THE DMCA WANTS YOU TOO!!

I am in a particularly curmudgeonly mood after getting a jack-boot email from Blogger, the host of this blog.  For starters, the DMCA is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and you can read about it here.  One can see that it is mainly a battle of the giants like Google and Facebook regarding republishing copyrighted materials.  It's nearly unbelievable that I got a takedown notice for my post about the passing of Robin Williams - if you look for it, you will note that it is gone.  This humble blog gets maybe 100 views per day, and would not be a blip on the radar by any objective criteria, so whoever instigated the takedown is scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Below, I will copy the email and warnings that I received, but it doesn't indicate the nature of the problem.  I used several images from the internet - one from the Mork and Mindy TV show and a couple of pictures of the Mork and Mindy House here in Boulder, including one with Congressman Polis.  I also copied a picture of my sister and Robin Williams that appeared on Facebook - who knows - maybe that was the problem - and if so, that would be exceptionally lame.

I also learned about www.dmca.com - a website that provides "professional takedowns" for a mere $199 or "do-it-yourself takedowns" for $10 a month.  So apparently, I stole something in the Mork and Mindy post, but they don't tell you what was stolen!  The link that they give to search for the offense has been "unavailable" for some time now. Chilling Effects is most aptly named......

Email Received:

Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog is alleged to infringe upon the copyrights of others. As a result, we have reset the post(s) to \"draft\" status. (If we did not do so, we would be subject to a claim of copyright infringement, regardless of its merits. The URL(s) of the allegedly infringing post(s) may be found at the end of this message.) This means your post - and any images, links or other content - is not gone. You may edit the post to remove the offending content and republish, at which point the post in question will be visible to your readers again.

A bit of background: the DMCA is a United States copyright law that provides guidelines for online service provider liability in case of copyright infringement. If you believe you have the rights to post the content at issue here, you can file a counter-claim. In order to file a counter-claim, please see http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=lr_counternotice&product=blogger.

The notice that we received, with any personally identifying information removed, will be posted online by a service called Chilling Effects at http://www.chillingeffects.org. We do this in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). You can search for the DMCA notice associated with the removal of your content by going to the Chilling Effects search page at http://www.chillingeffects.org/search.cgi, and entering in the URL of the blog post that was removed.

If it is brought to our attention that you have republished the post without removing the content/link in question, then we will delete your post and count it as a violation on your account. Repeated violations to our Terms of Service may result in further remedial action taken against your Blogger account including deleting your blog and/or terminating your account. DMCA notices concerning content on your blog may also result in action taken against any associated AdSense accounts. If you have legal questions about this notification, you should retain your own legal counsel.

Sincerely,

The Blogger Team

Affected URLs:

http://dougandrhonda.blogspot.com/2014/08/mork-returns-to-ork.html

Notice on my blog sign-in page:

We have received a DMCA complaint for your blog, A View From Planet Boulder. An e-mail with the details of the complaint was sent to you on Sep 15, 2014, and we reset the post status to "Draft"; you can edit it here. You may republish the post with the offending content and/or link(s) removed. If you believe you have the rights to post this content, you can file a counter-claim with us. For more on our DMCA policy, please click here. Thank you for your prompt attention.