There’s a site that’s caused quite a stir in the last couple of days, which I won’t name or link to, for attacking a Georgia Congressman anonymously. Griftdrift and Wilson have excellent posts up about the situation.
Somehow, my site is listed as a “friend” on the blogroll. I didn’t ask to have it placed there, and would like for it to be removed. Using the site’s contact form, I sent the owners this message:
Hi,
I don’t support this type of anonymous attack site, and request that you remove my site from the “friends” list in your sidebar. I am not your friend.Rusty
radicalgeorgiamoderate.org
I’ve been pondering how to address these situations after dealing with another weasel (see the first link under Georgia Legislature Resources in my sidebar to learn who I’m referring to, but don’t click it if you’re at work).
I’ve been having trouble determining when I should bother worrying about hacks trying to pawn their pathetic wares off using my or my site’s name, and when they’re not worth the trouble. On one hand, it’s unethical and has the potential to give people the impression I endorse something that I don’t endorse if people pay any attention to it. On the other, they often are just looking to boost their search engine rankings and get people to pay attention to them, so addressing them publicly (even to call them out as the gutless weasels that they are) helps them meet that end.
Anybody have thoughts on when to use one approach versus the other?
If there’s one thing I’ve learned on the Internets, it’s that there will be a never-ending stream of weak-minded piss ants trying to do things the easy way and making things harder for people who want to do good work here.
Update 10:20 p.m. The site mentioned in Grift and Wilson’s posts removed my link after I asked them to do so. So, good on them, but I still think anonymous attacks are shady. I have no problem with someone running an attack site as long as they disclose their affiliations and they’re not lying.
I guess everything takes some amount of discretion. As for me, I didn’t become a lawyer to have someone piss on my foot. I am going to concentrate on inventing a worm that, when roused by my righteous anger crosses the osmotic barrier at the end of my fingers, actually enters the keyboard, is transformed into a digital wizard and back traces to the offender who is transformed into s**t eating maggot the next time he goes online!
Is this too strong?
I think that’s just the thing for these people. We should consider marketing this.
Heh. My favorite part is the direct and to the point, “I am not your friend.”
I just clicked on the link to you know who. God, Rusty, you are a mess.
Yep Rusty’s a class act.
Let’s recap his dispute with [site name redacted -Editor].
When [site name redacted -Editor] launched Rusty was fine with it. Rusty’s wife liked it enough thet she asked to be a part of the Georgia page. When I didn’t add her because she generally writes about things other than Georgia state or local news and politics, she trashed [site name redacted -Editor].
Then Rusty and another blogger sent [site name redacted -Editor] emails informing us that if we didn’t add his wife’s blog, they’d withdraw.
When we didn’t cave, Rusty came up with the picture and launched his widdle cyber tantrum.
Hello Dave,
I see you’re out on another good will mission.
I thought the concept of your site was okay originally, but also that it had core features that were fundamentally flawed, as I documented in my original post. I wrote:
Hardly a glowing review.
But there was hope yet that you might actually apply some sort of collective intelligence standards, given what it said on your about page at the time:
Alas, it wasn’t to be. Later on, you confirmed my fear that the [site name redacted -Editor] Illuminati (that’s you) would apply categorization standards arbitrarily. It just so happened that the brunt of your arbitrary entrance admission standard was directed toward my partner (we’re not married yet). You could offer no rational explanation for not including her blog, so I asked four times for mine not to be included.
For reasons unknown to me, you insisted on continuing to include excerpts from my content on your web site without my permission.
As you can see in the sidebar, content on this web site is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license. That means that if you profit from the use of my content without my permission, that’s copyright infringement.
Your hosting service, 3Essentials, Inc., will hear from me soon about this copyright infringement.
Wait, Rusty has a wife? How did I not know about this? We could’ve been having threesomes for months now…
Rusty,
Before you go firing off pointless accusations of copyright infringement, I suggest you consult a lawyer. Any reasonably experienced intellectual property attorney will tell you that no site license can restrict fair use rights.
[site name redacted -Editor] excerpts are well within fair use standards.
Here’s a news story about the latest court decision. I am sure you and your partner will enjoy researching the decision:
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1179330300627
An online nudie magazine’s copyright infringement suit against Google now requires some complex legal maneuvering after a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel severely limited what it could argue.
Perfect 10 magazine, which offers a subscriber-only service that claims to have photos of “the world’s most natural beautiful women,” sued Google in 2004 for providing thumbnail versions of images from the magazine. A district court had found at a preliminary hearing that Google’s images probably constituted direct infringement. But on Wednesday, the federal appellate court disagreed.
The magazine is not likely to prevail against Google’s fair-use defense, which allows the courts to avoid rigidly applying the copyright statute when “it would stifle the very creativity which that law is designed to foster,” the court ruled, citing Stewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207, 236 (1990).
“We conclude that the significantly transformative nature of Google’s search engine, particularly in light of its public benefit, outweighs Google’s superseding and commercial uses of the thumbnails in this case,” wrote Judge Sandra Ikuta, who authored the opinion. Judges Cynthia Hall and Michael Daly Hawkins concurred.
I guess we’ll just have to take that theory out for a spin, won’t we?
Regardless of how that turns out, what I don’t understand is if you think I’m such a “class act” (sarcasm noted), then why again do you insist on promoting my content on your web site?
Better yet, is it worth all the bad karma you’ve stirred up with Georgia bloggers? I may not be the best blogger, but I’ve been around longer than most. About 20 bloggers I know have been kept in the loop of this conflict, and would never in a million years support any project you’re involved in. And if asked, they would advise their friends and their friends’ friends not to as well.
The reputation you’re building for your site is of a closed directory with arbitrary admission standards and a transparent interest in profiting from other people’s work without offering any compelling value-add features. The reputation you’re building for yourself is of a petty, vindictive jerk and a poor developer who puts out unfinished, poorly-conceived products. Way to endear yourself.
I’ve only visited the site-that-shall-remain=nameless once (from Grifts post) and think the thing I found most telling was seeing your site listged among the other-site-that-shall-remain-nameless belonging to Mr Walker. At that point I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to run into this “friend” at any podcast party or Manuels happy hour.
The thing about all this stuff that really pisses me off is that you, Amber, Grift, and others in the local blogosphere have worked very hard and for quite some time to become established and respected in the near and far blogosphere and they come along and try to grow their puny sites on your good name and reputation. It’s just bullshit. Bullshit, I say!!
Catherine,
To the credit of the owner of the site from Grift and Wilson’s posts, my site was removed from the blogroll after I asked them to. That’s more than can be said for Dave, who is now lower on the credibility totem poll than an attack site run by a totally anonymous partisan hack.
“What I don’t understand is if you think I’m such a ‘class act’ (sarcasm noted), then why again do you insist on promoting my content on your web site?”
I promote your site for the same reason I don’t remove your RSS feed: Radical Georgia Moderate is an important part of the Georgia politics and news blogosphere. Since [site name redacted -Editor] goal is to provide an accurate window into what is going on in this increasingly important public affairs arena, [site name redacted -Editor] is not complete without you. The Georgia blogosphere thinks you are an important daily read on politics, so it doesn’t matter whether I think you are a jerk or not.
I know you disagree with where I draw the lines on what fits and what doesn’t with regard to your partner (sorry for the previous mistake.) And you’re welcome to your opinion. However, the line has to be drawn somewhere and I do my best.
As far as making enemies in the Georgia blogosphere, if that’s the cost of disagreeing with you, then so be it. I hope you and your readers will not that before any of this started, in my very first email to your partner, I offered to build a version of [site name redacted -Editor] that would fit her niche because I recognize her reputation and the importance of all the work she has done for the blogosphere.
She chose to attack us in a blog post instead of working with us. I have nothing to apologize for.
I’ll comment without injecting myself into the actual debate at hand, Rusty, to answer your question.
To deal with the weasels, it’s always satisfying to create an image containing their name and URL so that if people want to visit, they have to retype it and they get no Pagerank bump. I think that’s even better than a ref=nofollow.
Okay, but Site Name Redacted Aggregator Thingy isn’t Google.
And Dave, hon, don’t go making assumptions about whether Rusty has or hasn’t contacted a lawyer. Surely you remember what happens when you assume.
Anyway, copyright law aside, at this point to my mind it’s not really about the law so much as just… being weird. I cannot understand the mentality of someone who would keep a site up even after they’ve been told by the owner in no uncertain terms to remove it; they’re getting no benefit and just making things harder on themselves; they’re clearly not friends with the owner; I… just don’t get it.
I wasn’t saying that they’re Google. I thought when Rusty said “they often are just looking to boost their search engine rankings” that he meant sites like Google that would give bonus points to an inbound link from Google or even a mention in your body text.
But it does, apparently, matter whether you think I’m a dirty slut or not.
Sorry, Amber dear. I’ve explained myself as best I can. Isn’t the first time my communication skills have failed me, won’t be the last.
Sorry, Garrett, I wasn’t responding to your comment. I was responding to Dave’s where he cited a court decision. Shoulda been clearer, my bad.
Also known as a ghetto.
Yeah, the logic doesn’t really progress from Point A to Point B.
Point A - RGM is a respected mainstay of the Georgia Politiblog community
Point B - Site Name Redacted wants to gain a foothold in said community… But by ignoring Rusty’s requst, chooses to embroil itself in a very public spat that all of RGM’s readership will likely see?
By the way, if you want to see a web site that rips people off and is not careful to treat people’s intellectual property with respect. Check out http://www.blogowogo.com
Wait, is Dave still here? I thought surely he’d run out when the credibility of his arguments did. And after agreeing with me on how pathetic and shitty that is! You know, Dave, that kind of betrayal really hurts.
Please note, despite his admitted communication challenges, Dave learned this lesson well from his time at the Karl Rove Institute of Deception: LOOK OVER THERE! What? I have no argument or credibility? Doesn’t matter, LOOK OVER THERE!
It should be noted that for a few weeks now [site name redacted] has been pulling content from this site through an intermediary, because I’ve blocked access to the site’s aggregator entirely. That’s why until last night you saw “[site name redacted] Recommended” before the title of this blog’s listing if you went over there. His site still can’t access mine directly. I can tell because he can’t count the comments in the comments sections here, which is something he still needs direct access to the site to do.
So, don’t believe what you read, because he’s not getting it directly from me, and could well be manipulating it en route to it appearing on his site.
And before I blocked access to the site entirely, I had a little fun at his expense. View the results here.
This makes no sense to me: “It should be noted that for a few weeks now [site name redacted] has been pulling content from this site through an intermediary, because I’ve blocked access to the site’s aggregator entirely. That’s why until last night you saw “[site name redacted] Recommended†before the title of this blog’s listing if you went over there. ”
I don’t know what one has to do with the other, so I added back in the recommendation on [site name redacted -Editor].
It demonstrates that you were editing the title of the feed.
Oh wait, did Dave run out of arguments and run away again?
He said he agreed with me:
The Thief Dave Mastio has stolen my content as well. His “reasoning” is the same as you have already seen - InMuscatine is an “important” part of the blog-o-sphere, at least in Iowa. Well, that and I get about 30,000 more visitors each day than either of the Thief Dave Mastio’s “news” aggregator sites.
The difference between RGM and InMuscatine is that we have only one request for the Thief Dave Mastio to use the content of my site : ask! Apparently, that is just far too much effort.
I guess the lesson to take away from this is the Thief Dave Mastio is a consistent thief.