"Copyrighted content on your site"

This morning I received this email...

From: Steve Pavlina
To: rg_pugh@yahoo.com
Sent: Thursday, June 1, 2006 7:15:22 AM
Subject: Copyrighted content on your site


Hi Rob,

One of my regular blog readers sent me this email today:

Steve, I ran across a blog where the author seemed to have plagiarized part of your "subjective reality" postings. Check out relaxedfocus.blogspot.com if you care to.

I checked out your site, and she appears to be correct -- it looks like you've reposted entire sections of my articles without permission. Those articles are copyrighted. Would you please remove them from your site immediately?

It's OK to post a short excerpt like a paragraph with your own commentary -- that's considered fair use. But to repost as much as you did is unethical... not to mention illegal, even if you do include a link to the original. For one it hurts the author's search engine rankings when their content is duplicated on other sites as you've done.

My reply:

Hi Steve,

First, let me say I'll be happy to remove the posts you'd like me to. Please send me the links to the posts you'd like removed, as I have linked to a number of your articles, and have found them helpful and insightful.

You can skip the rest of this if you like, but I'd like to take a moment to respond to what it seemed to me that your email said.

First, I think it's unfair of another of your blog readers, and you, I guess, since you forwarded it, to assert I've plagiarized anything. I think you and I know both know that's untrue as I've never posited the excerpts from your blog as my own and never once tried to pass your work off as mine. Every post was attributed and linked. So, it's not plagiarism and the insinuation it was is both hurtful and, honestly, I guess, made me a bit angry.

Fair Use in the information age, as especially as it relates to blogging, links, excerpts, etc, is, at best, an ill defined area. The amount of excerpted material appropriate or legal under fair use isn't clear by any stretch of the imagination. What's more, I live in Japan, which is obvious from the blog. So for you to claim illegality is both ill informed and smacks a bit of heavy-handed arm-twisting. Which I guess is only surprising because I'm comparing you to the imaginary "Steve" I've built in my head from reading your work. Which is, of course, ridiculous. Still, for you to toss around the idea of what I did as "not to mention illegal" in what I can only perceive as a vaguely threatening RIAA mannerism [my failing, perhaps] really rubs me the wrong way.

You're use of the phrase "unethical" really bothered me, as you're both assuming my intent and motivation, and positing, quite negatively, what they are. I think you're mistaken, but probably because I'm me.

Had you simply wrote and asked me to remove the links/posts without insinuations on my character or vague legal threats I would have been happy to take them down. And I still am, of course.

The excerpts from your work serve mostly as reminder to myself - a personal journal of a sort - of fascinating and interesting ideas I come across - things I need to remind myself of, and something that the miniscule number of friends and family who check it out might find interesting or helpful.

I can understand the search engine confusion motivation, and the desire to draw more eyes to your site... you are, rightfully so, very business model oriented, but I think someone would have to be extremely easily confused to think the info presented was mine. And what's more, anybody who found the information even a little useful would, of course, follow the links to find out who actually wrote it. I would think. Unless I've horribly misunderstood the nature of the internet this past decade.

It's all just vaguely disappointing somehow. Not that the vague disappointment of somebody half way around the world you've never met is, or should be meaningful to you. Hey, we both only exist for the other, right?

Anyways, send links to the posts you'd like deleted and I'll be happy to take care of it for you ASAP.

Best,
Rob