However, that has been changing in recent years as several search engines have come online for the express purpose of tracking duplicate images. Though, most notably, this has included Tineye, other search engines, including Google, have gotten in on the act as well.

Now, a Firefox extension, Who Stole My Pictures (WSMP), is aiming at making all of those search engines available at one convenient place, your right click menu, thus making it trivial to search for plagiarism of your images or duplicates of any image you find online.

But how well does it work? I decided to give it a test to find out.

What is Who Stole My Pictures?

The extension itself is nothing fancy. It is basically a sub-menu in the browser’s right-click menu that lets you quickly search for any image on Yandex.ru, Tineye.com, Google.com, Baidu.com or Cydral.com, each of which have different reverse image search tools.

So, all you do is right click the image you want to search for, select “Who Stole My Pictures” and then choose your search engine.

All in all, it’s a very straightforward extension. While it doesn’t do anything to help parse the results or to make it easy to search multiple engines at once (it just links to the regular results pages), it does make performing such searches more convenient.

This is especially useful with the foreign-language search engines, which would be difficult for an English speaker to use without the aid of a tool like this.

Is “Who Stole My Pictres” Worthwhile?

The ideal use case for WSMP is an artist who wants to do the occasional quick search for their work. Artists wanting to check their entire library will likely want to look at other tools.

Of course, WSMP isn’t just for finding plagiarists of your photos, but can find duplicates of pretty much any photo online, which can make it useful in situations where you know you’ve seen an image before or you suspect another artist of being a rip off.

All in all, if you want to occasionally check an image for duplicates, this can be a powerful extension. But if you want to protect an entire library, you need to look elsewhere.

Bottom Line

More than anything, WSMP is a sign of just how far the image detection industry has come in the last few years. When Tineye was launched just a few years ago, it was a coup for photographers, even as limited as it was. Today, one has browser extensions that streamline and organize the multiple sources one can check.

Though there’s still clearly a long way to go for photos to catch up with text in this area, the improvements are more than noticeable in just the time I’ve been running Plagiarism Today. It is going to be very interesting to see what happens in the next few years.

Even with proper handling of takedown notices, it can be 48 hours or more before a response is received of a work comes down. That’s more than enough time to forget about filing a notice and completely lose track of it. Thus, if a host doesn’t respond or is sluggish in doing so, you may forget to follow up and, leaving the infringement online needlessly.

Previously, I had relied on spreadsheets in Google Docs to help track sent DMCA notices and the responses I was getting. However, while I still use it when working on larger projects, I’ve found a new service to supplement such manual tracking methods, it’s called Boomerang and it is an add on for Firefox or Google Chrome that works with Gmail or Google Apps to help you keep track of your sent mail.

If you’ve struggled with this issue or any email tracking issue, you will probably want to take a look at Boomerang for your own account.

What is Boomerang?

The big idea behind the service is fairly simple, in addition to enabling you to send mail at a later date, Boomerang returns (boomerangs) messages to your inbox at a designated time. It works with both messages in your inbox currently, for example, messages you don’t need right now but will want to see in a few days and also with mail that you’re sending out.

For example, if you send out a DMCA notice, you can tell Boomerang to put the message back in your inbox after X number of days. It is also smart enough to recognize if you heard back, meaning that the other party responded to the email thread, and gives you the option of choosing whether or not to boomerang the message back in that event.

This means that, if you send a DMCA notice (or any other email for that matter) and don’t hear back about it after X number of days, the message will be placed back in your inbox for follow up.

This, I’ve found, has greatly simplified email tracking, in particular with DMCA notices, and has made me much more efficient at following up on ongoing DMCA matters than I was with more manual systems.

Some Boomerang Limitations

All of this being said, Boomerang does have a few limitations that are worth noting.

First, it only works with emails that pass through Gmail or Google Apps. If you send a DMCA notice via a form, as with Google’s new DMCA system, you’ll have to find a different way to keep track of it. It also doesn’t work with notices sent via fax or postal mail obviously.

Second, Boomerang’s system for tracking replies only works if the message is in the same thread. Thus, if a host responds with a trouble ticket or changes the subject line, Boomerang won’t pick it up and will return the message to your inbox even though you’ve gotten your answer. This is a fairly small problem and easily dealt with, but annoying at times as well. However, you can go into Boomerang’s backend and remove the message from the queue by hand if it bothers you too much.

Finally, I’ve been getting errors saying that a message can’t be found when I try to boomerang something already in my inbox. It’s an erratic error but has limited its usefulness in dealing with existing messages. That being said, I am yet to have this problem with an outgoing message.

All in all, Boomerang is not a complete tracking solution, especially for DMCA notices, but it is better than the alternatives I’ve played with and it is a great aid in preventing notices from falling through the cracks.

Bottom Line

If you are sending out DMCA notices, or any other legal notices for that matter, you need to stay on top of them and follow up as appropriate. Boomerang can help with that.

Best of all, Boomerang is completely free, at least for right now, and also has a version available for Outlook (the Outlook version costs $29). If you want, you can purchase a Boomerang subscription for the Gmail product though it currently doesn’t do anything other than purchase a year’s subscription for when Boomerang leaves beta.

Overall, Boomerang has been a great addition to my arsenal and it’s a tool that I’m proud to share with my readers here in hopes that they will find it useful too.

However, Creative Commons has always come with one headache: Attribution.

Though all Creative Commons licenses require attribution (other than public domain dedications) completing the attribution requirement under CC is notoriously difficult and time-consuming. It requires adding in the person’s name, the URL of the content, the title of the work, the license and a link to the license itself. This can require a lot of copying and pasting, just to use a single image.

OpenAttribute, however, hopes to fix that problem or at least make it a little more bearable. As a plugin available for both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, OpenAttribute aims to make the insertion of Creative Commons attribution as easy as possible.

Though currently in a very early beta and wrestling with some potentially nasty bugs, OpenAttribute is already showing a great deal of promise and a good deal of usefulness as well. If you use CC-licensed content regularly, this is a tool you need to be aware of and one you should follow closely.

How Does it Work

Both extensions work the same way fundamentally so I’ll be focusing on the Google Chrome version for this writeup.

Once installed, the extension hides itself until you surf to a page where it detects a Creative Commons License. There, an icon appears on your address bar that opens a dropdown when clicked.

The dropdown presents you with basic information about the license of the work and, when clicked, will give you the option of copying the attribution for it in one of two formats: Plain text or HTML.

I did an experiment with this post on Plagiarism Today and here are what the results for each look like (formatted solely for line breaks):

Text:

Flickr Blunder Shows Problem with DMCA Counternotices : taken from – http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2011/02/02/flickr-blunder-shows-problem-with-dmca-counternotices/ Author: Jonathan Bailey http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

HTML (RDF):

Flickr Blunder Shows Problem with DMCA Counternotices Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported / CC BY-SA 3.0

Overall, the results look pretty good and it certainly takes a lot of the headache out of attributing a CC-licensed creation. However, there were a few snafus that I ran into along the way and a few places where OpenAttribute may need to do some additional work.

Problems and Hiccups

As great as the system is, it isn’t perfect and those who do seek to use OpenAttribute need to be aware of its limitations as they might create trouble when trying to license works for use.

First, the HTML version is missing a link to the original article, something that is required by the license, and also appears to have an HTML error in that it has an extra closing “a” tag. However, other than those issues, which can probably be fixed easily with a tweak, it has all the required information and works very well (Note: The source URL is in the meta information for the site but is not linked).

There were also a few other, relatively minor, bugs that I encountered in my use. For one, again in Chrome, was that it would always pull the information from the last CC-enabled page that I loaded. For example, if I visited the URL above and then opened another page on my site in a new tab, OpenAttribute would pull the information from the latter page, even when in the previous tab.

The bigger problem, however, is that at first OpenAttribute would and could not pull the author information from my site. I was using the older-format CC notices, the ones without author and other metadata (I have since updated). As a result, OpenAttribute did not recognize my name, because the information wasn’t there, and would instead attribute the work to whoever the last-visited author is.

For example, when I try it on my firend’s blog that doesn’t have the metadata, I am listed as the author since I visited my site just prior. This would go on until I found a site with the author meta information that would overwrite my name.

While it’s understandable that OpenAttribute can’t interpret what it doesn’t know (and many people will have to update their CC licenses), the way it can misrepresent author information is very worrisome. Someone just using the extension casually can, very easy, attribute content to the wrong person.

A better solution would be to prompt to the user to fill in the author information, or even just leave it blank if the info can’t be found on the page.

Still, the extension shows a great deal of promise and it’s definitely one of the better ideas in Creative Commons usage to come out in a long, long time.

Bottom Line

Though the bugs are fairly ugly in a few places, it’s important to note that both extensions are early betas and there is a great deal of room for improvement. In fact, the Google Chrome extension is listed as being version 0.1, making it just a first release..

So, even though there are some serious problems with it, I feel compelled to go a bit easier on it than usual. Furthermore, OpenAttribute is still far more effective than the bookmarklets I covered last year and has many more uses than PhotoDropper. That alone makes it worth noting, bugs and all.

In short, I love the idea of the extensions and, even with the issues, they are still fairly useful. If you’re someone who uses CC-licensed work a great deal, it’s definitely worth giving them a try, so long as you are careful and aware of the problems these extensions have currently.

The extension connects to PicScouts ImageIRC database of licensable images and scans images that the browser is loading to see which, if any, can be licensed for reuse through the services PicScout represents.

The goal of the new user interface is to make it easier for a designer or other person interested in buying rights to an image to locate photos for their desired use and, though the change is largely a cosmetic one, it actually addresses one of the major concerns I had with the extension when I first reviewed it back in December.

What’s New with ImageExchange

As mentioned above, the changes are primarily cosmetic and designed to make the extension much easier to use. The biggest change is that the new interface gets away from the use of “i” in the corner of licenseable images and, instead, creates a sidebar of images that can be purchased or otherwise be made available for reuse.

This makes it easier and quicker to distinguish images that can be licensed from those where no information is available and it makes quicker to glance through the images that are available without going through the entire content of the page.

The change is currently only for the Firefox version of the plugin though Picscout is planning on updating the Internet Explorer version as well and introduce similar extensions for other browsers (Google Chrome, Safari, etc.) down the road.

An Interesting Trick

Shortly after the announcement, photographer David Sanger pointed out to me an interesting potential use for the extension, tracking down where a site gets its images from.

All one has to do is install the extension, visit Google Image Search and then search for “site:domain.com” to pull up the images on the domain and then have ImageExchange sort through them and see where they came from.

For example, if you perform the search using Plagiarism Today, you’ll quickly learn that this site uses a lot of CC-licensed images. For other sites, you may be able to use this to backtrack the images and see what stock photo sites they favor.

Certainly not a groundbreaking use in helping one track their own content, but a potentially enlightening tool nonetheless.

Bottom Line

The change fixes the major usability issue of ImageExchange, not being able to clearly see which images were available and which weren’t. Though, in my experiments, it didn’t find significantly more images than before, I certainly found it easier to locate the ones that it did.

It remains to be seen how widely adopted this extension will be by graphic designers and others who are interested in licensing images, but by making it easier to use, they certainly increase the likelihood that a broader range of potential customers will jump on board.

Hopefully, that is exactly what will happen and, more than anything, this extension can be a tool to get creators thinking about the importance of licensing and the value of doing so.

When a big part of your job has you visiting both spam blogs and pirate Web sites, ad blocking software is not option, it is a requirement. Not only do I not wish to give money to those sites, but the ads are often so intrusive as to interfere with whatever I am doing. As such, ad blocking software, quite literally, makes it possible for me to do my job on many projects.

But what about ad blocking on legitimate sites?

Ars Technica recently raised the issue by conducting a brief experiment on the matter. The site altered their code so that anyone running ad blocking software would also strip out the site’s content, essentially making it useless. Anyone who either A) Whitelisted the domain or B) Paid for a subscription would be immune to this effect.

However, this caused a great deal of controversy among Ars Technica’s readers when it was discovered. Many leaped to the site’s defense, others whitelisted the domain, but still a sizable mob vented anger and frustration at the change, many vowing never to return.

Ars Technica eventually backed away, undoing the changes. This came after AdBlockPlus updated itself to defeat the protection but Ars Technica staffers said they could easily rotate the code to defeat the reversal, essentially playing “cat and mouse” for all eternity.

But Ars’ goal wasn’t to shut the ad blockers away permanently but rather, to start a dialog on the issue and to educate users. A dialog I am hoping to continue here.

Ad Blocking as a Form of Piracy

With rampant piracy and a swell of free, legal content hurting nearly all content industries, many view ad-based distribution as one of the few possible business models that can still work. Furthermore, it is one employed by countless Web sites, including Ars Technica.

However, ad blocking essentially short circuits that model. Since the ads are never loaded, the site pays for the content, bandwidth and server costs to deliver the material to the reader but never has a chance to recoup the costs. In short, every person who blocks ads on a site is a mathematical loss for the site, albeit a small one.

Since many Web sites, especially larger ones, are paid on a per impression basis, simply saying “I wouldn’t click on them anyway” is no consolation. Refusing to look at the ads or be subject to the impression deprives the site of revenue.

Patrick O’Keefe, both my co-host of the Copyright 2.0 Show and the operator of many advertising-supported forums, agrees with this, “I say this as both a publisher and an active website user and reader: If you love a site, you should view their ads or, if they offer it, subscribe to their ad-free version. You should not block their ads because, if you do, you are contributing to the end of that site.”

As a result, many, though not necessarily O’Keefe, view this as a strange form of piracy. A situation where the viewer is trying to obtain content for “free”, without taking on their share of the burden. The only difference is where traditional piracy involves obtaining a normally paid creation for free, ad blocking takes a work that was available at the “cost” of viewing ads but removes that expense.

As with any other type of piracy, this shifts the cost of the work to the paying customers, in this case those who view the page normally, and forces creators to squeeze more revenue from them in order to stay alive.

With that in mind, there is little doubt that ad blockers do hurt legitimate sites, but the question is how much and, more importantly, why do people use them in the first place.

Why Block Ads?

Given that everyone seems to want to support the site they love, the question becomes why do so many people go out of their way to block ads?

On that front, there are many reasons given, below are just a few:

1. Annoyance: Many ads on today’s Web are animated and even contain sound. Not only are these distracting but may be inappropriate to view in certain environments, such as computer labs. They may also interfere with other programs, such as music players.
2. Bandwidth Issues: Many consumers are paying for the bandwidth they use and ads, especially animated or large image advertisements, can cost them money, essentially showing them advertisements that they have to pay for.
3. Privacy: As ad networks have consolidated and have spread across more and more sites, they are able to track user’s surfing activities all over the Web and many intentionally do so to serve better targeted ads. Mix that in with the dubious privacy history of some ad networks and many feel uneasy about loading ads.

The problem is pretty simple. As advertisers have become more and more aggressive about selling their ad space, out of necessity, they have used tactics that have made visitors less and less happy, so much so that many have installed ad blocking software, including 40% of Ars Technica’s audience according to their research.

But is ad blocking a copyright issue? It’s an unfortunately dubious area of the law.

Ad Blocking as Copyright Infringement

One area of contention with ad blocking software is whether it is illegal or not. There are several legal theories that may offer an avenue of attack for those who wish to seek recouse against the creators of such tools and, possibly, their users.

The biggest is that ad blocking software infringes the copyright of the sites they filter by creating an unlawful derivative work of the site. It is an interesting theory, by which the Web page, as it is intended to be displayed, is a work that is unlawfully altered by the application.

The problem is that it would, at least theoretically, also affect a slew of other Web page moderation tools, including those that add search links or notations for bookmarks. Anything that displayed a Web site in its non-intended form, could be bit.

Another theory is that, depending on the site’s terms of service, that the use of such applications could be a violation of that contract. This one would be targeted more to the users of ad blocking software rather than the makers. However, this would be a dubious path to go down in the courts as the PR backlash would inevitably do more damage than ad blocking.

Instead, it would more likely be used as a tool to flag user accounts and even ban repeat users. While still dangerous from a PR standpoint, it’s better than filing suit.

However, none of these theories have been tested and, to date, marketers have been trying a more conciliatory routes. The Ars Technica “experiment” marking the first time in recent history a major, well-respected site went against ad blockers head on, even calling them freeloaders.

But that begs the question: Are ad blockers freeloaders? If so, is it worthwhile for sites like Ars Technica to turn them away?

Are Ad Blockers Freeloaders?

On the surface the math seems pretty simple. A user with ad block generates zero revenue and consumes bandwidth, server resources, etc. As such, they operate at a net loss.

The reality, however, is not that straightforward. Ad blockers often contribute to the site in other ways, including posting comments, submitting links to social news sites, sharing URLs with friends and helping build a community that others, including those who don’t block ads, will want to visit and partake in.

The challenge for Web sites is determining if these visitors are valuable enough to welcome. Would a site make more money blocking those with ad blockers and swapping the decreased traffic for some users whitelisting the site? Or do those who block ads add enough value to increase the site’s revenue without seeing ads? There’s no sure-fire way to tell.

The better solution, it would seem, is to find a way to reach the ad blockers without turning them away. In short, find a way to increase the number who view ads while not completely blocking the ad blocking crowd.

Seeking a Better Solution

The path Ars Technica chose seems likely to be the best. Though it initially blocked ad blockers, it instead chose to educate those users about the harm they were doing and ask them to either disable their plugins or whitelist their domain.

There are even WordPress plugins that can help achieve this goal, replacing ads with pleas to disable ad blockers for those who use them.

This is something that O’Keefe agrees with saying that, “Ad blockers are scary. I think that some people don’t realize the damage they can do. In which case, it’s good to try to reach those people and educate them. Displaying a message to people who run ad blockers, asking them to turn them off, and explaining why, sounds like a good way to do that.”

Though these methods won’t convince everyone, or even a majority, to turn off their ad blockers, they will convince some and do so without turning away those who won’t or can’t.

Bottom Line

There are no easy answer to the ad blocking puzzle. The ethics and legality of ad blocking are going to be debated for a long time to come. Where traditional piracy fits more neatly into existing copyright law and social norms are becoming somewhat more settled, ad blocking is still relatively new and untested both in courts and in society at large.

However, as the Ars Technica ordeal illustrates, it is starting to get to a level that impacts Web sites enough to take action. It will be interesting to see if, in five years or so, if we look back on Ars Technica’s play as something of a “Napster moment” in the war against ad blocking.

What is clear is that this issue is growing in importance and it is only going to get more divisive and more heated in the future. What we saw this weekend was, almost certainly, just a mere taste of what’s to come

This issue is about to blow up and in a very big way.

As previously covered, image matching company PicScout recently launched its Image IRC, a database of fingerprinted images with licensing data that is publicly accessible, and ImageExchange, a user-facing program that accesses the Image IRC and finds matched images on the Web.

Currently, ImageExchange is only available as a Firefox extension (though other extensions are planned) and is in the very early stages of public testing. Aimed mostly at buyers of stock images, such as designers, ImageExchange and the Image IRC currently have access to millions of images, including from many of the largest microstock and stock photo agencies.

With all of that in mind, I wanted to take a look and see how well ImageExchange performed both to see what it was doing well and to see what might need improvement in later versions.

Here’s a look at my experience with the extension and what my early impressions are.

The Experiment

For my limited test I decided to simulate what a potential searcher for stock photos might do, I visited Google Image Search and experimented with different search terms to see how many images were found and to make notes about the usefulness of the extension.

All in all, I conducted 35 searches. The first 25 were for a variety of semi-random terms a stock photo searcher might look for, ranging from vague to very specific. Five searches were for terms in the first 25 but with the words “stock photo” added. The final five were for the same terms but with the words “clip art” added.

From there, I checked the first three pages of Google and counted how many matches were found. The results are below (click to enlarge):

Matching

As you can see in the chart, the matching isn’t exactly going to blow anyone away. Many of the searches produced no results with Google Image Search, in my test, showing 18 results per page, the highest any one search found on one page was 6, or 1/3. None generated more than 17 matches out of the 54 total images.

That being said, the results were interesting. The more specific the search, the better ImageExchange did. Searches with “stock photo” added also did better most of the time.

However, to be clear, when it was struggling to find matches it isn’t because ImageExchange wasn’t matching images correctly, but because the top pages within Google were filled with user-generated content and other images that aren’t indexed at this time. That will likely change as the database grows.

On that note, I fully expect these numbers to go up in the coming weeks in months as PicScout adds both more stock image providers, new sources of user-generated content and the existing sources continue to add images.

In short, the matching isn’t great at this time but it shows a lot of promise and, considering that it is a free service that runs in the background, it is still a worthwhile install.

Usability

ImageExchange is pretty much a “set and forget” extension. The installation is nothing special if you’re familar with Firefox extensions and, as you can see in the image to the right, the settings are pretty basic, the most important being the ability to manually search for just the images you ask.

My biggest gripe on the usability front is that the “i” that indicates whether an image is a match or not is a bit difficult to see, though it would be easier in regular Web surfing, it got lost in Google Image Search’s already cluttered results pages. I had to be careful to go through image by image when counting to make sure I didn’t miss any.

However, once clicked, the “i” did a good job directing me to the correct licensing page. In a sample of the found images, I never had an issue finding the correct licensor and understanding how to obtain the image.

All things considered, it’s a simple extension that seems to work well and not require any real intervention from the user. It’s a “set and forget” application that does its job well.

Speed

I wouldn’t call ImageExchange lightning fast but I wouldn’t call it slow either. On my computer, it took about 4-5 seconds after the page loaded to complete its matching.

The timeframe isn’t outrageous but there is no clear indication as to when ImageExchange is done working other than the icon in the toolbar. Since many of the “i”s loaded before ImageExchange had finished checking all of the images, it was very easy to try and click to the next page too soon sometimes.

The time wasn’t nearly as long during regular Web surfing. It is only during these images searches that the delay was as noticeable as it was.

Potential Uses

Considering that ImageExchange is both zero-cost and zero-thought, there’s really no reason not to install it. Yes, it has flaws but they are all ones that can either be addressed or are being addressed now. It is important to note though that, right now now, it is not aimed at laypeople, but at buyers of stock images, a crowd that will be well-served by this service.

My hope is that the service is able to grow in both scope and usability to reach out to a broader market, something PicScout has said they are working on. It would be nice to see average bloggers and Web designers using this tool to find licensable images on the Web as they surf.

It certainly is an improvement over those who use Google Images as a clip art library.

Bottom Line

The $10,000 question is whether or not you should install this extension. To that, the answer depends on what you intend to do with it. If you’re a buyer of stock images or routinely do searches for reusable photos, the answer is probably “Yes”. It’s free, easy and, even though it isn’t as effective as it could be, it works well enough to probably help you find what you need.

On the other hand, if you’re a blogger or someone that only looks for images more casually, especially if you’re looking for ones for free use, it’s not the right tool yet. That being said, do keep an eye on it as improvements could easily change that.

All in all, ImageExchange is really a no-cost service to use and, if you’re the type of user who might gain any benefit from it, I would consider signing up to use it. Though there are imperfections, they don’t outweigh the benefits and they especially do not outweigh the potential.

Since locating a host is one of the most difficult parts of dealing with copyright infringement or spam, have repeatedly highlighted tools that have helped users detect who the host of a site is. I’ve specifically mentioned Who Is Hosting This?, a great tool to make finding the host as simple as possible, and Domain Tools, a site for finding out a wide variety of information about a site for those with more experience.

However, while doing research for another article, I ran across an old Firefox and IE toolbar by Netcraft, a British Internet services company that specializes in security, particularly with phishing-related issues.

Though it is called Netcraft Anti-Phishing toolbar, it provides a very unusual and powerful feature for those that deal with content theft and spam issues, namely on-the-fly hosting and country information about any given site.

In short, if you install the toolbar, for every site you visit, you’ll see the host of the site displayed in your browser toolbar, no need to use a bookmarklet or paste the link into another site.

Though the toolbar is primarily phishing oriented, providing information on the age of the domain, the estimated rank, a site report and a “Risk Rating”, it could also be very useful for those that are either curious about hosting matters or are constantly looking up hosting information for abuse complaints.

However, there are a few caveats to remember if you decide to install it.

Words of Warning

There are a few things to keep in mind as you use this toolbar and important considerations to weigh to decide if it is right for you:

1. Privacy Issues: The toolbar does do some very basic tracking in order to compile its rankings. Though Netcraft says none of this is personally identifiable, you may wish to read through their FAQs to ensure that you agree with their policies.
2. Some Inaccurate Results: Though any automated host detection system is going to make mistakes, Netcraft lacks some of the changes and improvements made by Who Is Hosting This in terms of detecting hosts that use other networks, such as Hostgator. This means that Netcraft will detect most networks well but isn’t a complete replacement for other services.
3. Strange Linking: Clicking the link in the toolbar doesn’t take you to the host’s home page or to a page about the host company, rather, it takes you to a generic page about the site itself.
4. Incompatibility: The toolbar is rather old, not updated since May, 2008 and doesn’t work out of the box with the new Firefox 3.1 betas. I was able to get it to work with Nightly Tester Tools and it seems to be moving along fine.
5. Screen Real Estate: Obviously, any tool bar you install is going to take away some from your browsing area. If you aren’t going to use this toolbar heavily or don’t need the extra security features, you probably won’t wish to bother with it.

None of these problems will likely be a deal-breaker for those that need either the security or the host detection elements of this toolbar, but they should be weighed carefully before hitting “install”.

Bottom Line

I’m likely going to keep the toolbar installed for a while. I am interested in host-related issues both as someone who files abuse reports and DMCA notices, but also for personal curiosity. I also like the fact that it plainly shows what country is hosting the site and the age of the domain.

All in all, with this toolbar, when I see a site I need to take some form of action against and I have the toolbar installed, I’m able to form the beginnings of the strategy right away. The information provided lets me determine if the site is a likely spam blog what country it is hosted in and, in most cases, who is hosting it.

Though it isn’t for everyone, for those that need this information, it is a powerful tool and a great time saver.

Sample Information

1: Facebook Backtracks Under Community Pressure, Goes Back To Old ToS (For Now)

Facebook, after receiving a great deal of pressure from its users, has decided to return to its old TOS. Its new TOS, announced two weeks ago, had caused a great deal of controversy when it removed a clause that allowed users to terminate their copyright license to Facebook by simply removing the work, thus offering them a perpetual license to use the content, even after the user was gone.

Facebook has apologized for the TOS and has created a new group to begin working with members and seek feedback on the next terms of service. This is the second major incident, the first being Beacon, where Facebook has been forced to back away from a change due to user uproar.

2: Video Game Biz Still Targeting Canada Over Mod Chips

The International Intellectual Property Association has (again) asked the U.S. Government to take action against Canada over, among other things, mod chips in Canadian video game systems. It believes that mod chips, which allow users to play games that are either out of region or pirated, are not taken seriously enough by the Canadian government and wants the U.S. to add the country to a “Priority Watch List” along with countries such as Mexico, Russia and China.

Though it is unclear exactly what impact this would have, it is unlikely to succeed as the previous administration did not comply with a similar request and it is unlikely that the current will either.

3: Mozilla backs move to decriminalize iPhone jailbreaking

Finally today, the Mozilla Corporation, the not-for-profit behind the Firefox Web browser, has thrown its support behind an exemption for “jailbreaking” the iPhone as well as other mobile phones. Mozilla joins the EFF, Skype and others in backing the exemption to current anti-circumvention laws.

The United States Copyright Office is currently accepting comments and feedback on potential exemptions to the law and plans to institute changes later this year.

Suggestions

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

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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.

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.

What do the following have in common: Ubuntu, Firefox, OpenOffice.org, WordPress and osCommerce.

The answer is that, in addition to all being open source projects, they are also all trademarks, registered and protected.

Of course, in recent years, trademarks have become very pervasive. Even Digg, which licenses all user-posted content into the public domain, adamantly protects its trademark, shutting down sites that have similar names.

While there is nothing wrong with having and protecting a trademark, it is a good business move, what is different is that, traditionally, only enterprise open source projects such as Red Hat have taken advantage of trademark protection. Community projects rarely, if ever, applied for or enforced trademarks. Though using another open source’s project name was considered bad form, as with the Firebird/Firefox mix up, legal protection was rarely sought after or necessary.

However, the injection of trademark into the open source movement is a sign of a larger trend when it comes to intellectual property. A sign that copyrights and patents may be losing some of their prominence while trademark, their often-forgotten brother, may be stepping into the light for his time to shine.

Background

According to Harvard Law School, a trademark is “a word, symbol, or phrase, used to identify a particular manufacturer or seller’s products and distinguish them from the products of another.”

Unlike copyright, trademark is not designed to prevent copying or public display, but rather, confusion in the marketplace. The standard for trademark infringement is simply “likelihood of confusion” and that is determined on a set of variables including.

1. the strength of the mark
2. the proximity of the goods
3. the similarity of the marks
4. evidence of actual confusion
5. the similarity of marketing channels used
6. the degree of caution exercised by the typical purchaser
7. the defendant’s intent

In short, you can not use a trademark in a way that is likely to cause confusion as to the source of the product or service. Delta Faucets and Delta Airlines can coexist because they are two very different fields but if one attempts to found another computer company named Apple, they will likely find themselves in a courtroom very quickly.

Also unlike copyright, trademarks have to be defended in order to remain valid. Registering for a copyright means defending it actively. This is why Mozilla has a robust trademark policy and you can not use WordPress in a domain name without approval.

This trend toward stronger trademark protection, however, is bound to affect open source and the Web in general.

Impacting Open Source

A trademark is, fundamentally, an intellectual property right. Having a trademark gives you protections over an intangible creation the same as a copyright gives you protections over creative expressions and patents over inventions.

Since all intellectual property law is interconnected, it is inevitable that a greater push in one area will impact others. Since open source and other copyleft projects eschew many of their copyright protections, trademark becomes a way to retain control over their work when, otherwise, they would have almost none.

For example, under the terms of the GNU General Public License, I would be perfectly free to take the Firefox code and create my own browser based upon it, so long as the new browser was licensed under the same terms. However, with Mozilla’s trademark policy, I could not call this new browser “PT Mozilla” or “Jonathan’s Firefox”. Even non-official builds of Firefox itself have to carry different names and icons to avoid trademark infringement.

This means that any new browser I create would require a whole new name, whole new marketing and a whole new brand. Though some have been successful at doing just that, most notably Flock with Firefox and gOS with Ubunutu, the vast majority are not. The uphill battle is just too great and the mother project usually just absorbs any worthwhile code from the lesser-known fork.

What this results in is that most of there is no incentive to fork off new versions of a product as the chance of success if very low. Once a project has gotten established, reached a point where it warrants a trademark and has burned itself into the public mind, it can almost prevent competition. There will be no “Firefox +” or “WordPress Lite” without permission from their owners.

Perhaps even worse is that, should the company behind the mark close down, it takes up to five years before the mark is available again for public use. That is, of course, assuming that the trademark isn’t simply sold and another company, perhaps one with less interest in the product.

Though rampant forking has been one of the biggest problems with open source technology, trademark law is prone to many of the same abuses and problems as both copyright and patent. Relying on trademark to make open source profitable and sustainable may open it up to many of the same problems as a reliance on other intellectual property.

This isn’t to say it shouldn’t be done or that it is a bad idea, just that every business plan has risks, especially new ones.

Trademark As a Business Model

What we’ve seen over the past few years is the rise of trademark as a business model. You create, or have your users create, large amounts of copyrightable content, give the content away for free, often giving up many rights to the work and then leverage your brand name to make money.

It’s a system that has been used repeatedly with a great deal of success on the Web. Many sites, including this one, have followed that principle and made it work.

Open source projects have begun to use it as well. You can get a free WordPress blog on any number of sites, but most still choose to get one from WordPress.com. The strong brand name and reputation make it an preferred choice. That type of preference, generally, comes from a combination of a good product, successful marketing and diligent trademark enforcement.

Indeed, without trademark protection and enforcement, it is unlikely that many open source companies would have a business model at all. If anyone could make and distribute their own Firefox browser, we’d have little reason to go to Mozilla and download their version, complete with Google links that put money into the foundation.

While this can be said about many businesses, traditional, open source or otherwise, it can’t be denied that open source companies, along with millions of Web sites, are more dependent on trademark than most companies were 20 years ago. With the digital age copyright has slipped in importance while trademark protection has grown.

This isn’t to say that copyright does not have an important role (otherwise this would be the swan song for this site) but that role is more geared toward enforcing the trademark, registered or unregistered. Copyright, as a business model, is no longer a matter of simply targeting illegal copying (unless your organization ends in AA) but in protecting your corporate identity by targeting plagiarists, spammers and those try to sell works commercially.

In a few decades, trademark may replace copyright as a cornerstone of intellectual property, that is, if it hasn’t done so already.

Conclusions

Copyright is not going anywhere. It is going to remain an important intellectual property right for a very long time to come. However, the role it plays is shifting and how it relates to other forms of intellectual property, especially when looked at from a purely practical standpoint, is going to change.

Personally, I am glad that these companies and their products have registered and enforced trademarks. It means that they are taken more seriously as businesses, helps them focus their community’s energy and, I feel, has improved the quality of the products. The same can also be said for most Web sites and content producers that have gone down this path.

When Creative Commons protects its trademark, you know things can not be too bad.

The one request that I would make is that those in the open source and copyleft movement show more understanding for those who do choose to strictly enforce their copyrights. I may often disagree with their decisions, but it is their choice. Not only is copyright necessary for the GPL, Creative Commons and other open source licenses to be valid and enforceable, but many of the stars in the industry are making their living off of another intellectual property right, namely trademark. Sadly, most of the criticisms hurled at copyright enforcement can be said about trademark just as easily.

Intellectual property isn’t the enemy, it is how it is used. Any law, including trademark, copyright and patent can be abused. What is important is that we are responsible citizens. Those without good business models will die off soon enough. Those who find the right balance will thrive.

In the end, that will determine who is right and who is wrong. The law of the jungle has always been more vicious than the law of the land.