Update: OpenDiary.com Responds

My previous article on OpenDiary.com has remained one of the most-read articles on the site since it was first penned in August. It has drawn a great deal of criticism from OpenDiary fans, many of whom seem to be very confused about the articles purpose, and is probably this site’s most talked-about piece.

However, it was only recently that it got the attention of the publisher of Opendiary.com. He posted a comment to it saying, in part, that he finds plagiarism “despicable and will do what I can to stop it.” He also said that there is a method in place for reporting rules violation and that it had been used successfully in another incident involving his site. Finally, he offered a direct email address for anyone with plagiarism complaints to forward their requests directly to him.

While I want to be optimistic and call this a sign that things have changed. I have several concerns. First off, the means of reporting violations, clicking the “Report a Rules Violation” link underneath “Help” on the page itself, has proved ineffective. I have filed at least one complaint through that and not received a response, even after using a full DMCA notice.

To make matters worse, I sent an email to the address listed in the comment shortly after it was posted and now, nearly four days later, I’m yet to hear a reply. My intent with that letter was to address continuing concerns that I had and to get more insight from them for the purpose of writing this article. I’m sorry that I never heard back from them before I posted this and I still hope to do so.

In the meantime though, no matter how hard I want to believe that this is a sincere change, until I see actual evidence of improvement, I have to keep my current stand. However, I will continue to inform everyone on things as they change. The law of probability says that I’ll have another incident on opediary.com or one of its related sites soon. We’ll see how that goes.

01/04/06 Update: A few days ago I received a reply from the Diary Master at OpenDiary.com. He said that he had already downloaded the form from the United States Copyright office to register his designated agent as per the DMCA and was planning to submit it soon. He also confirmed that the above mentioned “Report a Rules Violation” was the best method for handling such complaints.

Though I am very pleased to see him taking such an active role in issues fo copyright infringement, I will be following up on this as keeping watch as things progress. I sincerely hope to be able to remove OpenDiary.com from the Villians list soon.

Update 09/20/07: I am closing comments to this piece because people are commenting to it before they read the entire piece, checking the updates or the other comments. This matter is closed and has been closed for over a year.

[tags]Plagiarism, Blogging, Copyright Law, Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, OpenDiary[/tags]

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