. Greater Tolerance of Truncated Feeds

Five years ago, having a truncated feed was a sure-fire way to turn away potential subscribers. The issue was such a hot-button topic that a petition was circulated around against partial feeds and it gained a bit of traction.

However, with the new subscription channels, people are more used to getting a preview and clicking through. They are more about content discovery than content consumption, making partial feeds roughly as useful as full ones.

4. Loss of Platform Control

While the ability to control access and the ability to greater openness to the use of partial feeds gives webmasters more control, it also comes with drawbacks.

Previously, if a single RSS reader or site using your content did something you didn’t like you could always block them, file a takedown notice or take other action. However, if Facebook decides to display RSS feeds in an in appropriate or controversial way, there’s not much one can do as that is a large percentage of the audience.

The good news is that Facebook and Twitter both don’t integrate RSS directly and, instead, use third party apps to do it. However, that’s no guarantee in and of itself as decisions by these two can impact and even cut off how RSS flows through their systems.

In short, even though you can always switch apps, Facebook and Twitter are still very much in control.

5. Losing Sight of What RSS Even Is

With RSS disappearing from sites and fewer bloggers even using them, it seems likely that even fewer people will be aware of RSS in just a few years’ time. Even those who know of it and use it somewhat now will, with time, probably forget about it as both the name RSS as well as the famous icons will be all-but-meaningless to end users.

This also means that fewer webmasters will be thinking about it and fewer will be weighing the issues and decisions that come with having an RSS feed on your site.

This may, in turn, open the doors for others with less-than-pure intentions to exploit the naivete of webmasters, who are unaware of how they are gaining access to their site’s content.

Bottom Line

All in all, the changing role of RSS is a mixed bag for webmasters and content creators. While it will make it easier to block and reduce the impact of traditional scrapers, the loss of control over the platform and lack of front-of-mind understanding of what RSS is and how it works still opens up some serious vulnerabilities.

However, this is a transition that is happening slowly and will continue to do so for some time. Most likely we still have several more transition years before we truly reach the point with RSS where it is meaningless to users.

That being said, with so many major blog eschewing or downplaying RSS, it may be that the transition is happening much faster than once thought possible. It may simply be that the simplicity and large presence of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks are just overpowering to the traditional RSS model and we may be mourning RSS’ demise as a destination sooner rather than later.

Either way though, RSS will live on, behind the scenes, driving social media and marketing for content creators of all stripes. That much is definitely certain.

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

1: Facebook Employee Reveals Killer Facebook Music Feature In Deleted Tweet

First off today, Facebook is expected to announce Facebook music within the next hour but already some details seem to be leaking out as one employee, Ji Lee, Facebook’s creative directory, tweeted that “The ‘Listen with your friend’ feature in ticker is blowing my mind. Listen to what your friends are listening. LIVE” The service, supposedly a partnership with Spotify, is due to be formally announced today at Facebook’s F8 developer’s conference and is expected to provide all Facebook users with free access to millions of tracks they can listen to and share.

2: Vimeo Launches Music Store to Help you License Music for Videos

Next up today, not to be outdone by Facebook’s music announcement, Vimeo has made one of their own. However, this one is geared toward using music in videos, not toward listening. Vimeo has launched a music store where users can license musics from a variety of sources, including fee Creative Commons tracks and paid tracks. The bulk of the tracks, some 33,000, come from Audiosocket while another 11,000 come from Creative Commons sources. The cost is free for Creative Commons tracks, $2 for paid tracks for personal use and $98 per paid track for professional use. Vimeo makes it easy to find the track you need by search for mood, tempo or genre of the song you want.

3: Movie Institute Feels Pain Of IP Address-Only Piracy ‘Evidence’

Finally today, the Swedish Film Institute (SFI) has been deflecting accusations that it uploaded several movies to The Pirate Bay after an anti-piracy firm traced the films back to IP addresses owned by the organization. However, SFI has responded to the accusations saying that the addresses in question are shared not just by every employee of the organization but by other tenants in the building and even an open wifi in the lobby. Despite this, the SFI audited its firewalls and logs and said that no wrongdoing could be found. The antipiracy firm involved, DoubleTrace, has refused to turn over its evidence to the SFI, which SFI says bars it from doing a more complete investigation.

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 5 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.

Basically, in the setup, site A scrapes or otherwise lifts content from site B. However, due to Google’s crawling patterns, site A is spotted first or otherwise has more trust with Google and, as such is treated as the original.

In the video Cutts, who previously said that such a scenario was “highly unlikely”, admitted openly that Google is not perfect and it does make mistakes in this area though it is doing everything it can to avoid them.

However, in addition to offering the typical Google solutions, including DMCA notices and spam reports, Cutts also listed two ways in which webmasters may be able to fight back against this kind of issue. This included “push” services and protocols, such as pubsubhubbub, but also Tweeting a link as soon as it is live.

The reason is that Google is. theoretically at least, constantly monitoring Twitter and the parts of Facebook it can access. Therefore, it’s likely that a link that appears there will be indexed by Google before it is crawled on a scraper or plagiarist site.

This makes plenty of sense because, though a spam or plagiarist site might be a higher PageRank than yours, it most likely won’t have more trust than Twitter and Facebook. As such, those updates will be spotted first and trusted more.

Unfortunately though, while all of this might have been true in April, when the video was made, it’s of much more dubious use now. The reason is that, in July, Google ended it’s real-time relationship with Twitter. As such, not only is Twitter not nearly as immediate with Google as it was, but supposedly the links are now nofollowed, meaning Google isn’t discovering new content from Twitter.

Facebook has similar issues as Twitter, including the nofollowing of links, but also in that much of Facebook is hidden from Google’s prying eyes.

So, while the technology is there and has been used previously to make Twitter a form of non-repudiation service for Google, independently verifying which links are original, it most likely isn’t very useful now. Still, it’s probably best to play it safe and continue as if nothing has changed as there may still be some benefits to tweeting out new content immediately and there certainly isn’t any harm.

In the end, it’s likely that tools like Pubsubhubbub, which push content directly from the site to the interested parties (including Google) that offer the long-term solution. The reason spammers and plagiarists are so easily able to outrank original creators is because of the quirks of a “pull” web. Switching more to a “push” model eliminates that problem.

However, according to Cutts, Google only places a small amount of credibility in such systems right now though it may expand its use of them in the near future. It will be interesting to see what impact they will have on spammers when and if they do.

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

1: Vostu Turns Table on Zynga With Game Copying Allegations

First off today, the Brazilian gaming company Vostu has hit back against Zynga claiming that Zynga has no right to sue them over allegedly copying their games because the elements Zynga is accusing Vostu of copying aren’t original to Zynga. Vostu also says that, even as late as January of this year, Zynga had no issue with Vostu’s alleged copying and even expressed interest in buying the company. Zynga has denied the allegations and said that there is a difference between any copying they have done and what they accuse Vostu of doing.

2: Music Piracy Row Escalates Between Label and Magazine

Next up today, London record label Ninja Tunes have accused the German music magazine Backspin of having leaked a promo copy of a promo CD sent to them for review. According to the label, the CD was watermarked to identify who it was sent to and, when the album was leaked online they were able to trace it back to that copy. Backspin, however, said the album was leaked before they even got the CD, a fact that Torrentfreak was not able to confirm. Ninja Tunes has said they will not be sending any more promo CDs to the magazine.

3: Euro Beaks to Rule if TVCatchup.com is Legal

Finally today, the UK High Court has asked the European Court to rule on whether or not TVCatchup, a streaming site that rebroadcasts live TV, is a legal service. The UK court had previously ruled that it was an infringement as, under British law, communicating a copyrighted work to the public is an infringement. However, the court wants to know if that is also a violation under EU law. According to TVCatchup, their service is legal as they don’t control how their equipment is used and only give the means to access the broadcasts.

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: U.K. Film, TV Directors Support Rejection of ‘Fair Use’ Copyright Policy

First off today, Directors U.K., a group which represents some 4,000 film and television directors in the country, has come out in support of the Hargreave’s report, especially its decision not to recommend a U.S.-style fair use provision in the country. The group also favors another proposal in the report, the addition of a central body to manage the rights clearance for film and music. The report, which was prepared by professor Ian Hargreaves, was at the request of the UK government and proposes several changes to UK copyright law, including the legalization for format shifting and a system for obtaining rights to orphan works.

2: The Learning Company Suing Zynga Over Oregon Trail Trademark

Next up today, rightsholders in the classic game “Oregon Trail” have filed suit against Zynga, the makers of the “Farmville” game claiming that an expansion for the game, also entitled “Oregon Trail”, infringes on both their copyright and trademark. The lawsuit, filed by The Learning Company (TLC), which is a subsidiary of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, claims the game has many similarities to the original “Oregon Trail” and violates both their trademark and copyright protections. According to the lawsuit, TLC had approached Zynga about making a Facebook version of their game, only to have Zynga use a third-party to create the expansion, which was released in February.

3: Copyright firm purports trademark protection on copyright symbol

Finally today, what seems to be a design error lead to controversy for Access Copyright, a Canadian non-profit organization that seeks to help artists protect copyright, by making them appear to claim trademark over the famous copyright symbol. The “C” with a circle around it was prominently displayed on their site with a “TM” next to it, indicating they were claiming the symbol was their trademark. The group has since corrected the issue, saying it was an error on their part, but not before many bloggers jumped on the controversy.

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.

What followed was a 24-hour firestorm over the removal as Ars attempted to use every channel available, including publicity, to get its Facebook page and its 40,000 fans restored. However, as the story unfolded, it was revealed that Ars was not the only group to have lost its page in this manner. Several others have had lost their pages due to similar notices and they had no luck in getting them restored.

Fortunately though, there was a happy ending for Ars. After about 24 hours of downtime, Facebook restored the page and everything slowly returned to normal. However, for Facebook, the incident was a huge black eye and has called into question their DMCA procedures.

So what happened and what could prevent it from happening again? A lot of the answers aren’t clear but what we do know paints a pretty bleak picture for Facebook in this particular area.

What Happened Between Ars Technica and Facebook

Sometime on the morning of Friday, April 29 Ars Technica noticed that its Facebook fan page was down and they were locked out from editing it. When Ars inquired about it, Facebook’s help team responded with a stock letter that pointed them to a generic help article, one that had no actual information about the notice itself.

Ars posted about the outage and, quickly, others began to provide similar stories, including Neowin and Redmond Pie.

As the media attention grew, Facebook eventually made a statement to ReadWriteWeb where they said they had contacted Ars about the issue, per their policy, but that they were looking into the matter.

However, as the day dragged on, the fan pages started to come back online, one at a time and without any official notice by Facebook.

Facebook did eventually release a statement on the issue, saying in part, “We have investigated a number of recent intellectual property cases and have restored four pages as a result. We apologize for any inconvenience. Abuse of DMCA and other intellectual property notice procedures is a challenge for every major Internet service and we take it seriously.”

There’s been no word what, if any, changes Facebook plans on making to its DMCA policies.

The Problems with Facebook’s DMCA Process

Right off the bat, there are several problems with Facebook’s DMCA process, at least as it unfolded in this situation.

1. Poor Communication: It took two days before Ars knew what the DMCA notice was over and even the basics of who filed it. This prevented Ars from following through on the notice or preparing a proper counter-notice.
2. Not a Copyright Issue: The actual DMCA notice lists “Ars Technica” as the work being infringed upon. If this were a legitimate complaint, the DMCA would not be the proper vehicle for this matter as the name of the side is a trademark dispute. Facebook has a form for filing non-copyright IP claims, such as trademark disputes.
3. No Opportunity to Respond: Facebook simply removed the page without giving Ars a chance to remove the allegedly infringing material. This is related to the first item, but removal of the entire fan page seems to be a drastic step, at least not without giving the page owner a chance to fix the problem surgically.
4. Questions About Authenticity of Filer: Though we don’t know who filed the notice or if they were a real person, there has been some indication that the individual’s information was clearly false or should have been quickly realized as such. Though hosts have no obligation to verify the filer’s information, they usually at least check to make sure it makes sense and is complete.
5. Lack of Counternotice Process: Finally, when asked about filing a counter-notice, at least one who had their page removed said that Facebook instructed them to work it out with the filer rather than file a counter-notice. While, as we discussed before, Facebook doesn’t have to answer to counter-notices, they have at least an ethical obligation to consider them.

However, the problem actually goes a great deal deeper than the recent stories. In October we talked about Facebook’s controversial response to a DMCA over a Facebook group for the movie “Let Me In”. There, Facebook removed much of the content from the group but ignored a counternotice that was filed.

On the other hand, those who file legitimate notices with Facebook often report that Facebook is slow to act on proper DMCA notices, often taking a week or more to remove the infringing content. This is something I’ve seen first hand as well.

All in all, it seems Facebook’s DMCA process is in disarray and is in need of a major overhaul.

How to Fix Facebook’s DMCA Process

Fixing Facebook’s DMCA (and other abuse) process is no simple task. However, there are a few steps Facebook can take to rapidly improve the process for both sides of the coin.

1. Create an Abuse Center: Dreamhost has an excellent abuse center that deals with nearly all kinds of abuse, such as spam, copyright infringement, phishing and so forth. Facebook, to my knowledge, has no such centralized hub, instead scattering their various forms on the site. This is important as it ensures that notices are filed the correct way and get to the right person. No spam complaints in the copyright form, etc.
2. A “Sanity Check” Before Execution: It seems to me that the problems with the DMCA notice files against Ars could have been spotted in a few seconds by someone with knowledge on the process. As such, it’s crucial that Facebook makes sure every complaint is evaluated by someone knowledgeable about the law and be able to ask for additional information or clarification if needed.
3. Use In and Out of Account Notifications: One of Blogger’s recent DMCA overhauls made it so that those who had a complaint filed against them had a notice both in their account’s dashboard and emailed to them. Facebook should adopt something similar for all abuse complaints, not just copyright, to properly notify users of the complaint made, what action was taken and what they can do.
4. A Clear Response Path: Given that Facebook may be too large to let their customer remove infringing material direction (though this is GoDaddy’s policy), the best hope may be to provide a clear path of response, couternotice and appeal. Right now, Facebook is notoriously difficult to reach and that’s not good for customers wrestling with any kind of abuse issue, copyright or otherwise.

All in all, the situation between Ars and Facebook was completely avoidable and has less to do with the DMCA process and more to do with Facebook’s policies.

Bottom Line

Facebook is hardly unique in having problems with its DMCA and abuse processes. Nearly every host has issues and ways that they can improve. Despite that, it seems that, the larger a host gets, the more the problems shine.

Most likely, Facebook’s policies were written and established when it was a much smaller site and they never revisited them after they grew to be as large as they are. This creates a problem as a system that is acceptable when you only get a few notices a day will usually fall apart if it starts getting hundreds.

It’s time for Facebook to revisit its DMCA policies and this incident is an excellent opportunity to do just that.

Hopefully, if they can do that, they can move forward from this incident and start rebuilding their reputation in this area.