Here's a response I sent back to Lycos this morning...
Waiting to see the response.
Cheers,
Jeff
----------
From: Jeff Tsai <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 09:12:06 +0900
To: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Lycos Photocenter (KMM6850544C0KM) NOTICE OF INFRINGEMENT
Regarding the notice sent to me, I'd like to point out the following:
Under Lycos's TOS, article 34, it is clearly stated that:
-
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY INFRINGEMENT CLAIMS
It is the policy of the Lycos Network to respond expeditiously to claims of
intellectual property infringement. Lycos will promptly process and
investigate notices of alleged infringement and will take appropriate
actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") and other
applicable intellectual property laws. Upon receipt of notices complying or
substantially complying with the DMCA, the Lycos Network will act
expeditiously to remove or disable access to any material claimed to be
infringing or claimed to be the subject of infringing activity and will act
expeditiously to remove or disable access to any reference or link to
material or activity that is claimed to be infringing.
-
I am making a claim of infringement of intellectual property against Lycos
as you are modifying and illegally displaying content without permission. I
understand the concept of linking (or even deep-linking) to a site, but
displaying and storing images without permission is against the law. Please
take action to remove the materials stated.
In addition, your TOS also indicate:
-
Use automated means, including spiders, robots, crawlers, or the like to
download data from any Lycos Network database.
q. Conduct your own contests and promotions.
r. Upload, post, email, otherwise transmit or post links to any Content
regarding any raffle, contest or game requiring a fee by participants.
s. Modify, publish, transmit, transfer or sell, reproduce, create
derivative works from, distribute, perform, link, display or in any way
exploit any Content from any Lycos database, including, without limitation,
by incorporating data from any Lycos database into any e-mail or "white
pages" products or serviced, whether browser-based, based on proprietary
client-site applications, web-based, or otherwise.
-
Yet, Lycos hides behind the excuse given below to
'modify...reproduce...create derivative works...' from another Web database?
If my photos were submitted directly to Lycos, this would be one issue and I
would leave it alone. Yet you have harvested images from another site
breaching the conditions of your own terms.
Are you indicating that if I create said search engine and apply the above
conditions to my search engine, I can freely and without hesitation draw
information from Lycos as well?
Regards,
Jeff Tsai
-
> From: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 10:39:43 -0800
> To: Jeff Tsai <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: Lycos Photocenter (KMM6850544C0KM)
>
> Hello,
>
> Thank you for writing to Lycos.
>
> Lycos maintains a catalog of Internet sites, analogous to the white
> pages of a phone book. We provide this catalog to the public as a free
> information service and research tool. Due to the size and nature of
> our catalog, it's not possible for us to remove individual results. As
> with any Web search, Lycos claims no right to these files and directs
> our users to contact the administrator of the Web site in question for
> more information on the use of copyrighted photographs.
>
> The Lycos Multimedia Search engine employs spiders that scour the
> internet for rich media content, much like a regular search engine
> would. My understanding is that because we are not publishing your
> photos, rather we link off to your site, this is not an illegal
> practice. You can find more information at:
>
> http://www.lycos.com/lycosinc/legal.html
>
> To prohibit spiders from any server from accessing your site, you must
> make use of the robots.txt standard. What is robots.txt? This small text
> file is like a traffic cop that tells our software which parts of your
> site can be examined and indexed. Ask your Web hosting company if your
> site already employs this file. If not, it is a fairly simple matter to
> create your own robots.txt file.
>
> You will find further information about robots.txt files at the
> following sites.
>
> http://www.lycos.com/help/robots.html
>
> http://www.kollar.com/robots.html
>
> You may also wish to read the following article regarding an image
> copyright case:
>
>
> Ditto.com wins image copyright case
> Ruling may have sweeping implications for search engines
> By Elliot Zaret <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> MSNBC
>
> SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 17 - In a case that may have sweeping implications
> for search engines of all kinds, a federal judge in California has ruled
> that a "visual search engine" did not violate copyright laws by
> collecting thumbnail images of photographs from the Web and displaying
> them on its site. The necessity of searching the Internet outweighed any
> other factor in determining whether a copyright was violated, the judge
> said.
>
> IN JANUARY, a California photographer sued Ditto.com
> <http://www.ditto.com>, then known as the Arriba Vista Image Searcher,
> for violating her copyright by collecting and displaying 35 of her
> copyrighted images on its site as search results. The Ditto search
> engine works by "spidering" the Web - having a computer program collect
> some two million images from any site on the Internet it can find them -
> then shrinking each image down to a thumbnail image that is displayed in
> the search result. The photographer argued that an image is an image and
> displaying her copyrighted photographs without her permission - and
> making money in the process - was effectively stealing. The U.S.
> District Court judge in Santa Ana, Calif. ruled that Ditto wasn't
> stealing the images. But the 15-page decision, handed down late
> Thursday, was somewhat more complicated - with the judge effectively
> giving a split decision on many of the relevant issues. However the
> judge said that the crucial role search engines serve for users of the
> Internet outweighs the other factors and makes Ditto's thumbnails "fair
> use" of the images. "(The photographer's) images were swept up along
> with two million others available on the Internet, as part of (Ditto's)
> efforts to provide its users with a better way to find images on the
> Internet," wrote the judge. "(Ditto's) purposes were and are inherently
> transformative, even if its realization of those purposes was at times
> imperfect. Where, as here, a new use and new technology are evolving,
> the broad transformative purpose of the use weighs more heavily than the
> inevitable flaws in its early stages of development." The judge also
> said that thumbnails themselves - though an exact replica of the
> original photos - had to be considered different from the originals
> because they served an entirely different purpose. "The character of the
> thumbnail index is not esthetic, but functional; it's purpose is not to
> be artistic, but to be comprehensive," the judge wrote. Ditto.com's
> attorney Judy Jennison, who heads the Silicon Valley Intellectual
> Property Litigation Practice of Perkins Coie, said the decision
> validates the importance of navigation tools like search engines on the
> Internet. "Generally speaking, the court has realized that the Internet
> is important to all of us, and helping people navigate the Internet is
> an important thing," said Jennison. "It's clearly the right decision for
> the Internet."
>
> SWEEPING RAMIFICATIONS?
>
> Rich Gray, an intellectual property attorney and founding partner of
> Outside General Counsel Silicon Valley, said the case may have sweeping
> ramifications for the industry. "It's very pro-fair use in the Internet
> context, which has implications in all kinds of things ranging from
> search engines to deep linking to framing," Gray said. For instance, the
> case seems to support the right of a music search engine to play clips
> of songs sold on MP3 sites, Gray said. And the case may come into play
> in a case filed this week by online auction giant eBay, which claimed
> that Bidder's Edge effectively stole eBay information by searching eBay
> listings with its auction search engine. However Gray warned that it's
> only one ruling in the nascent field of law and cyberspace - and until
> more cases are decided, every case will be looked at differently. "It
> wouldn't shock me if a similar case was brought in a different district
> court and a different result happened," Gray said. "This could have gone
> either way."
>
>
> Farah
>
> Lycos Customer Service
> ----------------------
> Lycos.com - Part of the Lycos Network
> http://www.lycos.com
>
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
>
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>
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>
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>
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> ________________________________________________________________________
>
>
>
>
> Original message follows:
> -------------------------
>
>
> Message from JeffTsai:
> I was alerted to the possible presence of my photos on the Lycos site.
> As you can see from the URL below, the first four or so pictures that
> come up on the list are those located at http://pug.komkon.org. However,
> Lycos has arbitrarily taken the artwork I've submitted to an authorized
> site and altered the work without explicitly asking permission from the
> owner (myself).
>
> Linking is one issue, but creating unauthorized duplicates is a breach
> of copyright.
>
> Please remove references as soon as possible.
>
> Thanks.
> ID :
> ( PARTNER ) :
> ( PTNR ) :
> Platform : Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)
> RE :
> http://www.multimedia.lycos.com/default.asp?query=jeff+tsai&first=1&inde
> x=3&component=ViewPicture&ff=0
>
>
>
>
-
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