Friday, June 20, 2014

One of our Publishers has become a site owner


In an interesting turn of events, one of our own publishers has recently spun off his own site. While we hope he will still be publishing an occasional story with us, we are very happy that he has taken this bold step.

The publisher in question is one of our favorites, RedditTroll. On Mizozo, RedditTroll would often post various things he found on Reddit. His articles could be funny, bizarre or just incredibly interesting. His new site, NotReadingIt, follows in the same light.

The site is about 2 months old now and has a ton of great content. I am also a huge fan of Reddit, but unfortunately I don't have much time to really delve into its bowels. NotReadingIt, however, is much easier, and already sorted to bring you the most interesting content from Reddit.

Congratulations, RedditTroll ... may your venture be prosperous!

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

This extortion is just never ending

It seems that lawyers trying to extort money have plenty of time on their hands. Earlier today, I received the following message from them (previous post link):

Dear Mr. Golob,

Thank you for getting back to me. Yes, by amicable we mean a monetary settlement out of court. There are thirty three (33) infringements that are/were posted on your website, to which my client owns the exclusive rights.

These do not appear to be posted by a user but  by the website itself, and all of the pictures were housed on Mizozo servers. Therefore, the defense of “user content” does not appear to be a valid assertion.

Please call me to discuss this matter further.

What's most interesting to me is their count of infringements. Either they just make up numbers as they go, or they are willfully not sending me additional takedown notices. The notice I received from them only has 4 images, so where the other 29? I remember there were many more images on that post, all of which I removed, but unfortunately I have no record of the count.

Of course, their second paragraph is also telling ... 'do not appear'. Now there's an argument! I figured they would be a bit more concrete than that.

Oh well, looks like this fun isn't ending soon. My friends tell me that I have nothing to worry about, these shakedowns happen all the time. If they do take this to court, I can potentially benefit a great deal due to the press it would generate, so I should just sit back, be nice and answer any questions they have so as not to offend. So, that is what I'll do.

I don't see any questions in this email, do you?

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

And so the Takedown Extortion contiues

Looks like the extortion attempts aren't over. In case you aren't following the story, I think my last post may be useful, and this post started it all. I'm impressed by these people's resolve, but unfortunately for them am unchanged in my resolve.

So, here's the email I received from the wonderful law team yesterday:

Dear Mr. Golob,

I have not received a response to my email dated April 17, 2014. Since that date unfortunately my client has informed us of more infringements of images they owe. There are now thirty three (33) violations in total.

As I am sure you are aware, removing the images does not alleviate the infringement. It is our desire to resolve this matter amicably. However, if we do not hear from you by Friday May 23, 2014, we will assume that you are not interested in resolving this matter and will proceed accordingly.

And, here is the response I sent:

Hello Stacy,
I am not exactly sure what you see as amicable, but I'm guessing it involves green pieces of paper. If this is the case, how many pieces are you looking to attain?

I must point out, your attempts at extortion are futile. Mizozo is a user generated content website, which provides ample ways for people to send me takedown notices for any content they feel is infringing.
Dan

This sounds like fun. Time to get a few other people involved.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

A Decision has been made

After our last post about the attempted extortion, it has been decided that we will play the waiting game. Rather than try to reach an amicable resolution, as suggested by the email, we will simply ignore the threat and see if it goes away on its own. Lets be honest, the only solution that those lawyers will be happy with is money, and that is not going to happen, so why bother?

Assuming this doesn't simply go away and they reach out again, our response will simply be that we have done and said everything that we plan to do and say, so the ball is in their court. If they decide to take it to the next level, we will become very vocal and they will only lose the battle, wasting both our time and money as well as theirs. Also, a battle like this may prove most beneficial to Mizozo in the long run.

If they are reading this blog, we should see a response from them soon ...

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Seems our latest Takedown Request is a blast from the past

It turns out that the previous post's takedown request is in reference to an earlier takedown request. After we removed the link and alerted them that the link was gone, we got a follow up email claiming they would get back to us shortly, but it seems that their idea of shortly and my idea of shortly are very different.

Here's the latest message we received from them.

Hi Dan,

I am not sure that you remember what this case is regarding. We received the email copied below from you on October 9, 2013, and appreciate that you removed the image. However, we have left several messages for you to discuss the fact that removing the image only solves part of the problem. The other part being the time that the images were up on the site without permission.

I would like to discuss this matter with you and hope to come to an amicable resolution. Please contact me as soon as possible.

From: Dan Golob [mailto:mizozo.com@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2013 8:43 AM
To: SLPLLC - Copyright
Subject: Copyrighted content removed
 
Hello.
The copyrighted content referenced in the attached PDF has been removed from Mizozo.
Thanks
Dan


Regards,

Looks like they really want to scare me into giving them some money. Nothing like a good extortion scheme to start your weekend right.

I am not responding to them right away, I need a little time to think this over. Do you have any suggestions?