Tuesday 27 May 2014

Important Notice

Readers will note that suddenly a lot of pictures have disappeared from this website.

There is a reason for this, I think. In fact, I am convinced that this blog is under attack from Blogspot itself. 

First was a fake copyright violation complaint against me two weeks ago. I received a notification that one of my articles - a totally innocuous parody of a 19th century poem - had been cited for an unspecified copyright violation by an unnamed complainant. I immediately filed a counter complaint and after several days got a response from Blogspot saying that they'd reinstate my post in two weeks unless the complainant (who I am convinced does not exist) files suit against me. The two weeks are almost up and of course so far no suit has been filed. 

Last night I came on to Blogspot and noticed a lot of my photos were missing. Now I always upload images after saving from my hard drive, not by hotlinks, so they aren't affected by their status on the original website. But even images from Raghead - original artwork by me - are missing. At first I thought it was my slow net connection which was to blame, but it's the same even on my phone. And I haven't heard a single other person having this problem. 

I can't afford a website of my own with unlimited upload limits otherwise I'd have set up one long ago. That's out.

From what people tell me, Blogspot's follow-up on complaints is poor, and I don't in any case know where to start. I need some advice.

In the meantime, I am thinking of moving to another website. For the time being, except for Raghead, I am not going to upload any pictures on this site.

7 comments:

  1. How very odd and disturbing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Maybe it's only you, who can't see them? Give us or somebody else a link to a page with missing photos and we can tell you what we see.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think it's amazing that you were able to get any sort of message through to blogspot.

    When I was having trouble with my domain name, I tried for weeks- leaving dozens of emails, complaints, questions, etc everywhere I could - and NEVER got any kind of response from google or blogspot.

    Nothing.

    Not even a "Sorry, we can't help."

    ReplyDelete
  4. I had an issue like this once. Turned out I'd hurt someone's Tiny Little Feelings, and they 'complained'. Kept the page; reuploaded the content, and none the worse for wear.

    The sad thing about places like Wordpress is that you'll need to promote your site through other social media to drive 'eyeballs' - Multiply was good for that, if little else toward the end; Facesuck can help with that, but frankly most folks aren't going to frequent a page without a social component (which is what made places like Y/360 and Multiply work so well in the beginning).

    Also, to get anything meaningful out of Wordpress, you'll have to buy their service, buy a domain, host it - you know the drill.

    The good news? It's not that expensive - not like it used to be. Try BlueHost or HostGator.....

    ReplyDelete
  5. That stinks. I once got a C&D from an artist for using one of her images on my blog. I was happy to take it down, but pissed that she didn't just contact me directly. So I wrote a post featuring rude parodies of her work. This does nothing for your current problem, but I hadn't thought about that in a while, and it made me smile.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hello. I am the professional photographer who filed the DMCA complaint. The issue was not the text of the post, but the image accompanying it. You uploaded a copyrighted photograph of mine (a bed bug), without my permission. Then, you appended your own copyright statement to the post, implying that you owned my work. You do not. Then, you filed a fraudulent counter-notice.

    I would appreciate it if you kept the image in question offline, unless you'd like to purchase a license.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So...Alex...it didn't strike you to simply, you know, drop me a message asking me to remove the image instead of filing a complaint for copyright infringement? And it didn't strike you at any time while my counter-claim was pending to contact me about it? Only now when Google reinstated my blog do you feel fit to contact me? I hope you're proud of yourself.

      I left a note in the original post for anyone who might be interested.

      Delete

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