Content Theft

[LunaPlays 5]

Hi guys,

checking back to you to send you all a hug for the upcoming new year.

Also want to give you the short information that my Ylands guides content but also other guides content that I wrote got stolen by some page in the net that does traffic with steam guides content it seems. The whole content theft he does has such an huge extend that it is easy to proof and that I had to write to the steam support because a lot, and I really mean a lot of steam guide writers seem to be affected. The whole page seems to be mainly set up by stolen steam guides content that does traffic for that guy. I don't want to post now the link to not give that guy the traffic I already cause by all my DMCA notifications I did sent to the provider and steam. However I did contact at first the page owner who did ignore my message and then the provider of that page, in the worst case the provider is also the violator, but you can never know, so I just requested them to take my content down within 14days and also told them that if they don't take the whole page down a lot more complaints might come in soon, because I am going to give the information to all the guide writers in case that steam also doesn't want to take action. I also gave the infos to steam of course to give them a possiblity to take action before I make anyone upset, which I really would like to avoid, but in case that the support trys to just give me a standard message to get rid of me they might regret that soon.

This might go even public, because I do believe steam doesn't like content theft from their page, even not in the community guides and in the worst case for that thief he might have to pay for his violation. There is a possibility to let google know about this too and in that case he might be taken off all search machines. However I took at first care that that page will not go on stealing as good as I could by giving the information to steam and the provider of that page.

Every help offer will be of course very much appreciate, because this is not just affecting one person that does some social and vulonteer work for games on steam! I do think we should not tolerate theft at this and this is not about me but about all those people that do work for early access games on steam. We all do not get paid for all the hours we do put into this, of course you could just say: Hey why reacting at all! But my feeling tells me that we may not allow that to happen, because a lot of people that work for free would get demotivated and stop working for games like this!

I am just an old lady that got the time to support the really great early access games but I assure you I do put my heart into supporting young people that develop games because I was earlier 3d designer and my husband is programmer. I love playing and I love the developers because I know how much heart they put themselves into this! And if you can support me now in any way feel free to contact me in this case on steam by a comment on my profil "Luna plays". Thank You!

Have a Happy New Year

Luna plays

Edited December 30, 2017 by LunaPlays

[Designated Drinker 16]

unfortunately, i don't think there is a lot you can do about that legally anyway, since you are not protected by any copyright, doing a written guide for public viewing anyway.

[LunaPlays 5]

Hi Designated Drinker,

 

how did you get that idea, absolutely every published work, also guides, that you create yourself and put into the net are copyrighted (if you don't say that you don't want to have any copyright) especially if you even post that you have copyright on your work, what I did.

I mean seriously if the internet would offer to steal everything no one would post anything at all. Just imagine you write a guide for cooking, simply called a cooking book. You will use already existing recipes and those are not under copyright, but the book you write, the way you sort the things and your personal description is still under copyright. Would be strange if not, because no one would publish anything like that anymore.

Maybe you should read this to end that myth about having no copyrights on a guide you wrote. This was posted about copyright and intellectual property concerning games: https://www.gamefaqs.com/help/29-copyrights-trademarks-and-plagiarism

Edited December 30, 2017 by LunaPlays

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Hi Luna,

It is very unfortunate that people like you - those who actively create original content to help other players - find their work stolen. I'm not sure what we can do about it but I will discuss it with the others sometime during the next week and let you know. In the meantime, let me thank you for your effort and wish you a truly great year 2018!

Ales

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Hi Luna,

I just wanted you to know that we discussed this and although there's indeed not much we can do to help you with this directly, at least we decided that in the future we will granting people who create good, original content a special forum badge as a token of appreciation and recognition. I know it won't be of much help, but it might at least help other players with an easier identification of who is more likely to be a content creator and who's a copycat in a case when an identical (or strikingly similar) content is posted by more than one player.

[Whane The Whip 99]

@LunaPlaysOne thing that I have done in the past, when sending a take down notice, is to include a bill. Anyone that has disregarded your protection or usage rights is financially liable to you. Removing your works from their site will not absolve them from their financial obligation, they still owe you for the period of time that they were publishing your works. But sometimes offering to waive your usage fee if they remove your stuff now (14 days is way too generous imo), helps with the push. However, in order to do this, you must set a reasonable fee and if it comes down to challenging your fee, you must be able to show that your fee is reasonable.

@DesignatedDrinker the public status of intellectual property has no bearing on it's protection. All original works are automatically protected for... I think 80 years now after the death of the author (In the U.S.) or something like that. I know that modern day copyright law has extended the older protection. For example, if you take a photo of a cloud, no one can use that image unless they get your permission and there are several ways that you can grant that permission. But the default position it that you will own any and all of your own original creative works, regardless of how they are presented, or regardless of how visible those works are.

 

Edited January 4, 2018 by Whane

[LunaPlays 5]

Thank you Ales and give my greetings to the other developers please. I did write to steam meanwhile and am now most of all in need of any laywer that could write a letter to the violator and the provider, because a private mail from me they did not take serious at all. I am unfortunately very handicaped by a heart illness that weakens me too much to fight this alone. So I would need some publicity in case that steam can not take care of this case. I do still expect them to need to do so, because there are just so many other people from steam affected by this theft. I asked them to let me know if they take any action, otherwise I really need to find more help by contacting the other guide writers and somehow getting any laywer that can write a simple letter, maybe even with a bill so that he earns something for his work and some publicity to be more effective. Hopefully not everyone will just turn around and leave me alone with this. There is still the possibility to let google remove that page from all search machines by a DMCA complaint. But I do honestly believe that this provider should also get punished if he ignores a DMCS notice I did send.

[John - NEXFER 111]

Some thoughts on copyright -

Copyright laws are jurisdictional and only loosely enforced on large international issues via treaties; for example, what applies to the use of content by American citizens, does not necessarily apply to the use of content by Chinese citizens.

If one nation chooses not to agree to the terms of another nation, or simply ignores them - all that can be done is to ask nicely / sanctions / politically negotiate (which largely won't happen).

This is why 'Hollywood' has decided to be its own international enforcement body for copyright 'infringements' of their own intellectual property (not yours) worldwide, as no international body exists that would otherwise be responsible for it, or care enough about it (WIPO) - certainly not a national government, on an international stage, as they simply do not have any jurisdiction to claim (though the USA still tries).

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

This would be akin to coming in to your house, and informing you what you can and can't do with your own belongings, many nations simply ignore them.

Next, even if you seek to hold 'copyright' - simply holding and claiming it, does not enforce it. If you do not have the means to enforce your claim internationally, you can not protect it internationally (Hollywood).

This is likely what the owner of your problem website has gambled on - that you nor any other Steam guide creator, can in fact enforce any claims against him - he's likely correct.

Even if you issue a take-down notice for video content such as a YouTube video - if the stolen content uploader chooses to ignore you, YouTube will do nothing and the content will come back online for them - the responsibility to act on the infringement and enforce it is left up to you by YouTube, as they are not a judge, and cannot do anything other than recommended taking your action to court in the appropriate jurisdiction.

Bring them a court order and they will abide by the laws in the jurisdictions that they operate, nothing more - the same thing here could be applied to Steam.

 

Philosophically - I don't think any human has any right to claim such a thing as 'copyright' - such things hold humanity back generations, for the sake of a few people whom generally wish to profit from one action, on a recurring basis - instead of working for what you earn, the tactic is clearly - do a job once and let it pay me forever - clearly an unrealistic system that extorts rather than benefits humanity.

Furthermore - to claim that you can copyright something written in English - a language that has been taught to you, with every single part of it being given to you freely, then claiming because you have rearranged words around, that you have sole right to it - is to ignore the fact that if every other human took this same action against you - you would not even have been able to write anything - as the language you used was copyrighted, you would need permission to write each and every word...

I don't extend my ideology of property ownership - to the creation of ideas - that would be an attempt to claim that I have not benefited from every other human's ideas over the generations, that I am the sole creator to bring this idea in to existence, and to ignore reality - that I am a product of countless generations of humans, whom have all contributed their ideas to humanity; I do not own any of it, nobody does.

Copyright holds humanity back, for the benefit of a few, or a single person, I could give plenty of examples of this, and I've yet to think of, or see, a single example of this being an actual benefit to humanity.

Regardless of the philosophy, if you live in a country where these laws are enforced - someone might sue you for using 'their' words or ideas (words and ideas they claim are theirs alone is in fact a fallacy).

 

Additionally - It has been a well established tactic for new websites (especially forums, blogs and article hubs), to effectively plagiarise the majority of their initial starting content. I have watched it happen time and time again, and it actually works pretty well for them.

As a brand new website lacking content is visually unappealing to a new users, they simply avoid this by plagiarising their initial content, and tricking new users into believing that they are the content creators for it. Soon enough the Search Indexing Robots / Web Crawlers redirect traffic to the plagiarised versions instead of the originals, and the website grows quite quickly.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if this content is being ripped to his website by script, something like highest rated guides / newest additions get downloaded to his database, and then displayed automatically etc.

The alternative of course if creating your own content, and that usually takes people. Can't grow people without people catch 22 situation can be quite frustrating, leading these developers to get desperate and resort to underhanded or shady tactics I guess.

 

Edited January 5, 2018 by John - NEXFER

[Whane The Whip 99]

3 hours ago, John - NEXFER said:

Additionally - It has been a well established tactic for new websites (especially forums, blogs and article hubs), to effectively plagiarise the majority of their initial starting content. I have watched it happen time and time again, and it actually works pretty well for them.

Yup, that and the fact that there are only so many ways to say the same thing without invoking similar phrasing. I use copyscape and get a lot of matches simply due to one or two phrases that could have  both been independently articulated without any intentional copying. This is so common that Google search algo's are used to cope with the use of the same phrases. But there is a big difference between using a source of information to author a different version, and a direct word for word data scrape of content that essentially duplicates a web page. One can be used to expand and improve upon an idea, concept, or presentation while the other is just pure laziness. Most people don't post content and yell "this is all mine", but when someone copies it all verbatim, it can become bothersome, and in some cases, costly.

Edited January 5, 2018 by Whane

[LunaPlays 5]

Just to make that clear, this is not a case of someone that did his own guide by being inspired by any steam guide, he copied all one-to-one from steam guides. Second he lives obviously in the Turkey, which got European rights as far as I know. Still their political situation is ...lets say compared to Germany like Wild West. Also he is the one earning money with his page by advertisement and not the guide writers, because we did not get a penny for our work, because it was done voluntary and on a social basis for the community. Third I saw already one time in a different case that steam actively fights copyright violations. So lets hope the best!

It is of course easy to say: Hey you got anyway no chance instead of helping, or do you really think that your post helped me now. You discourage people to fight for their rights. It might be right, that it is difficult, I am aware of that otherwise I would not state that a lawyer would be the minimum to have, but google offers you to take the complete page down from search machines and they are not interested into taking anything down, they just do their duty. Why would they do that if there would not be any copyright or if copyright would be illegal or not fair? If you would write books or create a song or movie you would view this copyright matter different. But we aren't talking about earning money by copyright, we are talking about a far worse violation, a hurt of personal dedication to the society, a social behaviour that gets hurt by a greedy idiot that steals work. And of course we are talking about a provider that doesn't do his duty and earns money by the page too. My husband brought it to the point that you probably mean too: "He is smart, he earns money with work that others did!" Right? So does that mean that he will succeed with it? No! And could he just open up the same page again at any different provider? Yes he could, but I do believe Google would take it down the second time without asking, because they got also nicer stuff to spend their days on and he wouldn't be the first one with that nice try.

We also copied songs from the radio on tape in earlier days and we shared our games and videos with friends. I do still believe that it is your right to do this at least within your family and not buy a game 3 times just because 3 people in your family want to play or use it at different times. To me that is a totally understandable complaint about copyright, but not if people work social for the community. Then you'll cause that no one does that any more and if you support this by telling them they wouldn't have any rights to at least protect the personal intellectual property of their work or the right to say "this is my dedicated action in society" you'll cause that in the future no one will be willing any more to react social to anyone, which would mean to end social networks. First step to do then is to close all the community forums to not let anyone post there. So the base for your post would be gone and trust me Ylands doesn't earn by running and paying this forum here, it is also social. ( I really wished people had the brain to not view things one sided like you just did! Sorry but that just gets me a littlebit upset although I do know: Bla bla Mr Freeman ) So you force me to show here the other side, although it means even more work to do so. Try to think social to view the other side, I know we are the idiots of the nation, but all nations of the world grew and gained by idiots like that. And there are still some survivors as you can see. And I am not going to show the white feather just because some people would. That might just be my life story, because I had 3 heart attacks because of antisocial people that I took too much to my heart and the selfish reaction of people almost killed me, but seriously even if it might not be smart I will stick to it because deep down in my heart I still believe that is the right way to go and society would be not social anymore without people that fight in any way for this.

Especially men are very fast with realistic looking comments (sorry, no offence, but that is just a fact), but that doesn't mean you overlook that it is usually at court anyway a matter of luck or money to be successful. The laws are not executed for the poor old social man that tries to help his neighbour, they are executed for whatever interests, mostly it is about money. In this case of social work you will never be able to predict what happens if the other part involves a lot of money to keep his page, but I personally believe he will not be able to fight against many DMCA reports he might get. So to discourage and even say any reaction to it would be probably not successful might be a nice meant warning, but is definitely not the way to believe or go! If all the guide writers on steam will not bother, because it was not so much work for them and just turn their back on it then my chances go of course down to fight this. But I am not even getting started yet, because I want to give steam the possibility to not have trouble on their platform, because I am a social thinking lady and who knows what shit storm breaks loose if I react in a wrong way about this issue. I could imagine that there could be some trouble, otherwise I would not try to react wisely. Honestly women tend to react emotional and such cases are the last ones you want to be emotional. Still I do strongly believe that by not being the part that earns money by the content and having done it for a social reason ( and the guides do also help selling the games) gives the guide writers at least a moral and ethic plus in the eyes of anyone that will need to decide about it.

[kimbuck 746]

for the record  i wrote a  comedic  book ..and it was published online,  but the  publisher went  bankrupt and honestly  returned all documents including  copyright to me  ..however the book is  still on line ..hosted in a  site  in Turkey, along with other  pirated books  from the same  bankrupt  publisher.  Discussions with the other authors  reveals  trying to stop these thieves is like  nailing   yogurt to a concrete wall. The  site  is  based in  Turkey, using  all  turkey based  facilities and they  flaunt  all laws. They ignore all copyright symbols etc..and all they are interested in is  making a quick dollar. One  author  advised me hes  spent  more on  legal  fees and getting  nowhere than he has earned with sales of  his  book.

There's  two ways to handle these  thieves ....one is  not to draw attention to their  website so it  eventually  starve , and the other is to create  multiple  alternative  websites of your own with links and  higher traffic   that forces the search  engines to ignore the thieves websites. Aas they are only interested in profits  and are not  prepared to  spend  money promoting them they  soon  die when  costs  exceed income.

[LunaPlays 5]

Sounds terrible, but the difference is again that you wanted to earn money with your work.

Also for the record: Just a simple question, did you all hand in a DMCA complaint at google to get the page down from the search machines? Because Google would need to support you to stop the theft?

And how come that you did chose a publisher in a country that is well known for their Wild West situation in law matters? (this last question now rather out of curiousity)

[kimbuck 746]

11 hours ago, LunaPlays said:

 

And how come that you did chose a publisher in a country that is well known for their Wild West situation in law matters? (this last question now rather out of curiousity)

My publisher was in the UK .. these thieves from turkey obviously copied the  book and reposted it on a server in their country which has no regard of the laws.  In order to see what they  have on their  site, you have to pay a 'registration" fee..  this is  akin to blackmail.  I am sure if  i pay the fee  i will find  just 'clickbait"  and a few tags  linking to excerpts  from  my  book ...enough to create a  google search result ..and they will have   got  money out of me.

In order to  get  Google to investigate, i needed  to see whats on that site,  and i am  not going to give them ( the thieves) money to access their  site and find out ... that's the aim of their website... not to earn money from the stolen books  but to  get money from the  authors  seeking to see what may have been  stolen.

Oh  .... and my  work was being used by educators  in the  UK   and  Aust as  reading material for   young  students learning English...  (it was 100% PG rated,  humorous and contained no obscenities..)   my only  reward was knowing  that  young kids were being encouraged to learn to read  proper English  (  If you consider the   Aussie   accent  as "English")

Edited January 7, 2018 by kimbuck
my spelling is better than the spellchecker

[LunaPlays 5]

Kimbuck I really don't want to hurt you, but I need to tell you that if people don't even go that step to fill in a DMCA complaint they can not complain then about their work getting stolen and being unable to do anything against the theft. In your case if you even know others authors that experienced that theft with the same page it should be easy to get the page down from the search machines if all of you group up and do together a complaint.

Of course it is understandable that you don't want to pay the fee to log into a page that might have stolen anything, but as I said, if you aren't even willing to get a proof you can not complain about the bad protection in the net. No offence, but you will need to take action otherwise this is just a wild guess. Could be just a topic that mentions your book in that page, but you are already posting in this forum that your work got stolen. I do get why it upsets you but it sounds a bit strange if you state in one post that you can't do anything against the theft that happened to you and in the next post you admit that you never found out what exactly got stolen and if at all. I cross fingers that you can protect your work and fill in a DMCA complaint, if anything got stolen.

Edited January 7, 2018 by LunaPlays

[kimbuck 746]

@Lunaplays     It has not hurt me, and I am not  upset. I  didn't  complain then  and i  don't  complain or care now.  Why?  because this was over 3 years ago  and has  not  hurt me  financially. As the site that has   the stolen stuff has  heaps of   stuff  possibly  stolen from other  authors, it doesn't  worry me as they wont  get any  financial gain from  me.  I posted here to actually  add support to  others who say they are the  victim of similar theft.   Theft  happens .  It  still will happen. I have  better things to do with my life rather than  chase after a foreign website, in a foreign  language, and who probably  does not  understand the content of the book anyway!   By the  way, the   book was called " Owdjabee"  and was about a  fictional  model  railroad placed into a  factual situation on earth.

The point of my posts here is   ' Sh..T  happens, and there's always  someone who will want to profit  from your  hard work'.

Meanwhile   i have  retired, and  am  enjoying  "ylands" ... the  sharks   here are  more  friendly and  fun