It is a rare occasion that I grant public permission to republish my materials to anyone wishing to do so, however with THIS, and ONLY this post I request that anyone and everyone repost this wherever you can.
Topsy.com was forced to remove my content in 2011 when I filed my first DMCA complaint with them and their domain registrar. I just so happened to be searching around and found that this company is back at it. Stealing peoples intellectual property and copyright materials for their own commercial gain, with no regard for the law or the rightful copyright owners legal ownership or rights.
My feed is currently being syndicated by Topsy.com at http://topsy.com/twitter/nyphonejacks
I have tried to settle things peacefully with this company by emailing them and advising them to remove my content, yet they refuse to do anything other than to tell me that I should make my Twitter feed private, which would defeat the whole point of twitter in the first place. They also try to hide behind Twitters Terms of Service, which still would not grant a third party the right to violate my intellectual property rights.
This post will serve as an archive, and to hopefully publicly shame this immoral company into removing content when the rightful owner of said content files a complaint with them.
Again, I could really care less about you hiding behind some "terms of service" for a company that you are in no way associated with.
If you would like to refer to Twitters TOS then lets do just that.
Section 7:
All right, title, and interest in and to the Services (excluding Content provided by users) are and will remain the exclusive property of Twitter and its licensors. The Services are protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws of both the United States and foreign countries. Nothing in the Terms gives you a right to use the Twitter name or any of the Twitter trademarks, logos, domain names, and other distinctive brand features. Any feedback, comments, or suggestions you may provide regarding Twitter, or the Services is entirely voluntary and we will be free to use such feedback, comments or suggestions as we see fit and without any obligation to you.
Lets break that section down a bit, shall we? Twitter maintains copyright ownership of everything on their site WITH THE EXCEPTION of user generated content, which remains the intellectual property of its authors. So they do not have the right, nor authority to license or provide access to other peoples copyrighted materials for publication.
Also using the Twitter name is a violation of this section of their TOS, so you have no legal rights to claim that you are affiliated with Twitter in any manner. Claiming you are a "Twitter partner" is clearly a violation of this section.
Finally, TWITTER is free to use feedback, comments and suggestions anyway they see fit. You are NOT Twitter, and this does not give you the ability or permission to use other peoples copyrighted material for any reason.
So lets see what the Copyright section 9 has to say:
Twitter respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects users of the Services to do the same. We will respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement that comply with applicable law and are properly provided to us. If you believe that your Content has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, please provide us with the following information: (i) a physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or a person authorized to act on their behalf; (ii) identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed; (iii) identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit us to locate the material; (iv) your contact information, including your address, telephone number, and an email address; (v) a statement by you that you have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and (vi) a statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and, under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.
We reserve the right to remove Content alleged to be infringing without prior notice, at our sole discretion, and without liability to you. In appropriate circumstances, Twitter will also terminate a user’s account if the user is determined to be a repeat infringer. Our designated copyright agent for notice of alleged copyright infringement appearing on the Services is.
This section states that Twitter RESPECTS the intellectual property rights of others and EXPECTS users of the service to do the same. You are NOT respecting my intellectual property rights by continuing to syndicate the entirety of my twitter feed for commercial purposes with out prior permission even AFTER you were forced to remove it back in 2011 when I filed my first round of DMCA complaints with you and your registrar.
It also mentions that Twitter responds to all infringement complaints, and may terminate YOUR account if you are found to have infringed upon peoples copyright on multiple occasions.
Finally, I will throw the quote that YOU provided right back to you.
"You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to provide, promote, and improve the Services and to make Content submitted to or through the Services available to other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter for the syndication, broadcast, distribution or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use.
It does not appear that a web browser based republication of my Twitter feed would constitute "other media or services" since Twitter is provided by a web browser based application. As for being "subject to the terms and conditions for such content use" I have already provided you with TWO additional such sections of Twitters TOS that you have violated.
Again, I am demanding one last and final time that ALL content published by me in its entirety, included but not limited to the content found at this link: http://topsy.com/twitter/nyphonejacks be immediately removed from your site PERMANENTLY or I will have no choice but to seek civil and criminal penalties against you for your continued disregard for the law, and my intellectual property rights.
Twitter respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects users of the Services to do the same. We will respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement that comply with applicable law and are properly provided to us. If you believe that your Content has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, please provide us with the following information: (i) a physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or a person authorized to act on their behalf; (ii) identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed; (iii) identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit us to locate the material; (iv) your contact information, including your address, telephone number, and an email address; (v) a statement by you that you have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and (vi) a statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and, under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.
We reserve the right to remove Content alleged to be infringing without prior notice, at our sole discretion, and without liability to you. In appropriate circumstances, Twitter will also terminate a user’s account if the user is determined to be a repeat infringer. Our designated copyright agent for notice of alleged copyright infringement appearing on the Services is.
This section states that Twitter RESPECTS the intellectual property rights of others and EXPECTS users of the service to do the same. You are NOT respecting my intellectual property rights by continuing to syndicate the entirety of my twitter feed for commercial purposes with out prior permission even AFTER you were forced to remove it back in 2011 when I filed my first round of DMCA complaints with you and your registrar.
It also mentions that Twitter responds to all infringement complaints, and may terminate YOUR account if you are found to have infringed upon peoples copyright on multiple occasions.
Finally, I will throw the quote that YOU provided right back to you.
"You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to provide, promote, and improve the Services and to make Content submitted to or through the Services available to other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter for the syndication, broadcast, distribution or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use.
It does not appear that a web browser based republication of my Twitter feed would constitute "other media or services" since Twitter is provided by a web browser based application. As for being "subject to the terms and conditions for such content use" I have already provided you with TWO additional such sections of Twitters TOS that you have violated.
Again, I am demanding one last and final time that ALL content published by me in its entirety, included but not limited to the content found at this link: http://topsy.com/twitter/nyphonejacks be immediately removed from your site PERMANENTLY or I will have no choice but to seek civil and criminal penalties against you for your continued disregard for the law, and my intellectual property rights.
From: Topsy Account Removal Support <accountremoval@topsy.com>
To: DMCA@nyphonejacks.com
Cc: legal@topsy.com; dan@topsy.com
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2013 6:17 PM
Subject: Re: DMCA notice to remove infringing materials from your website
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...And it continues, This is the latest email exchange with Twitter, they must have some really stupid people working there, if they can not find the infringing material by simpily clicking the links that I provided them in my initial DMCA notice. :
Lets make this real simple, since you need a little help with this.
First open up your web browser. This should be an icon on your desktop that either says "Internet Explorer", "Chrome", "Firefox", "Opera" or maybe even something else.
Once you have your web browser open type in http://topsy.com/twitter/nyphonejacks into the address bar, which is the long text box at the top of the page. On this page you will see the entire contents of MY Twitter feed, which can officially be viewed by entering this text into the address bar on your web browser http://twitter.com/nyphonejacks
As you can clearly read english, you will see that the ENTIRE contents of the official source of my intellectual property is republished without my authorization. That means they used it with out my permission.
The commercial entity responsible for infringing upon my copyright maintains a Twitter account that can be located by entering this text into your web browsers address bar http://twitter.com/topsy as well as at least one other additional account, such as the one that can be found by entering this text into your web browser http://twitter.com/flipberkin
This commercial entity was forced by their then domain name registrar to remove my twitter content in 2011 when they republished my entire feed with out authorization, when they were served with the first round of DMCA notices. This now becomes a repeated and recurring offense and something must be done to prevent further violations of my copyright protections held under the law.
If you have further difficulties in locating the infringing materials, perhaps you should not be using a computer, or working in an industry related to computers and technology, as this information was already provided to you. If needed you could set up TeamViewer or Join.me on your computer and I would be more than happy to assist you in visiting the above websites, but I would have to charge you a service fee.
From: kurtray <notifications-support@twitter.zendesk.com>
To: Dmca <dmca@nyphonejacks.com>
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2013 5:51 AM
Subject: #7752429 Twitter Support: update on "DMCA Takedown Notice"
##- Please type your reply above this line -##
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Topsy is working well within the bounds of the law. Topsy is not reproducing your feed in its entirety on their page, they are instead providing a link to your tweets that would direct all of the revenue back to your website if somebody followed that link.
ReplyDeleteIf I search for you on Google, a search engine, it would display some of your feed because it is publicly available. If I click on the link then it would direct my browser to your website.
Trying to get Topsy to remove your feed and the links to your feed would be the same as telling Google/Bing/Altavista/etc to remove your page from their search engine. The end effect would be you losing money.
I understand your complaint if they DIDN'T link to your site, but they do, and they don't host your content but merely link to it.
Here is where I break my own code for my blog and break into profanity.
DeleteAre you FUCKING kidding me?
Google at most provides one or two lines of text, just enough information to give the reader information of if they wish to continue on to my website.
Topsy on the other hand reproduces the ENTIRE FUCKING CONTENT that I have published on Google. Regardless of if they host the information on their own, or they just republish the information leaving it on Twitters servers, the end result is the same. The ENTIRETY of the content is located on their website. Any reader would assume that this was authorized, and as the ENTIRE content is located on your "search engine" this leaves little reason for a reader to continue on to the official and authorized source of the content.