Forum Moderators: not2easy
Other than specifically noted as "Copyrighted by Firstname lastname", all material is available for your use.
It was a completely user-unfriendly site - but has nice information. So I used a section of that site (no copyright notice on any page of that) for my work extensively and after working for over 100(?) or more hours to make it presentable and adding new material and put that on a section of my site. (It brings almost no traffic to my site, being of almost no interest to most.)
After that it seems like that site owner visited my site and decided to change the copyrights notice to:
All information is "Copyrighted by Firstname lastname". All material is available for your use for personal research. Please attribute source as noted or acknowledge the source as Firstname Lastname. blah blah blah
Last week I received an email from a person who received an email from that site owner regarding my "plagarism and copyrights violations." It seems that person had been sending out emails to a list of people. When I went to that site I found the new notice and then I tried the Google cache and it had the old notice that I stored. This old snapshot clearly indicated the date as later than my visits. I also checked alexa and the notice since the start of that website about 2-3 years ago has been "NO Copyright."
Today I received a letter from that owner stating that I have made unauthorised use and much more that "fair use" and blah blah blah and a legal action will be taken if material is not removed from my site within 2 weeks.
What should I do? Should I just ignore the letter or should I write to this person, gently, that there was no copyright to any of the work I have used and he has no legal claim and he should stop slandering me?
[added]I had provided link to that site and had referred to that site on several important places, and had praised that site. Also linked to several other sites, all unconditionally. Just in case you want to know.[/added]
They have now changed the terms of such a permission, which they are of course entitled to do. The big question is whether this invalidates their previous and less restrictive permission. I would assume that the old statement is still valid for any material that you published before the change (a lawyer may or may not see it differently).
The question on how to proceed looks more like a political than a legal one to me now. You could send a nice reply citing the permission they gave you earlier, which didn't have an expiry date attached. Then you see how they react to that. You can try to make it more acceptable to them by stating the source on every page containing their stuff, and not just "in several important places". If they remain stubborn, decisions will become tricky. If it is really only interesting to a small minority of your visitors, it may not be worth the trouble of a lengthy discussion.
You should reply with a brief letter indicating that you acted in good faith according to the original terms of the license and you see no obligation that requires you to accept the revised license, nor any principle that allows the owner to revoke the license. Include brief detail of what and when you used, with references to old licenses in the web archive just to substantiate yourself (remember that the burden of proof is upon you to show that you did the right thing). Indicate that you will continue to use the existing material according to the existing license. Acknowledge that you understand the terms of the new license and you will honour that new license for any new material that you use from the site.
If you receive anything after this, well that's the next step in the problem.
You can try to make it more acceptable to them by stating the source on every page containing their stuff, and not just "in several important places".
However, ignoring the letter may lead the owner to believe that he does have a claim and so he may take further steps which waste your time. You want to nip it in the bud.
That is my thought too. Moreover, I want to be diplomatic. This researcher is has lots of friends in a small circle I was hoping to get some links from, that I am not counting on now. ;) I think I have strong legal standing but got to be diplomatic.
If it is really only interesting to a small minority of your visitors, it may not be worth the trouble of a lengthy discussion.
...by specifying that material without such an explicit notice was "available for your use", they did authorize you to take it for your own purposes. In other words, other than they now claim, you seem to be using their copyrighted work with their permission.
I would agree with this, but remember that permission can also be revoked by the materials owner at any time. Just because they gave permission in the first place doesn’t bind them or require them to continue to allow you to use the material for as long as you like. They have now revoked your permission to use the information. IMHO, you have only one right thing to do – remove the material.
Take it down. It's that simple. They own it. They always owned it. They can change their minds if they want to. It's like loaning someone your laWebmasterWorlder. It doesn't mean you give up ownership.
They did do some original work on their website and they have and always had strong copyright notice in front of those articles. However, the material I have obtained from there seem to be mostly government property. They claim to have spent hours on modifying that data, I am not so sure about that. For example their list of names seems like a raw data dump containing lastname followed by comma followed by first name and so on and their website mentions that if you want to search for a name there then go to Google, type in quote, followed by last name, followed by comma, followed by first name, followed by quote, a space and and a keyword! (For names on my site just type in first name, space and last name and a keyword if needed, the way 99% of the people search.) Therefore, their copyright claims seem dubious to me.
Second, by following your logic, one cannot build anything on a public domain material. It is like inviting people to a dinner treat and later sending them bill for that. Once rights have been given away for a given contract/licence and the receiving party has spent effort and time building on that material, it cannot be revoked in my view.
Not necessarily. An author can't order his publisher to recall a book just because he changed his mind later. In our case here, the original permission didn't state whether it was permanent or temporary. In such a case, good faith would assume it's permanent. If the author changes his mind later, the given permission for material already published remains valid, but any new material taken from that point on will fall under the revised license.
the material I have obtained from there seem to be mostly government property.
You should have mentioned that right away, because in the US, material published by the governement cannot be copyrighted at all. If you can find the original sources, keep the material, and dump all references to the other site. Of course, you need to make sure that you don't use any data analysis they may have added (your description doesn't sound like they have).
Good point mcgream.. but what exactly does the legal definition of the word "use" mean? If you have studied contract law than you know everything hinges on the exact definitions of the wording used in a contract.
"It brings almost no traffic to my site, being of almost no interest to most"
Where's the ROI? Don't stress yourself - just dump it.
About 99.99% of all legal issues are not about who is right and who is wrong, but about ROI. Legal ROI = (what the likelihood of winning) * (the amount you will win) / (the opportunitiy cost of your time)
In this case it's about 50% * 0/X = 0% ROI
If this is a business issue, then you must live according to those formulas.
If it's a moral / personal vendetta issue than this conversation is suddenly of non interest to me :)
If others are using his content, his own site may have been hit by a dupe penalty, and he's going around trying to solve it.....
If you can find the original sources, keep the material, and dump all references to the other site.
Thanks. That's what I am planning to do. Went to the government site and downloaded raw data from there. I had created a special page linking to that 'offended site' and had recommenrded my visitors to go there; that page will be missed very soon from my site.
Where's the ROI? Don't stress yourself - just dump it.
That's what I am going to do. Will keep my directory but will trim it down to get rid of that site's material. Thair cause is not worth my headache.
If others are using his content, his own site may have been hit by a dupe penalty, and he's going around trying to solve it.....
I checked his site. This does not seem to be the reason. His new copyright notice states something like "give me links from every page to your heart's desire" but besides that he does not seem to be search engine expert. For many searches relavant to his site, my site seems to be ahead of his site in Google's serps. Could that be the reason? ;)
