Slashdot Mirror
Record Label Infringes Own Copyright, Site Pulled
AnonCow sends in a peculiar story from TorrentFreak, which describes the plight of a free-download music site that has been summarily evicted from the Internet for violating its own copyright. The problem seems to revolve around the host's insistence that proof of copyright be snail-mailed to them. Kind of difficult when your copyright takes the form of a Creative Commons license that cannot be verified unless its site is up. "The website of an Internet-based record label which offers completely free music downloads has been taken down by its host for copyright infringement, even though it only offers its own music. Quote Unquote Records calls itself 'The First Ever Donation Based Record Label,' but is currently homeless after its host pulled the plug."
...the copyright system works and is perfectly sane.
When even pink contract spammers can find a way online, are you telling me they can't find an ISP that doesn't have their head up their ass? File a breach of contract lawsuit if you got good reason to and if not just move on.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I mean, the market for hosting is so huge they shouldn't have a problem finding a company that actual understands CC and won't pull their site right away. I hope they do.
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
I gotta get off. All hope is lost, sanity has fled us. Run for the hills everyone. It can't get stupider then this. Or can it?
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
It's right here
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Copyright holders by definition cannot violate their own copyrights. They have the (copy)right to do with their own material as they see fit.
Their host chose to pull the plug on this website because they thought it was a risk, and because of their own lame policies. It's not like anyone actually sued for copyright infringement. The host, not the band, is who loses here. They can just go find another host who is more worthy of their service.
I wouldn't be all that surprised to hear that this is just the host's way of kicking off a heavy bandwidth user.
Most websites will have copyrighted material on them. Most of the copyrighted material will not be registered. If they have this policy, and they require proof that most people won't have, it's a bit pointless arguing with them, and a lot easier to find a new host with more sensible policies.
And I think I've found the perfect guy for them.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
That's just sad. And their hosting service doesn't seem to be subject to any reason.
They should sue them and meanwhile try to regain all content and host it somewhere else.
As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.
Who cares about companies violating their own copyright? Last night I sexually molested myself. I must be stopped before it happens again.
...publicity stunt.
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
So, the hosts asks for a copy of the registration records with the Copyright Office. That's stupid but it's not an impossible request. Record label dude can't give records because the copyright isn't registered. Fair enough. What I don't get is why record label dude doesn't simply register the music and say the registration is being processed? That makes a lot more sense than blathering about Creative Commons, and it's actually helpful if there ever are real legal problems.
To use a Slashdot-approved car analogy, what you are telling us is that if you find a used-car salesman that offers stolen cars for sale that's no big deal because there are plenty of used cars for sale that aren't stolen.
It's the sad truth of the matter that the main reason to get a law degree and pass the bar is that people will suddenly listen to you once you're a lawyer.
For those who don't want to go to the trouble and expense of becoming a lawyer, the best you can do is hire one instead.
I would wager that a lawyer could resolve this situation with just a few phone calls. The ISP won't listen to you, but if your lawyer says the exact same thing, suddenly the situation will resolve itself.
Only copy you say?
oops.
What do you mean, What do I mean by oops?...
This comment was removed due to a breach of copyright law.
Are we sure the AA's aren't involved in some back room, pulling the strings to cause this guy more grief?
He was in effect in direct competition to the 'industry'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
... literally, because the rest of the world has the Berne Convention. What are these "copyright registration forms" of which you speak?
the story does remind me of something eBay tried years ago -- they took down auctions of people selling their own software or software for linux because the auctioneers didn't have licenses from Microsoft.
however, this story sounds a bit fishy. I believe that the ISP pulled his site because it's highly likely they're retards and see any online music as pirated, but I'm suspicious of his having lost his own copies of the files. Did the other musicians in any of the bands not have copies? Didn't any of them burn onto CDs to give to their friends, or to play in their cars?
I think this is creative marketing. When the site goes back up, he'll get loads more hits to his site, and make a bunch of pity sales and more people have now heard of him and his bands. Epic Win.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
Bomb The Music Industry! Is my favorite band! Jeff Rosenstock is an amazing musician. This article has a terrible summary. The hosting company took the site down. I guess there is one positive thing could come out of this. With all this publicity Bomb the Music Industry! could get some great exposure even if this whole incident is crap. Am I the only BTMI fan on Slashdot?
Z?
It's not going to take long until the hoster takes its own sites down for using their own copyrighted logo.
:D
More recursive infringement claims please! It's like kicking yourself out of a channel on IRC (that works!)
Do not trust this signature.
According to the article, the web hosting outfit "proactively" took it upon itself - with no complaints - to take down the site.
IANAL, but.... (take the rest with a grain of salt)
Since it did not follow DMCA provisions, I would presume that it left behind the DMCA safe-harbor provisions, and is open to a lawsuit...
It sounds like some suits from the RIAA worked over the weekend to study the nuances of the RoR and narc'd the company to its own host.
Where in the ToS of a website host does one need to look to be sure that this doesn't happen again? I run a website for a band and now I am concerned that it may get pulled since they are not signed to a major label. The host I use is CRYSTALTECH.COM. Am I safe?
Uncle Mantis
The web hosting company is IX Hosting, and I certainly hope they get Slashdotted into a smoking crater, and that their support folks get a whole lot of input from various sources about the idiocy of their policy...
http://www.ixwebhosting.com/index.php/v2/pages.customerCenter#top
--
Tomas
There is a feature on Evite.com, which lets you associate your own icon with your "account". Obviously, using copyrighted images is prohibited.
Well, the geniuses at Evite have deleted my logo, which I created in Paintbrush back in 1993 (before switching to Unix for good), because — they thought — it can't possibly be my own creation...
Well, ass-covering, ignorant dimwits working for a corporation... Spit-spit-spit...
Years later, the same image is forcibly deleted by Wikipedia — where it was only used on my own user-page.
The idiocy spreads...
Maybe, there is some artistic merit to that poorly-drawn cat on a castle wall? Should I try selling it or something?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If you can't find your chargers, you can probably buy more at Radio Shack or on the manufacturer's website.
The website was pretty well made, and they had Bomb The Music Industry! signed. Silly name aside, they are a really marvelous blend of punk, twee, and brass, something I could normally never appreciate
They gave away stencils and cds at shows for free, so that fans could make their own t-shirts. They've got a brilliant DIY ethic going on, and they became something of an underground hit without even properly releasing a CD.
So I don't know who tagged this "andnothingofvaluewaslost", but you don't know what you're talking about.
It's very easy to complain about how the RIAA does things, but you need to think up solutions, as well as identifying problems, or you're just being annoying. Quote Unquote make the perfectly valid point that some artists aren't interested in wealth, and can get by on donations alone. Obviously it suits some bands better than others, but it's _a_ solution, not the only solution
They must serve up a different site to foreigners because I don't see any US flags (from here in .au).
On your own anyway.
Time to find a good nasty lawyer and sue the piss out of them for anything you can imagine.
Whoever made that decision to pull the site might be one of the stupidest people on the internet. And that's saying alot................
It seems that the ISP ix is itself propagating copyright infringement. The landing page they put up for 'Quote Unquote' includes advert links to copyright infringing sites. Perhaps someone should find out if ix is a sub-hoster and then send a DMCA takedown notice to their host. As it turns out they own their own DNS server, so it seems unlikely.
And a sworn affidavit can't fix.
Even if his hosting company is brain-dead, they should at least recognize that a signed affidavit that he is, indeed, the copyright holder will get them off the hook if any litigation comes their way. Failing that, he could file charges against them for copyright infringement under the DMCA, and sue for statutory damages. I believe the going rate is around $168,000 per song...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Many hosting providers give you ridiculously high bandwidth limits, counting on the fact that it's usually quite difficult to use much bandwidth without violating the AUP. So I'm guessing what happened was that these guys got popular and started costing the hosting company money (but were still within the stated limit) and that's the real reason they got disconnected.
It's a lot like the 'unlimited dialup' popular in the mid 90s... it was unlimited, unless you used it a whole lot, in which case they billed you or disconnected you.
If you look up my site on archive.org, you will see that my limits used to be much higher, comparable to my competitors. Being as my AUP is much less restrictive in the non-spam areas, it was a very expensive lesson for me to learn.
This is rich: "I Will Guarantee You With My Own Money That You Will Not Be Dissatisfied."
That is the arrogant boast of IX Webhosting's CEO, Fathi Said:
http://www.ixwebhosting.com/index.php/v2/pages.ourPromiseToYou
I'll wager I know of one customer who wants to take him up on that bet... after they've slapped him around a bit for good measure.
here's a partial transcript from Live Chat with an IX Webhost Rep (be warned. there's a lot of incoherent rambling because the customer service rep is from Ukraine, and i think there was a slight communications barrier):
... the hosting provider sued for misapplication of DCMA. I'm sure it would never happen, but I'd sure love to see it happen.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
... post his email address (even if obscured from spammers) on that page.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I do not see the big deal here. Everthing that this label needs is on their MySpace page and they are doing everything a band can do on their own anyway. http://www.myspace.com/quoteunquoterecords Did the website in question actually host any music?
Uncle Mantis
Someone sets up an independent record label who shares and licenses under the CC and when news hits that it's been nailed by the DCMA (or the side effects of), it gets tagged by fuckhead slashdot readers as "nothingofvaluewaslost."
unbelievabl, reactionary assholes. you're as bad as the people you rally against. high five, kids!
You're partly right. As soon as you record something "in fixed form" (on paper, hard drive, CD, or whatever), the copyright is yours. But if you want to go to court over it, you'll want to have it registered.
From the Copyright Office website:
Why go through a web hosting company? It's pretty easy to host your own website:
I don't use DynDNS nor a static IP, and I host my own websites. I didn't bother setting up my own mailserver, as Google Apps more than fits the bill for that. So what's the problem?
Sanity is like a condom: rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.
Right. Even if it is my own creation, I must allow everyone else to use it, or else even I can't use it -- not even on my own user page.
Wikipedia can't support images that aren't under a public copyright. It's not a matter of "zeal". All information on the site needs to be usable everywhere on the site. Images that appear in your user page can easily be used elsewhere in Wikipedia. That's how Wikipedia is designed to work.
Kind of difficult when your copyright takes the form of a Creative Commons license...
No, no, no. Ownership of copyright is fundamentally and completely separate from terms of licensing. If you own the copyright of a work, you can license it however you want. If the site in question required that media donors verify ownership of the copyright for the donated media, then that would mean that only the copyright owner is allowed to submit media.
Licensing something under Creative Commons does not transfer the copyright to the public at large, it just grants certain rights to usage to the public at large. I thought that this audience in particular would understand the difference.
Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
IX Web Hosting online sales staff responded to my query.
Seems the fellow I spoke to has no idea about this story or even Slashdot.
At least he did not deny that it was IX Web Hosting.
Anyway google cache shows IX Web Hosting having some spam on the record label site when they shut it down.
I've created loads of copyright material - mostly computer code, some gaming material such as scenarios , a few pictures and doodles, but I'd never have any way of proving that I owned the copyright on any of them.
This reminds me of the monty python sketch:
Bridgekeeper: What... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
King Arthur: What do you mean? An African or European swallow?
Bridgekeeper: Huh? I... I don't know that. [he is thrown over]
Bridgekeeper: Auuuuuuuugh.
The website is currently up just fine.
When ideas fail, words become very handy.
teh interwebz is retarded