Thursday, June 4, 2009

I Fought The Law (and erm, the law won)

Crikey. My Universal Language thread (formerly below) has been removed by Blogger and I received an email from them this morning saying this:

"blogger-dmca-notification@google.comBlogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog infringes upon the copyrights of others. The URL(s) of the allegedly infringing post(s) may be found at the end of this message.
The notice that we received from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the record companies it represents, 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). Please note that it may take Chilling Effects up to several weeks to post the notice online at the link provided.
The IFPI is a trade association that represents over 1,400 major and independent record companies in the US and internationally who create, manufacture and distribute sound recordings (the "IFPI Represented Companies").
The DMCA is a United States copyright law that provides guidelines for online service provider liability in case of copyright infringement. We are in the process of removing from our servers the links that allegedly infringe upon the copyrights of others. If we did not do so, we would be subject to a claim of copyright infringement, regardless of its merits. See http://www.educause.edu/Browse/645?PARENT_ID=254 for more information about the DMCA, and see http://www.google.com/dmca.html for the process that Blogger requires in order to make a DMCA complaint.
Blogger can reinstate these posts upon receipt of a counter notification pursuant to sections 512(g)(2) and 3) of the DMCA. For more information about the requirements of a counter notification and a link to a sample counter notification, see http://www.google.com/dmca.html#counter.
Please note that repeated violations to our Terms of Service may result in further remedial action taken against your Blogger account. If you have legal questions about this notification, you should retain your own legal counsel. If you have any other questions about this notification, please let us know.
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team"

Has anyone else had any experience of this? I must admit, until I came on here, I've never posted any music up on the internet before, so hadn't really given it much thought. I wonder why this post in particular and not all the other ones you guys have posted up with links. Do you reckon it's because this post of mine featured a couple of more trad, established international artists, Gilberto Gil and Jorge Ben, rather than the the sort of two-bit indie bands and dance acts I'm more likely to post about. I can't imagine The Phenomenal Handclap band getting in much of a tizzy about it.
Anyway, any thoughts appreciated. I don't want to get myself, or indeed the blog in general, into any trouble.

13 comments:

ejaydee said...

Fuck, I missed it, did you have the files in the dropbox?

BalearicBeat said...

I uploaded them to my public dropbox folder, not the RR one. I've just removed them from there pretty sharpish now.

snadfrod said...

I guess Blimpy's the expert on this, but it has happened a few times before, even though we say we are very lovely and will happily take any music down if people would just ask nicely...

One way round it seems to be to add links to places where you can buy the music (record companies, amazon etc) and to generally be very nice to those involved. Not sure if that's cast iron, though.

Maybe they're just onto you, BaBe. (*safety wink*)

BalearicBeat said...

I was a good boy until I started hanging around with you pesky kids, snadfrod. Now look at me ;-)

Blimpy said...

Ola,

This is about our 5th DMCA takedown - don't worry about it. I used to get annoyed about it, but not so much these days.

It usually happens if we post just-released stuff that the record companies don't want to be promoted to our 10,000 strong readership. Their loss really.

ejaydee said...

Files in your dropbox are safe BaBe (hint, hint), google can't get to those (yet, I think).

Blimpharmonic said...

Although I did get annoyed last time:

http://readersrecommend.blogspot.com/2009/04/who-stole-my-words.html

I would also like to add that I listened to the Silversun Pickups album on spotify, and apart from the track I posted, it's rubbish

DsD said...

HAve we lost another thread?

Steenbeck says one of Shane's has gone missing.

If so, then I think we need to give serious consideration to taking our business elsewhere: I'm getting seriously pissed off with Web Sheriff Big Brother Bully Bollox

Blimpy said...

Does anyone know how easy/difficult it would be to migrate the whole blog to a self hosted wordpress jobbie?

ejaydee said...

I'd heard of a blog hosting service, apparently it's very easy to transfer your old blog to theirs, I'll try and find it again.

Blimpy said...

Next week's 'Spill will only be available on c90 tape, so please send in your comments for next week NOW.

Abahachi said...

Good article on this in this morning's Graundiad by Ben Goldacre the 'Bad Science' deity, examining the validity of the figures that always get bandied about for the alleged costs of illegal downloading. Even better to read it here, as you get decent comments as well.

B-Mac said...

good article, aba, i love that the internets is keeping folks accountable, if you know what I mean