Dean's World

They do that to get high Google results. I think if you report them to google, they may help you.

Professor Reynolds recently complained about the same thing. Can you say "class action", baby?

I've said for a while now that, much as I hate the world of class action lawsuits that end up benefitting the attorneys more than any of the plaintiffs, I would gladly make an exception if someone could find grounds for a good class action suit against spammers and their ilk. Sometimes you gotta hire a demon to slay demons. (Hey, it's almost Halloween, so the imagery struck me.)

A class action copyright infringement suit sounds ike just the ticket. Since many of the guilty parties are either broke losers, in foreign jurisdictions, or both, you would want to find a way to rope in ISPs and carriers as defendants as well. Normally, I'm against holding them responsible for what happens on their services; but from what I'm reading, it sounds like they could do more to stop the spam if they could get past intramural political squabbles and just settle on some solutions. Maybe a threat like this would make them work faster.

I know, it's all wishful thinking, and horribly unrealistic. But I can dream, can't I?

I read something days ago about a bizillionaire earlystage webguy who also happened to be the owner of url www.sex.com that got hijacked by a porn mogul/ex-con who went offshore and stomped all over his intellectual property. There was over a decade of litigation. Mr. Bazillion kicked the con dude's ass. The awards were significant. And uncollectable. Until a few days ago. If I remember correctly, the ex-con was just deported by Mexican authorities into US custody. Mr. Bazillion may have a greater ethical interest in this type of problem. His lawyers would be a repository of expertise. Such litigation strikes me as the clang bird from hell, but these cats may have the actionability simplified and easy to execute. In the interest of stewardship, they might be willing to converse and advise.

The record labels have all kinds of success against those who sell their wares and don't share. Free distributors they have a harder time with, and for good reason.

These people are making a buck off the content here, of which one hell of a lot of work is put in by me and others. I've never restricted anyone who wants to reprint or redistribute or quote for free, but if someone's going to copy it, make a buck off it, and not even credit me? Excuse me, but THAT'S obnoxious.

Well you could start writing pieces about how porn is immoral, will cause increased reception to mind control waves in the weak-minded, and is generally a sign of those who can't get a date.

They might just delete those pieces. Or you could autospam yourself. Arrange some sort of function to occasionally insert a paragraph in the middle of whatever else you are saying so that its difficult for them to edit you.

Signable petitions to join anti-copier class action lawsuits would be fun too.

Dean,

The Media Bloggers Association has a Legal Defense Initiative.

Maybe this is something that the MBA could research. I tend to view this kind of thing as "needle in a haystack" stuff but perhaps we could come up with a process to quickly do whatever can be done legally. Even if it does not get an immediate result, getting claims on the record might be useful in future litigation.

Bob Cox
President
Media Bloggers Association