"Derivative Work" style plagiarism

Can they get away with "translations"?

[Don Markstein]

I'm not a regular poster here, because I'm not really knowledgeable enough to help anyone out, and I don't think anything I say to the terrific people here would be of much value. But I lurk from time to time, and occasionally post when I have a question of my own.

Another way of saying this is, here's another question from a guy who does nothing but take, take, take, and never gives anything in return. Sorry about that, but in the words of an immortal, I yam what I yam.

Here's the situation: The other day, I was alerted to a "translation" site, where they take the content of any URL requested and "translate" it into something that apparently amuses children -- i.e., replace some of the words with vulgarities.

Am I allowed to give the URL? If not, just snip it out. It's gizoogle.com, which has been up for about two weeks.

Now, it seems to me, this constitutes a "derivative work" and is therefore forbidden by the DMCA. I'd like to shut them down just for that, but it's not the extent of the problem.

It turns out if I click on a link in their "translation" of my home page, it puts up an EXACT DUPLICATE of my content, with the sole exception of deleting the advertising which constitutes my sole compensation for the thousands of hours I've put into developing my site.

As I said, I'm not very adept at this stuff. Even through WHOIS, I could only find an address for the host, not one for an administrator of the site itself. The one person I was able to contact says that since they're simply taking the content from my own site and putting it in their frame (first taking out the ads), and not storing it on their server, it's perfectly okay.

In other words, he claims the theft of my bandwidth cancels out that of my content.

Is this true? Can they get away with displaying my content without my advertising?

If not -- is there anything I can do, short of hiring an expensive lawyer?

Thanks for whatever help you can give.

-- Don Markstein
butt-ignorant webmaster

[bcolflesh]

Search the forum for examples of blocking by IP address - run the "translation" of the site and check your logs for their address - block it's range.

[vabtz]

that site is no worse that translating your site into say french or something via babelfish. And it doesn't insert 'vulgaritites' from what I have seen.

More importantly I think it would be considered a parody of your site which makes it next to impossible to prosecute.

[Don Markstein]

Thanks for the replies, guys!

bcolflesh --
My ability to use the logs extends mainly to reading off the traffic reports my server provides. Even after four years, I'm an awful amateur at this. But there's an IP address on WHOIS -- would that one be correct?

I'll try to set aside some time this afternoon to seek out those threads and wade through them to figure out how to apply the knowledge. This is very helpful info, marred only by my own &#@#$%! limitations.

vabtz --
I'm sure you're right about the translation bit, at least as concerns the opening page. Technically, it seems like anyone wanting to translate a piece of writing would need permission from the copyright owner, but we never enforce that on machine-produced, on-the-fly translations, do we?

I guess the samples you tried didn't come up with "nigga", which is quite prominent in their "translation" of my site. I call that a vulgarism, and would never use it myself. (I try to keep the site at approximately PG-13.)

But -- parody? Can a parody be THAT close to the original and still protected?

And you've overlooked the second part of my complaint, which is that when I follow the links in my "translated" home page, I find precise, UNtranslated duplicates of my own writing, only without the ads that provide what little revenue I get for my work.

Doesn't matter -- bcolflesh's advice should eliminate the problem, once I figure out how to implement it. (My head is already swimming.)

Thanks again. I love this site!

-- Don

[vabtz]

that is a good point.

I was suprised the site owner didn't have a "don't use my site" form. Maybe one of use should send him an email.

[Dynamoo]

It is most likely that the IP address of the component that pulls in your page will be exactly the same as the site. I tend to use whois-dot-sc as an easy site to poke around at that sort of data.

There's quite a few of these filter sites about, so this isn't exactly a new concept.

The copyright issue is tricky - there are all sort of legal arguments that can be applied. Typically the bottom line will be this - are you suffering some sort of nontrivial loss because of this other site? I think the primary danger that I can think of is that this other site might somehow generate duplicate content which could get you a penalty.. other than that, well I think it's pretty harmless.

[Don Markstein]

Well, maybe it's harmless and maybe it isn't. Personally, I tend to have a low tolerance toward theft of my work, whether there are provable monetary damages or not. Maybe it's just an ego thing, but when I make something it belongs to me, and that's all there is to it. It is just and proper that I be the one to set the terms by which others view it.

Second paragraph -- I know, and was successful in shutting down one, at least, shortly after opening my site. Show me another, and I'll attempt to shut it down as well.

The third paragraph, tho, is the one that's truly chilling. Is it possible that some of the people who have lost their Google AdSense accounts through (they claim, at least) no fault of their own, are victims of this sort of thing?

Is there a way to keep my pages from being used as frames on anyone else's site at all?

-- Don