Badmovies.org Forum

I don't know why, but in the last two months I have run across more instances of the website's content being copied to another site than I have over a period of years.  I think that it is the growth of blogs and also the small online business model of advertising that is made possible by Google Adwords and affiliate programs.  People want to make the money. They do not want to (or cannot) make the content to attract visitors, so they copy.

Anyway, I keep finding these and keep sending out DMCA takedown notices when possible (US or other countries with decent copyright protection).  I have the template, so it only takes a few minutes to write the letter, verify it twice, and then scan and email or fax it.

By copied content, I mean somebody takes an entire review (or the characters, plot, lessons, and stuff to watch for) and posts the article onto their own site/blog.  It is very rare that they provide any credit to Badmovies.org.  Like this guy, who just copied a number of my reviews and posted them as his own IMDB reader comments:
http://imdb.com/user/ur10220319/comments

It's truely shameful that people have to copy stuff, then claim it as their own and not give credit to the source material. 

If I do write a review and use text that someone else wrote, I will cite the source material. Though I rarely pull something from another review unless I feel that it is either good to my cause or will be able to explain something better then I could.
 

Just out of curiosity, are you sending these letters to IMDB in this case, or the wolf_man guy?  If IMDB has this info, they should pull his account and preferably ban by IP.

What an ASS!!!  the_wolf_man07 is a plagiarizing turd with no self esteem!  He did not even try to cover his tracks, just lifted your reviews, Andrew, whole!  What an ASS!!!   :hatred:

asimpson - Heck, if they were only using snippets there wouldn't be any issue at all.  I never see any snippets, or if I do I disregard.  Interestingly, sites or posters who use snippets also provide proper attribution. 

Allhallowsday - That is pretty much what all of them do.  I'd say 95% of the time they just copy the whole review, word for word.  If I could meet them in person, I'd probably get myself in trouble.  The world is a more civilized place now.

Ulthar - Most often, I send the DMCA notice to the provider, like Google (for Blogger) and Amazon for the IMDB.  They usually only ban users in the case of habitual offenders.

I can say my mind is not often boggled, but the blatant theft of intellectual property does it.  And, for... what?  Trotting out someone else's work as one's own on IMDB?  If I met some ASS in person who stole my writing I'd get myself in trouble too.  Here's to putting up with it, keeping cool, and running a great website.   :thumbup:

How hard is it to say ...

"To quote badmovies.org ..." or "According to badmovies.org ..." etc etc.

I mean if you can't have an original thought, then just don't have one.

 :hatred: This wolf_man *beep* deserves to have a silver bullet right up his arse and I will pull the trigger.  :hatred: I will report him as soon as I get on to the IMDB.

This reminds me of two SA government sponsored organizations who got wind of my thesis on the SA film industry's history and asked if they could use this 400 page colume for research purposes.

Being a nice guy, I said OK: the next thing you know, they have the entire thing on their sites. Now the kicker: I can't sue them as they are funded by my Department and I would have to resign and then sue them.

You just can't bloody win, can you?  :hatred:

Whatta sorry piece of sh!t. Obviously the shmuck has no shame,or even the brains to think that he wouldn't be caught . Whatta peter head!   :hatred:

At least he has good taste....if he had copied something I wrote...it would have shown he was a total idiot!   :bouncegiggle:

I know some people can be anal about snippets that are used from other sites without citing sources.

On one hand, you could look at it as the sincerest form of flattery.
But to do that would be wrong.

They're stealing from you...plain & simple.

What about reader reviews?
Several of us here (myself included) have reviews on this site.
Do you also check to see that none of our writings have been plagarized?

I do not.  Two real reasons. 

One (and this is the main reason) is that there is nothing I can do if I discover such - I am not the creator of the work, so I have no standing in copyright law or the DMCA.  Actually, the writer of the review is extending me authorization to post their review on the site.  They are the creator of the review and still own the rights.

Two is that the writer might publish the review or submit it to another site (or use it on their own or a friend's site).  There is too much a possibility that I would be finding duplicates and alerting on false positives.  For my reviews, they are all on this site.  I know that any copies are illegal copies.

Be glad you aren't using wordpress or a similarly super-popular front end program, there are millions of sites that do nothing but steal content based on search strings that constantly run through technorati and other blog search engines.  I have a blog attached that is just a throwaway thing and it even gets snatched up from time to time (the most recent being a blog that grabbed all articles with the word "giganto" in it.  Is Giganto suddenly a big Google adsense keyword?)  There are specialized terms for these thief blogs, and for the blognets used for fraudulent adclicking which sometimes runs hand in hand with the former but I don't remember them offhand.

Except for the forum, pretty much everything here is code I wrote.  That is something I am proud of.  Scrapers hit this site too, but Google and most search engines seem to weed them out quickly. 

Two words: People Suck

That's a surprise.  I thought that anything you write is automatically copyrighted.  Maybe you can get someone to sue on your behalf?

Sad thing is that guy visited here and was essentially a guest in your online community. Then he steals your work. It's not like ripping a song and enjoying it personally. He is saying that he is the creator of your work, very sad.

Too bad you couldn't get his IP and ban him. Although the last thing that you want is to hide your reviews in a registered area. Your reviews are the hook for your site.

Well you could start writing really crappy reviews. Then after this putz steals one then put your real review up.

What I will never understand no matter how hard I try:

What does someone get by pretending they are something that they are not?
I mean...how many times have any of us seen someone online pretending they are something special or misrepresenting themselves? I'm sure you've all seen it at least once. What does that person gain from it? Self respect? How could they?
So this a-hole steals reviews and puts them up on IMDB under his name...for what? So people will think he's smart and funny? Is the real him that sad of an individual that he needs people to approve of his online personality?

I just don't get it.

Indeed.  Phonies pretty much always get caught.

Can you imagine someone like this guy trying to impress his friends with "look at all the cool reviews I wrote on IMDB."  They may ooo and aahh a bit, until one of them has actually SEEN one of said movies and a discussion starts.  It would probably become pretty clear those IMDB thoughts were not his....

Kinda like someone trying fake having read a book .... like most of us probably did in elementary school (where this guy's development probably arrested), and our teachers saw through each and every one of us that tried.

It is mind boggling...

I have seen it twice that I know of...

Once I caught someone on the TAPS board (an 18 year old kid) trying to pass himself off as a chick...but not just any chick...a model. He had complete pictures of himself as a model...had a story to match...everyone loved "her" because she was just so wonderful. Months went by and I was viewing a scam baiting site for Russian dating scammers...I saw all the model pictures he had posted and it all came apart from there. What did he gain? For 2 months people were his online buddies...yay...

Another one I saw but didn't take part in was on the TAPS 18 board...There was this guy that pretended to be a cross country trucker. He was always on there and talking about how he was doing this run or that run and he always had stories about the places he went to...he even got so detailed one time as to giving a story about a rest stop he was at and how there were hookers all over and he had a run in with one of them...got the cops involved...anyway...almost a year of this and one day his wife found his account and signed on...she spilled everything about him. He was some fat bald guy who was on welfare and hardly left the house...she spilled everything. I know there were women that were cybering with him...think about how they felt...lol...anyway...he was never heard from again. So what did he gain? People admired and respected his online personality...did that help him get through his life? The fact that people admired and respected a part of him that wasn't even real made his life better?

I am also fairly sure I have seen it 2 other times but I was never able to really prove it...I had major suspicions though.

I don't see it at all. I've never misrepresented myself to anyone other than scammers...so my life isn't exciting...so what? Having someone respect me for something I am not makes no sense at all.

And another pops up today:

http://kokorosweet.com/blog/?p=14

(He used the images right from my review, which gave me a chance to have some fun.)

I don't look especially hard for these.  I think I might spend 15 or 20 minutes a month and I find several.

That's pretty bold.


As far as what people get out of playing out some online persona, they may just be pretending to be the person they want to be instead of the loser they feel themselves to be. It's probably some kind of inferiority complex thing.

That was classic!!! :bouncegiggle:

Once I got tired of all the people hotlinking to pics on my Dead-Alive page for use as their avatars on other forums, so I changed the files to gay porn.

karma for andrew!that's a hoot!

you know,i'm in an artist's group on ebay,people there are stealing these artists auction pictures and using them on jewelry,claiming original work!could you give me a link to how to contact their provider about them committing this kind of fraud?this is also happening on their personal sites,i'd like to be able to help them,if posible!
zombie

Ebay has a system for reporting fraud and such.  I know they do, I just never have a need to use it.  Try looking around the Ebay help center.

If it's not on Ebay, but the person is hosting the copied content in the US, you can use ARIN to locate the owner of the IP address:

http://ws.arin.net/whois/

You can use "ping" from your computer or via an Internet site to get the IP address.  Just put the hostname (in the case of my latest problem child - "kokorosweet.com" into the box and get the IP.

http://network-tools.com/

That's hilarious!  :thumbup:

:bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle: Thanks for the great laugh!!   :thumbup:   
F***in' idiot. 

Striking one back is always fun.  Taking matters into your own hands just gives you that much more satisfaction.

Especially when the results are great like that was!   :thumbup:

I checked the stolen review earlier.
Then I checked it again later and there are boxes that say, "I stole this review.  www.Badmovies.org wrote it."

How did you manage to add those to his blog?
They're hilarious!   :teddyr:

I just temporarly went over to the kokoblog thing and registered. I left a nice comment for NINE DEATHS of a NINJA...I also asked the theif if he knew how to tie his own shoes .

He was using the images on my site.  I just renamed the originals.  Renamed copies of my "I stole this review" image as the name of the images he used, and uploaded them to the server.  Pop, they show up on his review.

I've already sent him an email.  If he doesn't do something about the stolen review today, I'll send a copyright notice to Hostmonster (his hosting provider).

Thanks for the info Andrew.
You did everyone a favor by nailing that thief!

About Reader Reviews...
I understand your reasoning for not policing reader reviews.

However...
If you happen to come across one of our reviews that you know has been stolen and put on another site, would you be willing to take a few moments to drop us an e-mail or a PM to let us know?
Kind of a nudge in the ribs to say, "Hey...  This guy is stealing from you.  Just thought you should know about it."

That way we can take care of it ourselves.   :wink:

Yes, but it is very unlikely I would find them without looking for them.  I do not just stumble across the copies of mine, I cannot think of a time when I have.

So you use a program to deliberately search for review thieves?

Perhaps once a month (usually less often) I will check with some Google searches or Copyscape searches.

hello I'm sorry I posted your content on my site i wasn't trying to be a bad guy, I was just doing it to put something on there.i not to familiar with this type of thing so i apologize, please forgive me, now I know not to do it again. please try to give me a break and show some class with this type of thing because I'm not sitting here making it my business to bash you or your site which is very good i might say.I like what you have to say about films. It is funny and insightful . I didn't try to steal your work it was purely innocent and stupid on my part. once again i apologize for that ignorant act.

Sincerely,
 Mh   

This "purely innocent" person asking Andrew to "show some class" makes my jaw drop.

I did not immediately contact the hosting company with a DMCA notice and have not pursued any type of civil action.  In short: once the copied review was removed I let the matter drop.  I can only assume that the person in question means that they found this forum thread somehow and wishes it was not here.

I do believe the original "thief" actually didn't realize he was doing something wrong.  He's probably a youngster, and it kids today don't seem to grasp the concept that something intangible like words can be stolen.  Heck, most adults don't seem to grasp the concept.  He probably never even stopped to consider that badmovies.org is a for-profit venture and not just an elaborate hobby blog.  It's the dark side of the "information wants to be free" Net-culture.

That said, the "show some class" comment buried inside the apology suggests he still doesn't quite get it.  Andrew's little prank with the "this content stolen from badmovies.org" images was actually sent the message in a quite humorous and harmless way, and definitely worked. 

He didn't learn anything, I see he/she/it is hot linking others sites for content, at least images.