Another case of WTF. In the process of setting up a new blog with wordpress and wp-o-matic I received a DMCA voilation. The site was setup and I installed the plug-in to test it out for functionality. Worked Great! I was looking forward to using this for what I didn'k know but I knew I had a use for this plug-in. Well not so good here! I setup a few feeds to see how this actually worked and forgot about them for a few weeks. When I went back to the site I had a few post and thought this was great right? Wrong! The follwing night I received a notice of the DMCA violation. I deleted the site as told by my ISP. They say that is all I have to do for now. What does that mean, for now? There is nothing more I can do about it. It was not intended to sell or use anything within these feeds. Just a test. Even if it were not a test what did it hurt. Tons of stuff get reproduced evey day from site to site. Anyway, is this something I need to worry about? I did read a few things about it however it doen't look like a real problem other then telling me to please stop the feed from running. I don't know! anyone else ever receive one of these notices? What do I do now?
why you do not use wp robot? this plugin much easier with extraordinary abilities, no need to look for websites that have feeds, just my 2 cent, sorry
If you know that it is theft why are you planning on using a script like wp-o-matic? Justifying its use with: ain't gonna cut it. Anyways, all you can do is to stop scraping content from the site or risk losing your hosting, or worse, risk legal action.
if the site has a RSS feed then what the F--- do they think is going to happen ? I also have "tested" wp-o-matic
Again, if you had read the post you would not be asking these questions. I stated that I know I can find a use for it but didn't know what! not that I was planning to use it. Please re-read the post if you have time. there was never any intent to reproduce anyones content intentionally. this was only a test of the plug-in and that was it.
You are so right! Good job. Feeds are listed for that exact reason. To be reproduced. If feeds were mean to be secure they would be password protected. As a matter of fact if someone would reproduce somethng I posted, I would not even worry about it and most people don't.
my thing is IF THEY DIDNT WANT PEOPLE USING THEIR RSS ... WHY IS IT THERE ??? What purpose does it serve if it is not for other webmasters to use ? also did you remove their links in the articles ? that is a reason they could be mad at you, if you changed the article in ANY way then that is subject to being a problem as they have copyrighted that article and you changed it.... I MEAN ANY WAY - can be an issue... ANY !
There is a way to make changes to the links and or post however I have not changed anything. I think where I got noticed was through pingbacks. With out the pingback they would have never known anything. But to answer your question i did not change anything dealing with the post. The only thing different was a link on the bottom of the post linking back to the original post on their site.
yeah i would love for some one else that is DMCA voilation happy.... and that has a feed to explain to me WHAT DO THEY EXPECT TO BE DONE WITH IT... if you want pm me the url that did this to you and i will do everything i can to contact them and ask them that exact question. Because they probably have their whois contact info blocked. but if its not then check to see if their info is ALL THE WAY CORRECT. and if they give any false info REPORT THEM LOL PS - EDIT - and you are probably right... the ping back is what gave it away : D
Do not worry about it! You were unaware that the material you were sourcing was copywrited (usually material is not), plus you assume it is provided for alternate use via rss syndication, which it was. If this offends someone, then they will either contact you or your hosting provider, who is obligated to suspend your account, and then all you have to do is remove the content. I believe they have to provide the target content if they make a claim. Ask them what is illegal, where it is coming from, and make sure you respect the complaint's wishes by removing the source. Otherwise you do not have to worry any further. This should be your standard response practice, I believe. I'm going to go ahead and further say, if you do not want your content republished then here is what you can do: monetise your rss feeds with adsense Block the ip address of the website re-using your content Send them a cease and desist, providing your website url, and file complaint if ignored Place a footer on all your rss text linking back to your site. If you have partial rss feeds, then dont worry about it. They will never out rank you. Most autoblogs will fail themselves, you can count on that. Look at the lion, does he bother himself with flys? If the autoblog is crediting your source, this will be good for you in terms of backlinks and advertisement (If you run a quality blog).
Thnaks for your reply! This was great information and it seems you really know what is going on. As I see it I had an RSS feed that was not protected from publication. If I'm at fault then lets look at to contract between every bot on the internet indexing these post. Seems to be no problem for them. I did remove all of the post and even removed the doamin. It was only a test domain anyway so it didn't matter to me. My ISP stated that I completed their request and I needed to do nothing futher. Hoping this was the end of that? There is nothing more I can do so they will have to just get over it. The DMCA was not created for this anyway. This was created for stealing copyrighted software like movies, music and cd's anyway. At the end of the day if you read the DMCA we are all at fault according to the document.
I think that this is not a case of violation with the RSS feed being there. Also a backlink to the original post was present. They got to know through the pingback. Unless it was written that the contents were copyrighted and not to be reproduced without prior permission, I wouldn't worry much. You have already removed the content, so I feel it is fine now.