Friday, June 13, 2014

My Second DMCA Take Down Notice


For the second time, a Google Blogger account called "SW Test Engineers" has published a blog article that is a word for word copy of one of our company's web pages!

InterWorking Labs provides network emulation and protocol testing products. We educate prospective clients and the general public on issues related to network failures by writing technical white papers.

One of our white papers, "Network Protocol Testing Overview - InterWorking Labs" was copied word for word, along with the graphics and images!

Here's the white paper:

http://iwl.com/white-papers/network-protocol-testing

SW Test Engineers has copied it and published it here:

http://swtestengineers.blogspot.com/2013/02/protocol-testing.html

This is the second time SW Test Engineers has copied our material! The first time they copied this page:

http://iwl.com/component/content/article/87-protocol-testing/372-testing-the-tcp-ip-dhcp-protocols

I submitted the notification of infringing material after searching for "Reporting copyright infringement on Blogger" and going to this page:

https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?hl=en

I followed the procedure. Last time it took two weeks to get it taken down. A few weeks later, SW Test Engineers infringed again!

According to Google:
"Many Google Services do not have account holders or subscribers. For Services that do, Google will, in appropriate circumstances, disable the accounts of repeat infringers.
If you believe that an account holder or subscriber is a repeat infringer, please follow the instructions above to contact Google's DMCA agent and provide information sufficient for us to verify that the account holder or subscriber is a repeat infringer."

Unfortunately, despite the language in the above paragraph, there are no instructions for contacting Google's DMCA agent.

Thursday, January 16, 2014

My first DMCA Takedown filed at Google

A Google Blogger account called "SW Test Engineers" has published a blog article that is a word for word copy of one of my company's web pages!

InterWorking Labs provides network emulation and protocol testing products.  One of our products, the Maxwell Network Emulator, has a set of protocol tests for the TCP, IP, UDP, DHCP, ICMP protocols.  A description of this product is here:

http://iwl.com/component/content/article/87-protocol-testing/372-testing-the-tcp-ip-dhcp-protocols

SW Test Engineers has copied it and published it here:

http://swtestengineers.blogspot.com/2012/02/testing-tcp-ip-icmp-dhcp-protocols.html?showComment=1389898903465

I submitted the notification of infringing material after searching for "Reporting copyright infringement on Blogger" and going to this page:

https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?hl=en

I followed the procedure.  I wonder how long this will take?

Also, just to drive home the point, I posted a comment on the SW Test Engineers blog that it was infringing material.

I believe that every occurrence of a registered copyright violation (and our web pages ARE registered with the copyright office) is entitled to damages in the amount of $20,000.

Just received the automated response from Google:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [8-0250000002609] Your Request to Google
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 21:14:26 +0000
From: removals@google.com
To:  Chris Wellens

Hi,

Thanks for reaching out to us!

We have received your legal request. We receive many such complaints each day; your message is in our queue, and we'll get to it as quickly as our workload permits.

Due to the large volume of requests that we experience, please note that we will only be able to provide you with a response if we determine your request may be a valid and actionable legal complaint, and we may respond with questions or requests for clarification. For more information on Google's Terms of Service, please visit http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS

We appreciate your patience as we investigate your request.

Regards,

The Google Team

--------------

It is interesting that Google takes this approach. I would prefer to have the contact information for the legal representative of the infringer, and then turn my lawyers loose on it and pocket the $20,000 times the number of page views.

Seems like some enterprising lawyers could make a nice business out of this.