Update on dustdiary.com

This morning I was just starting out on writing a DMCA notice to send to domainsbyproxy.com regarding the lifting of significant portions of this blog by dustdiary.com. As I got to the point in my letter where I would match up specific URL's in arlnunnelly.dustdiary.com against the originals in this blog, I saw they'd been replaced by a page stating that the blog in question has been suspended or archived.

I assume that godaddy.com or domainsbyproxy.com paid attention to my e-mailed complaints and required the specific material in question to be removed. This means I no longer have grounds, unless there's a recurrence, to file a DMCA notice.

But a spot check of the lifted items which I listed in my earlier post suggests that few or none of the other items which dustdiary.com stole have been removed. Domainsbyproxy.com did not suspend the thief's account, but took the minimum action necessary to respond to a single complaint.

All I can do at this point is share the information which I've found and encourage others to send their own takedown notices. The DMCA is subject to egregious abuse, but that's no reason not to use it against a clear, unambiguous copyright violation. If DomainsByProxy.com gets hammered with enough of these, they may decide it's easier to dump dustdiary.com altogether.

Meanwhile, the sleaze who runs dustdiary.com has a pure win: Steal other people's stuff, remove the attributions, post it for whatever forms of revenue it generates, and take specific items down when people complain. Domainsbyproxy.com provides this dirtbag with private and anonymous hosting -- good things in many cases, but not when they're used to cover the tracks of a tort.

---

If you want to file your own DMCA takedown notice against dustdiary.com, here are some suggestions. These aren't legal advice, and your chances are better if you have a lawyer do it for you, but better to do it on the cheap than not at all.

There is some general information at the DMCA FAQ of Chilling Effects Clearinghouse. The address to which I would file a complaint is the one which I obtained by doing a "whois dustdiary.com":
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260

An important point is that you must state, under penalty of perjury, that to the best of your understanding there is a copyright infringement. If it's really your material which has been lifted, you're on safe legal ground. (But IANAL, and anyone can file suit for anything.)

Please spread the word. I want to grind Dirt Diary into the dust.

Could telco immunity be unconstitutional?

An article by Anthony J. Sebok on Findlaw suggests that legislating retroactive immunity for telecom companies, which Bush is demanding, may be unconstitutional. It takes away the right of plaintiffs to seek compensation for torts, thus violating the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment. He argues that both precedents in law and previous actions by Congress have regarded it as unacceptable to take away that right.

Found by way of Cato.

Schools as law enforcement agencies

A USA Today article discusses laws passed or proposed by various states against "cyberbullying." While such legislation can easily come from good intentions, the approach is a dubious one. "Bullying" isn't a well-defined legal term, and to the extent it should be a crime, it can be covered under existing laws. Threats, stalking, and harassment all are proper subjects of laws which don't need to distinguish "cyberthreats," "cyberstalking," or "cyberharassment" as separate crimes. At most, existing laws may need some modification to deal with the use of computer communications to commit them.

Worse yet, the article reports that laws in some states allow schools to enforce them against actions taken outside the school. This amounts to making the schools part of the law enforcement apparatus, taking the place of courts. Teachers generally don't have judicial training, and school disciplinary hearings seldom have the protections for the accused which are part of the courts. In New Jersey, schools are allowed to impose sanctions when a "cyberbullying" action "substantially interferes" with the school's operation. But this requirement could actually make things worse, by shifting the focus from whether an action is a crime to whether it's inconvenient for the school.

According to the article:

The American Civil Liberties Union has opposed some cyberbullying laws, saying they set up school officials to trample on students' First Amendment rights. The ACLU helped block a proposal last year to expand an Oregon law to include off-campus bullying, arguing that school officials have no right to impose punishment on students for what they do away from school.
 
"That doesn't mean a school district can't be involved," said David Fidanque, executive director of the ACLU of Oregon. "The most important thing is to notify a parent. Most cyber-bullying outside of school involves mean, insensitive statements posted on somebody's Facebook page. There's no real threat and no real impact other than hurt feelings."

A law against "mean, insensitive statements" is a censorship law, and goes against both the First Amendment and the underlying principle of free communication. Letting a school punish communication which nebulously "interferes" with its operation turns it into a monitor of expression both inside and outside its walls.

A 2005 article by Robert Shibley on FIRE's web site discusses how easily schools can turn anti-cyberbullying policies into speech codes. Schools, which have so much power over students' intellectual development, should be kept as far as possible from any role in enforcing speech-related laws.

How blatant can Bush get?

Bush claims that the FISA extension legislation is vital to national security -- yet he's going to veto it if it doesn't provide retroactive immunity to his cronies in the telecom companies that engaged in illegal surveillance. Whether you think the bill is a good one or not, that's a confession that covering up his own misdeeds is more important to him than national security.

Does any honest person in the United States still not recognize that Bush is a scared little crook?

Finnish privacy goes down the toilet

In some parts of Finland, if you want to use the roadside toilets, you have to send a text message from your cell phone to unlock the door. If you don't have a cell phone, or if you've never figured out text messaging on it, you'd better use the bushes.

This is supposed to be an anti-vandalism measure; people's phone numbers are saved. But it seems like a very ineffective measure. How often do road crews check the toilets for vandalism? If they find any, will the police investigate every person who accessed the toilet since the last check?

When you have to identify yourself to use the toilet, privacy has really sunk into the sewer.

Blog piracy on dustdiary.com

I've written to domainsbyproxy.com, which hosts dustdiary.com, but received no response so far. I'm afraid I might have to get a lawyer to get the blog which pirated the content of mine removed.

I'm not thrilled with the prospect. If my experience with eyada.com is any guide, I could end up with a lawyer who'll write up a complaint about "imaginary posts," insist repeatedly that I don't have enough of a case, and pocket the money without ever submitting a single document to a court.

But I'm not the only person whose work is being stolen; and some of the others may, unlike me, be making money from their blogging and thus have a financial base from which to initiate legal action. So to get things moving, here is a list of items that have been lifted by Dustdiary blogs, with links to the places they've been stolen from. Since people often check trackbacks on their posts, some of them may notice just from this post. I may attempt to contact some of them. (The second column represents what I've found with a search; it's possible that they aren't the originals either.)

Be careful if you decide to look at dustdiary.com. I viewed its pages with my browser solidly locked down -- no Javascript, no Flash, no Windows -- but I wouldn't be surprised if it contains malware.

The stolen goods	The victim
sojourn222.dustdiary.com	Interview with Steev Richter
gothictoons.dustdiary.com	Psychiatry - The Smoking Gun
staymyself1.dustdiary.com	Phinnweb
lilmawitcurvz.dustdiary.com	Welcome to Your Senses
ravenspoet.dustdiary.com	Opportunity Knits
untouchable98065.dustdiary.com	Boy Crazy
batessug.dustdiary.com	UisceBots Blog
alvord123.dustdiary.com	The Flowing Line
lbxpreciosa.dustdiary.com	Carboncito
jtk53511.dustdiary.com	Asian-American Poetry
x3eseflako704k13.dustdiary.com	Journey to Recovery
blkstrictm.dustdiary.com	blog de la klavaza
farmboy1212.dustdiary.com	You Know You Knit Too Much When...
jregas9232.dustdiary.com	Frugal Glam
luckyangee13.dustdiary.com	The Superficial
nitebird212.dustdiary.com	Making Light
rodeooutlawutah.dustdiary.com	Vinnies and Pats Holiday
munoztarzan.dustdiary.com	Thought Balloon
jwhitel6.dustdiary.com	Expectations are resentments in the waiting
mudjudd20.dustdiary.com	I want to dance with Shah Rukh Khan
jsims62380.dustdiary.com	La Grande Bouffe

More links reporting theft by Dustdiary:

• Parlancheq
• La France Profonde

Comments providing useful information are welcome, but please do not include any links to dustdiary in your comments. They would help to improve dustdiary's search engine ranking and thus its income.

Plagiarism

Someone has plagiarized large numbers of my blog posts from here and posted them at arlnunnelly.dustdiary.com. "arlnunnelly" claims to have written them. The title of the blog is "President Mcgath Gary Posted Speech," which looks computer-generated to me; I hardly think it counts as credit. Some of the posts are as old as 2004, though they have recent dates.

A look at dustdiary.com shows that it is full of blogs with nonsensical names, such as "Come Buffet Parties Wait Joint" and "Poetry American Retreat Press Asian." I wouldn't be surprised if the whole domain is a plagiarism operation. There is no contact information, and the hosting is held confidentially by domainsbyproxy.com.

I'll see what I can do to get this thief shut down. Thanks to Adam Gaffin for alerting me to this.

The Wi-Fi giveaway that won't die

When a government program gets established, it tends not to go away, no matter how pointless it is. Philadelphia's municipal wi-fi program is looking like a case in point. Adam Thierer observes that the City of Philadelphia is threatening to continue the program even if Earthlink gives up on it, possibly by taking it over directly.

According to the news story, it "is believed" that about 10,000 people use the service, though hard statistics aren't available. That's ten thousand beneficiaries out of a city of a million and a half people.

Municipal wi-fi is one of the favorite government programs of many techies, for the simple reason that it's money coming out of other people's pockets to benefit them. The city's Chief Information Officer "was vague about the city's plans but stated that the city sees the network as a valuable asset for residents as well as for their tourist economy." The unstated premise is that if something is a valuable asset for some residents, other residents should be forced to provide it to them. Those who receive it are potential voters for the politicians who approve it; those who have to pay have the cost distributed among them, so the chance of losing their vote on that issue is small.

Once entitlements are claimed and not contested, there simply isn't any limit on them. Anything can be a "valuable asset" for some people, and when that's regarded as reason enough for them not to have to pay for it, anything goes.