68Caliber.com has gone on another crazy tangent about copyright law. I guess people didn’t listen last time. Big surprise there.
Basically, their whole article is making fun of people who might have happened to copy and paste their story, and threatening them with lawsuits and probably bodily harm. Nothing like threatening people with a lawsuit to scare them straight. Just look at how well it works for the music and movie industry.
First, even after he clearly states it’s fine to link to them, they still state you still need permission to link to them.
If you want to link to one of our stories-go ahead after receiving permission (just like much of the paintball media already does).
Sorry, I’m not going to ask for permission to link to your articles. I just won’t. Easy enough.
They also have a whole list of the people that support them. It’s a total of 4 people, one of them being related to 68Caliber and another associated with some magazine I’ve never heard of.
Then they go into the whole stealing an actual item is the same as “stealing” some content. Wrong. If someone steals your Angel, you can’t use it anymore unless it comes back to you. If someone “steals” your content, you can still use it and do waht you want with it. No one took away your content. It’s still sitting there pretty on your server, which if someone stole, then the content wouldn’t be there.
Let’s just be entertained by some quotes from their article (Fair Use)
A juicy, interesting, exciting story breaks on www.68caliber.com (that’s almost always the case, we get the stories before anyone else almost ALL the time).
Kinda cocky there. I get the emails from the mailing lists at probably about the same time you guys do.
In fact, under the “fair use” doctrine, you could even quote some of my sentences in your own article.
If we want to give someone limited rights (let someone borrow it or license it), such as reprinting the lead paragraph, we can.
What?
So, TOOL, how does it feel?
Ouch. Calling the people who read your site tools seems a little harsh.
The enablers have even gone so far as to claim, publicly, that the DMCA-Digital Millennium Communications Act-shields them from being taken to task because ‘they’re just the provider and can’t be held responsible for the actions of their individual members’.
Basically. The DMCA provides a safe harbor for content providers. You send a takedown notice to the provider, usually the person running the site, and ask them to take it down.
If anyone is wondering, I don’t really get any stories from 68Caliber. They usually cover something that has been covered by someone else before or just isn’t that good or interesting. I get informed mostly from RSS feeds and mailings.
As for this site, the posts are most likely going to be placed under a Creative Commons license, most likely Attribution-ShareAlike or Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike, which would mean you could use the content of this site as long as you cite the source and put it under the same license.
Also, please stop using dashes when commas should be there. It’s really quite annoying. And doing a tad bit of SEO work will probably help a lot with the search engine traffic. And a framed link out is possibly one of the most annoying things ever.
Here’s the link to the story, without actually linking to them.
http://www.68caliber.com/story042529.php
I’ve been playing for 19 years…it’s a given that I’m not straight in the nugget.
Just a little clarification for ya:
1. Recon Magazine is the print publication for Special Ops Paintball
2. E-Money isn’t associated with 68Caliber.Com other than his company is a paying advertiser and that we distribute his shows for him.
McCarter Brown and PBJunkie are just mature, intelligent website operators.
So why all the hate? Me, my wife and the reporters who contribute to the site all work their butts off to provide what I consider the best content on the web, and given that a large percentage of the links provided by Paintball Headlines go right back to 68Caliber.Com, a lot of people agree.
I’ve got a real bad paintball habit…as such I have to charge people to advertise on my website. That means that when others copy and paste a story to another site or forum because the users there are too lazy to head over to 68, that impacts the traffic the site gets and the representation my paying advertisers get. As bad as the problem is now, it explains why so many go elsewhere after seeing my traffic stats.
Just for S&G’s, I checked my traffic a few days after the first copyright notice went out (which you so eloquently commented on), and interestingly enough, the traffic shows a big spike. Some of the worst offenders out there stopped doing what they were doing, and lo and behold, the traffic that was getting STOLEN from my business is now going to where it rightfully belongs. Funny how that works.
You know what? I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I burst your little utopian bubble insists that the internet is a free-for-all in distributing information. Even out on the web when someone creates something, they have a right to protect it. Sorry about that.
Quit being part of the problem, and become part of the solution.
Firstly, I hate on a lot of things. It’s just what I do. This site, I think, more applies to people looking more for entertainment, rather than a bonified news source, or at least, that kinda what I try to do. Don’t really take anything I say too seriously. It’s all in good-hearted fun.
Also, I’m in the whole generation hates the RIAA and MPAA, and doesn’t like anyone to tell them what they can or can’t do. Plus, I usually go against anything that say they’re better than anything else without really any proof or comparisons. Maybe you guys are, but, in my opinion, that’s really for other people to decide, not for you to claim.
It’s just that you guys just seem overly protective of it. You still state you can’t link to your site, and that you can, but at the same time can’t, use snippets from the article. It seems like you kinda want to define the rules as you see fit, or not even sure what you want. That’s what mainly puts me off about it. I don’t have a problem with the whole “don’t copy and paste our whole article and say it’s your’s” part.
Also, are you claiming the press releases you copy and paste your’s also? You display your copyright notice on those posts too and make no mention that it’s not your content.
Secondly, E-Money does seem to be related to you guys, since they have their own page with links in the title and sidebar, right next to the articles link with no mention that they’re unrelated. Sorry, I misjudged that. As for Recon Paintball, I still haven’t heard of them before this, but I’m probably out that whole loop. And McCarter and PbJunkie I both like. I never said anything about them.
Another thing, to show I’m not completely out to get you, you could do some SEO work on the site to bring in more traffic. Such as, making the page titles of articles have the article title in them. Like, The Bob Long Marq Series Closer – 68Caliber.com, instead of Paintball News, Articles, …. Just that small bit will help you with your search engine placement. Surprisingly, a lot of people still actually search for things, and they might even stay and come back again. I found somewhere around 5-10% of search engine traffic would come back again. If you need any help with it, I’ll be glad to oblige. I have worked with a fair amount of PHP. I’m not sure what CMS you’re using, but I think I saw something about Joomla a while back on there, which I’ve never used, but should be pretty easy to do.
And being part of the problem is so much more fun.
James,
you can say what you want and define things the way you want to define them, but the reality is that the article on copyright infringement and our instructions to people were not contradictory and they are a layman’s definition of the law. (When we print that kind of thing, we get it vetted by our attorneys who are NOT five dollar an hour hacks; in fact, their firm is one of the nation’s leading business law firms and they have a very healthy IP department.)
We want people to ask for permission to link to us so that we can do the return favor.
They NEED to ask for permission if they want to reprint an article in its entirety, or any portion thereof that is not ‘fair use’. That’s for articles generated by 68caliber and exclusives from other sources – not press releases.
When you see ‘EXCLUSIVE’ on a press release – yes, we do claim copyright on that presentation of the press release because it was given to 68caliber exclusively of all others, with the intent that it will appear on 68caliber only – unless we give permission to reprint.
I don’t know why you are making a mountain out of a molehill: Paintball News always asks for permission to link or reprint; Splat magazine does the same. Paintball Sports magazine does the same; Faceful does the same. Scenario News did while they were printing. PBJunkie, Recon magazine, PBHeadlines asked permission to reprint headlines.
In fact, its really only other websites that don’t follow the law or respect the origin of a story enough to ask permission to reprint.
Our statement about breaking news was about NEWS, not press releases. We wouldn’t have made the claim unless it was true – go back and look at all of the major industry news stories for the past two years and you’ll see that the vast majority of them broke on 68caliber.com first.
And when we refer to ourselves as a leading News and Information site, we’re restricting ourselves to paintball websites of similar type – not community sites, not forum sites, not retail sites – but sites that self-restrict themselves to covering the industry as news.
You sure do have a funny way of trying to drum up business for yourself…
James,
Hi.
http://www.specialopspaintball.com/shop/product_detail.asp?SKU=700+0025
Just in case you were curious.
I am also the former editor of Paintball Sports, in case you’ve ever heard of that little magazine. 😉 I’m not offended you haven’t heard of RECON. I’d never heard of your site before now, either.
All I can say, maybe you should fix your site. “Terms of Use” should state that permission is required to link/copy the articles on your site. Simple.
Wait, is this defined anywhere? Are users just supposed to know that? Do you have a ‘PURPLE-MONKEY-DISHWASHER’ tag that will only allow you to reproduce it only by saying it, because that would be pretty sweet.
O ok. Though you do have your own forums that’s called a community. And I do recall that you were selling some sort of T-shirt that might have been a slight knock at one of these forums you refer to, in which, they “converted” to you guys. But hey, you guys are completely different.
Really? Surprising, since this post wasn’t really drawing any traffic in.
And Dawn, I’m surprised that you have even heard about this site.
Well, I’m surprised you’ve never heard of RECON. But it looks like your web site is focused on tourneyball… so I guess our media paths just never crossed, as RECON is exclusively woodsball-focused (scenario, rec, SPPL, etc.)
Good to “meet” you.
Wow. How did I miss out on this…