Google is wasting honest webmasters time and giving them ulcers.

Also, sometimes when I feel like wasting some time, I reply back with a request to prove that the site is indeed theirs by placing something in meta or however else I decide to make them do it. Every once in a while I get no response, which makes me think what they do is:

1) Find indexed links to top competitors.
2) Send a batch of dmca violation link removal requests.
3) Profit?

Other times when email address matches the submission email address, I sure do feel like charging them for changing their mind since all in all it is extra work.
 


jschmidli said:
It's because they are using a service mentioned in this T&C thread.

http://www.wickedfire.com/traffic-c...cessfully-used-link-removal-service-here.html

It's a straight mad libs style email that gets sent out. They just insert their name, their site, and your site into a cookie cutter email and blast them out by the thousands.

This really needs to get some bad press. Google has traded what they call "web spam" which is legal and very hard to prove into "email spam" which is illegal and can actually be prosecuted.

Email spam does not effect there core business so they do not care.


I got 25 of these just this morning.


Simply not gonna happen. What's worse is that the services in the other thread are taking advantage of their clients because they do not guarantee that the links will be removed but rather just an attempt will be made. They know good and well that the links are not going to be taken down.

For only $97/mo you get 400 link delete requests. That means they send out 400 of these emails knowing that next to none of them will have any effect.

While I realize its a golden opportunity to bank it just seems wrong in so many ways.
Click to expand...

I hate to burst your bubble, but you'd have a hard time proving can-spam violations. They can argue pretty easy it's personal communication between two private parties and not commercial email. You'd have to show the commercial intent in the email and after that it would be civil and not criminal. They're making not effort to hide (made up name, sending from proxies, forged headers, etc).

Let's say you managed to proved a civil can-spam violation. There are safe harbor provision they'd more than likely fall under and all the time trying to sue them would be wasted. The only reason I know about the safe harbor provisions is I was actually sued by some famous anti-spam litigator and part of his compliant against me fell under it. I ended up settling out of court, but that's another matter.

EDIT:

Now that I think about it. If it's a commercial service doing this maybe you can sue the service. You wouldn't have to win either. If you're in California sue them in small claims court and you might be able to force a settlement. Make it cheaper to settle than to fight. That's what the fuck stick anti-spam litigators out there do.
 
tatrasim said:
While this is true for the most emails and I ignored them for a while, some started sending DMCA violation requests to my hosting companies and that is a pain to deal with. If anybody familiar with it, is it even reasonable to argue with hosting trying to prove that there is no dmca violation, that it's just a fucking link? Or does DMCA cover links as well? Some state that their URL is a registered trademark or whatever and say that I link to it without permission of the owners. Just curios if I should start sending automated fuck off replies to those emails or not.
Click to expand...

Question: What are the counter-notice and put-back procedures?

Answer: In order to ensure that copyright owners do not wrongly insist on the removal of materials that actually do not infringe their copyrights, the safe harbor provisions require service providers to notify the subscribers if their materials have been removed and to provide them with an opportunity to send a written notice to the service provider stating that the material has been wrongly removed. [512(g)] If a subscriber provides a proper "counter-notice" claiming that the material does not infringe copyrights, the service provider must then promptly notify the claiming party of the individual's objection. [512(g)(2)] If the copyright owner does not bring a lawsuit in district court within 14 days, the service provider is then required to restore the material to its location on its network. [512(g)(2)(C)]

A proper counter-notice must contain the following information:

The subscriber's name, address, phone number and physical or electronic signature [512(g)(3)(A)]
Identification of the material and its location before removal [512(g)(3)(B)]
A statement under penalty of perjury that the material was removed by mistake or misidentification [512(g)(3)(C)]
Subscriber consent to local federal court jurisdiction, or if overseas, to an appropriate judicial body. [512(g)(3)(D)]
If it is determined that the copyright holder misrepresented its claim regarding the infringing material, the copyright holder then becomes liable to the OSP for any damages that resulted from the improper removal of the material. [512(f)]

Fuck them file a counter notice. Linking isn't a violation.

http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi#QID922
 
ayzo said:
Thankfully penguin was rolled out the next week and I praised the SEO gods (Grindstone?).
Click to expand...

No but we're worshipping at the same alter. SEO got hard again and I for one welcome it with open arms, no more no talent faggots ranking with $100 ALN blasts. Suck it. McDonalds is hiring, there's no Big Mac algorithm, good luck bros.
 
crackp0t said:
EDIT:

Now that I think about it. If it's a commercial service doing this maybe you can sue the service. You wouldn't have to win either. If you're in California sue them in small claims court and you might be able to force a settlement. Make it cheaper to settle than to fight. That's what the fuck stick anti-spam litigators out there do.
Click to expand...


That's what I am talking about. The website owners are not manually sending these out. They are sent out by a service who is blasting out thousands of them. Anyone that gets these knows that it is from a service since they are the same form letter over and over again with different sites listed.

I am very familiar with copyright and trademark laws but I am not that educated when it comes to email and spam laws. These emails may not be a direct violation of can spam but they are at a minimum unsolicited bulk email and a report to their email ISP is in order.

You are right that the whole legality issue depends on whether or not it is considered commercial or not. I can see it both ways. If it is commercial then it is definite violation.

As far as the DMCA trademark and copyright notices that's 100% bull and should be fought. If anyone does get one of those you can file the counter notice and you then have 100% slam dunk case where the sender can be rung up for damages on the basis of perjury. It would be easy to prove they maliciously filed a false notice.

You cannot copyright a physical address or a URL.
You can trademark a term but using it in a link to another site is in no way a violation of that mark. Just as pointing to Walmart down the street and telling someone "That's the way to Walmart" is not a trademark violation.
 
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