Having had way too much experience with the negative aspects of the DMCA lately, I was pleasantly surprised to find an article at Plagiarism Today referencing DreamHost’s blog post on Dealing with a DMCA Crook.
I love the fact that DreamHost goes out of its way to be clear that the DMCA can be used with no legal basis:
While the DMCA does offer some major benefits to both copyright holders and web hosts like DreamHost – legal immunity, woo-hoo! – it’s not always used as a force for good. Occasionally, unscrupulous types (and I’m looking at you, Church of Scientology!) will attempt to use the DMCA as a cudgel to take down sites that they don’t like, even when they are clearly in the legal right under copyright law.
Even better is the fact that DreamHost stands up to those attempts:
Liability issues aside, we’re not about to knowingly help someone silence valid criticism by going along with false or overly broad DMCA Notifications.
I’m contrasting that with the treatment I recently received at the hands of my current host, MediaTemple.
There was an obviously non-infringing incident, a person who did not want criticism, and a DMCA takedown. Without doing even the least amount of fact-checking, MediaTemple told me to take down the content within 24 hours, or they’d do it for me.
When I talked to an individual at MediaTemple, I was told that this was corporate policy so that they were not at risk. That’s the legal immunity part.
The bigger risk, though, is that free speech suffers when merely alleging that an incident has occurred is the full and complete basis for censorship … at least in my opinion.
While I can understand MediaTemple not wanting to accept any legal risk whatsoever, I wholeheartedly applaud DreamHost for shouldering their part of the burden of the ongoing fight to keep freedom free.
Kudos to DreamHost!
[tags] dreamhost, mediatemple, dmca, legal, risk, censorship, john koetsier [/tags]
This is good:
Saw it on HorsePigCow.
[tags] complaints, funny, john koetsier [/tags]
One thing that has always irritated me about Adobe’s Acrobat applications is that they are real space hogs. Upon launch, they immediately expand to fill all available space:
Note, that’s all available space – as wide as your monitor will allow. Not, as one might expect, a reasonable size that is commensurate with the size of the document that you’re opening and viewing. To me, this makes Acrobat one on the long list of rude applications.
Annoying!
[tags] acrobat, space hog, PDF, john koetsier [/tags]
Whoa … I see Chris DiBona of Google’s open source program is helping NASA move 120 terabytes of data … all the data that the Hubble space telescope has ever collected.
Now that’s a LOT of data. Very cool. Hope they don’t lose any spare terabytes here or there.
But what’s with this pic? Is it Chris DiBona or Fabio?
This has gotta be a gag shot …
[tags] chris dibona, google, nasa, terabytes, hubble, john koetsier [/tags]
I’ve been in touch with the owner of Motiono.com, Sumer Kolcak, and we’ve decided to amicably resolve the differences between us.
Sumer has sent an email to MT telling them that he is withdrawing the DMCA takedown notice that he sent; I’ll preface my posts on this issue with a line stating that we’ve resolved our differences.
This is really good news, and a wonderful resolution to the somewhat stressful events of the past few days.
More info later …
[tags] motiono.com, john koetsier, dmca, resolution [/tags]
Just opened a package in the mail – it’s Timothy Johnson’s new GUST: the “Tale” Wind of Office Politics.
Where does the guy get the time? It seems like just a few months ago that he came out with Race Through the Forest: a Project Management Fable.
Very cool … I’ll be reading it in the next week or so and post some thoughts. Thanks, Tim!
. . .
. . .
FYI here’s Tim’s blog post announcing the book. And if you’re wondering what GUST stands for, here’s his explanation:
GUST is an acronym to describe a process of approaching office politics:
- Game – figure out what is being manipulated and the source of friction
- Understand – determine what is behind the players, the behaviors, and the motivations
- Strategize – establish an approach that will get you as close to win-win as possible
- Take Action – get your ducks in a row as you implement your political strategy
[tags] timothy johnson, books, gust, john koetsier, office politics [/tags]
March 22 note added:
I’ve been in touch with the owner of Motiono.com and we’ve resolved our differences amicably. The DMCA takedown notice has been removed.
Read more »
March 22 note added:
I’ve been in touch with the owner of Motiono.com and we’ve resolved our differences amicably. The DMCA takedown notice has been removed.
Read more »
March 22 note added:
I’ve been in touch with the owner of Motiono.com and we’ve resolved our differences amicably. The DMCA takedown notice has been removed.
Read more »
March 22 note added:
I’ve been in touch with the owner of Motiono.com and we’ve resolved our differences amicably. The DMCA takedown notice has been removed.
Read more »
March 22 note added:
I’ve been in touch with the owner of Motiono.com and we’ve resolved our differences amicably. The DMCA takedown notice has been removed.
Read more »
I love well-constructed and vivid language. Here’s a snippet I ran across today that inspired some memories:
A few years back, I was struggling to liberate a new Barbie doll from the almost invincible packaging that imprisoned her …
(Seen in an email newsletter from Character Counts … written by Michael Josephson.)
After weeks of pain, agony, and fruitless searches, I finally managed to buy a Wii.
Three weeks ago, actually – I didn’t want to post about it until I had some time to evaluate it – and it’s been great. Although I’ve bought another game (Excite Truck) I’m the only one playing it much so far … the kids (and friends/guests) are all playing the sports games.
The best things about the Wii:
- It’s social … we play together as a family
- It’s physical … we get at least some exercise doing it (and boxing is very strenuous)
- It’s fun …
- It’s an ice-breaker: friends we have over always enjoy some of the games, and the Wii is still enough of a novelty and hard enough to get that no-one we know has one
- It’s very easy to set up … probably the easiest piece of electronics I’ve added since my upconverting DVD player
- It looks great … fits right into our entertainment center
- It takes up very little space
- It wasn’t very expensive
The worst things about the Wii:
- Sometimes, the remotes get confused and don’t phone home, so I have to reset the system
- My 7-year-old son beats me at bowling
In other words, there are lots of good things and very few bad things. Love it, would buy it again.
[tags] wii, fun, family, games, console, john koetsier [/tags]
I just happened to stumble across this Steve Jurvetson photo of an eagle eating a rabbit or some small rodent hawk eating a vole.
Ouch! That is just nasty – predator and prey … both almost seeming to stare into the camera as one head disappears into the other. (Of course, this is probably taken with telephoto.)
I have, on occasion, felt like the rabbit vole. Not today, fortunately, and hopefully you don’t either.
[tags] eagle, rabbit, steve jurvetson, john koetsier [/tags]
Just so you know, I’m getting paid $50 to write this review of iBegin. I belong to the ReviewMe service, and get an invitation to review a product or site every couple of weeks. I accept about half of them.
Here’s why I decided to do this review of iBegin:
- I went to the iBegin site
- I clicked on Washington state, where I spend a significant amount of time
- I clicked on Bellingham, a city I’m in frequently
- I clicked on Landscape Contractors … a service I’m currently in need of
- … and there were 15 or so businesses listed
‘Nuf said: I clicked accept review and started this article.
Available where I am
Why? I’m fairly used to new online businesses coming out that are going to revolutionize XYZ offline category … but when you go visit, they offer services in San Francisco, New York, and maybe Mountain Village, CA. Then, over the next few months, they add major cities around the US – usually in order of population. In other words, they’re only useful if you’re in a major urban center.
Seeing that iBegin is useful in a smallish Pacific Northwest city is pretty cool. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have accepted this review.
Plumbers aren’t online
The other thing, however, that interests me about iBegin is that it addresses a major problem: plumbers aren’t online. Joe Butt-Crack doesn’t have a website … and that’s a problem.
Why? Because when I need information, I go online – and so do an increasing percentage of people. White pages, yellow pages – I don’t like pages. I like Google, and I like the web. So it’s important that local businesses have an online presence. Since Joe’s never going to start a blog and is probably not too likely to pay his teenage cousin $50 to put up a cheesy 1-page business card … someone’s gotta do it for him.
Taking it deeper
When you actually click on a business name, you get all the basics: address, contact info, etc. You also get a Google Maps view of where they are.
What I’d like to see in addition to that is some social media features. In other words, feedback from clients … “I used Joe, and he’s great,” etc. etc.
In other words, do for local businesses what TripAdvisor does for hotels. I’m sure iBegin has that in mind and will likely add it … I’d like to see it sooner rather than later.
You can actually do something like now, because it’s a wiki and therefore editable, but that might not be totally obvious to people. Some kind of simple star rating might be a little easier, and some slightly more structured way of adding feedback and giving businesses a score (like buyers/sellers on eBay) would be useful.
[tags] ibegin, paid, review, reviewme, local, business, john koetsier [/tags]
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
