Techdirt. Stories about "wordpress" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories about "wordpress"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Thu, 7 Mar 2013 11:42:19 PST Prenda Law Issues Subpoena For IP Addresses Of Every Visitor To Critic Blogs For The Past Two Years Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130307/10090322242/prenda-law-issues-subpoena-ip-addresses-every-visitor-to-critic-blogs-past-two-years.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130307/10090322242/prenda-law-issues-subpoena-ip-addresses-every-visitor-to-critic-blogs-past-two-years.shtml defamation lawsuits against commenters on two key blogs that have been instrumental in exposing their shenanigans: FightCopyrightTrolls and DieTrollDie. While John Steele has dismissed his claim, the other two suits are still moving forward as far as I know. And now it's come out that Prenda Law's Paul Duffy sent a ridiculously broad subpoena to Wordpress demanding every IP address of every visitor who has visited either site since the beginning of 2011. Basically, they're looking for everyone who has ever visited either site:
Our client is requesting all Internet Protocol addresses (including the date and time of that access in Universal Coordinated Time) that accessed the blogs located at dietrolldie.com and fightcopyrighttrolls.com between January 1, 2011 through the present. Please provide this information in an Excel spreadsheet.
The subpoena is from Paul Duffy, so it's a bit ridiculous to claim "our client" since he is the client. This seems like a pretty clear abuse of the subpoena process, though, coming from Prenda Law, whose specialty is doing anything it possibly can to get IP addresses, perhaps it's no surprise. The subpoena was issued in association with the original claim that was filed in state court. The cases have all been removed to federal court, and hopefully the lawyers at Wordpress know better than to just cough up this info like that. Even more ridiculously, Duffy tries to claim that this is an "emergency" so they shouldn't waste any time in handing over the info:
Due to the emergency nature of the requested information, it is imperative that your organization responds to the subpoena immediately. The requested information is perishable and vital to the claims asserted in a complaint alleging widespread and systematic defamation.
What hogwash. They're looking for data going back to January of 2011. If Wordpress has logs going back that far, it's not like they're suddenly going to disappear. And, of course, the "widespread and systematic defamation" claims are already pretty questionable.

It's not difficult to look at this and see a likely attempt at creating chilling effects to try to scare people off from visiting those sites. Considering that Prenda has been collecting all sorts of IP addresses in its various copyright trolling lawsuits, can you imagine what they might do if they can cross reference IP addresses of visitors to those sites with the IP addresses they've already sued over?

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]]> what-are-they-smoking? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130307/10090322242 Wed, 11 Jan 2012 04:18:41 PST WordPress The Latest Tech Company To Come Out Strongly Against SOPA/PIPA Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120110/17470317370/wordpress-latest-tech-company-to-come-out-strongly-against-sopapipa.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120110/17470317370/wordpress-latest-tech-company-to-come-out-strongly-against-sopapipa.shtml there's no real opposition to SOPA and PIPA, yet another massive online player has come out forcefully against SOPA -- and urged its users to do the same. WordPress.org has taken a break from its usual "we don't take political positions" position and come out strongly against both bills.
Normally we stay away from from politics here at the official WordPress project — having users from all over the globe that span the political spectrum is evidence that we are doing our job and democratizing publishing, and we don’t want to alienate any of our users no matter how much some of us may disagree with some of them personally. Today, I’m breaking our no-politics rule, because there’s something going on in U.S. politics right now that we need to make sure you know about and understand, because it affects us all.
And if you think WordPress is just some small tech player, you haven't been paying attention. WordPress is huge:
We are not a small group. More than 60 million people use WordPress — it’s said to power about 15% of the web. We can make an impact, and you can be an agent of change. Go to Stop American Censorship for more information and a bunch of ways you can take action quickly, easily, and painlessly. The Senate votes in two weeks, and we need to help at least 41 more senators see reason before then. Please. Make your voice heard.
Yeah, but no one's really against these bills, right SOPA/PIPA supporters? As Jane Wells, who wrote the post about this, notes, she's "freaked the heck out," because this bill threatens some of the fundamental principles of the internet, the same principles that democratized publishing and the independent web.
Every time you click Publish, you are a part of that change, whether you are posting canny political insight or a cat that makes you LOL. How would you feel if the web stopped being so free and independent? I’m concerned freaked right the heck out about the bills that threaten to do this, and as a participant in one of the biggest changes in modern history, you should be, too....

[....]

Some thoughts:
  • In the U.S. our legal system maintains that the burden of proof is on the accuser, and that people are innocent until proven guilty. This tenet seems to be on the chopping block when it comes to the web if these bills pass, as companies could shut down sites based on accusation alone.
  • Laws are not like lines of PHP; they are not easily reverted if someone wakes up and realizes there is a better way to do things. We should not be so quick to codify something this far-reaching.
  • The people writing these laws are not the people writing the independent web, and they are not out to protect it. We have to stand up for it ourselves.
Blogging is a form of activism. You can be an agent of change. Some people will tell you that taking action is useless, that online petitions, phone calls to representatives, and other actions won’t change a single mind, especially one that’s been convinced of something by lobbyist dollars. To those people, I repeat the words of Margaret Mead:
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
People are speaking out in droves. Will Congress still ignore them?

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]]> welcome-to-the-club http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120110/17470317370 Fri, 17 Dec 2010 19:39:00 PST WordPress Accused Of Copyright Infringement For Its Famed 'Hello Dolly' Sample Plugin Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101217/15042512325/wordpress-accused-copyright-infringement-its-famed-hello-dolly-sample-plugin.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101217/15042512325/wordpress-accused-copyright-infringement-its-famed-hello-dolly-sample-plugin.shtml Hello Dolly plugin that is part of the default install. If it's enabled, then you get a short lyric from the song in the corner of the admin-only dashboard. It was basically just a fun simple plugin, mostly used to demonstrate the plugin functionality of WordPress. However, as Craig points out, some folks in the WordPress community are pointing out that, technically the plugin may be violating the composer's copyright. It does not appear that the composer, Jerry Herman, cares or has complained about this, but some in the WordPress community worry that every install of this WordPress plugin may technically be infringing -- and they've filed a bug asking WordPress parent corporation Automattic to indemnify users of the plugin and/or explain if the song has been licensed..

The whole thing, of course, is pretty ridiculous, but seeing as we have seen a growing number of copyright complaints over lyrics sites, you could see a potential lawsuit. Of course, it's hard to see how the use of such lyrics in the plugin -- in any way -- cause any harm to the song or the composer. In fact, chances are it has done the exact opposite. But such is the state of copyright laws today that doing something as simple and as fun as creating the Hello Dolly plugin may have made copyright infringers out of millions of bloggers. Of course, there's a pretty strong argument for fair use in this case, but tragically, due to copyright law customs, you can't know if it's really fair use until after there's an actual lawsuit. Hopefully, this is all moot and no one actually sues. But it's a rather sad statement that a plugin famous for this description:
This is not just a plugin, it symbolizes the hope and enthusiasm of an entire generation summed up in two words sung most famously by Louis Armstrong: Hello, Dolly.
might have to be killed of due to copyright fears. Thanks, copyright, for killing off a symbol of hope and enthusiasm of an entire generation.

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]]> wtf http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101217/15042512325 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 17:09:01 PST WordPress A Bit Too Quick In Doing DMCA Takedowns Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101113/16515211858/wordpress-a-bit-too-quick-in-doing-dmca-takedowns.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101113/16515211858/wordpress-a-bit-too-quick-in-doing-dmca-takedowns.shtml more such requests.

It's unfortunate that the company is responding to them in misleading ways. For example, it recently took down some content and blocked the ability to post any new content, based on a DMCA takedown message claiming, incorrectly, that "we were legally required to remove the file from our servers." That's not quite true. First, Wordpress is not legally required to do so. It is true that the company is certainly strongly incentivized to do so, since not doing so could open it up to liability, but that's not the same as saying they're legally required to do this.

However, in this case, the details look even worse. The "content" in question was merely a link from a blog to an unauthorized version of an ebook. The author of the blog, which talks about ebooks, was complaining about certain ebooks not being available:
In a blog post, Ricardo had bemoaned the fact that a book, Ken Follett's 'Fall of Giants,' wasn't available in Spanish on the Kindle. He noted, however, that the publishers of the book didn't mind people converting other formats but presumably to save people the bother of messing with DRM removal, he linked to an already converted copy hosted on a file-hosting service.
The local IP "protection" group posted a comment on the site, demanding he take that down, and when he either didn't notice the comment or didn't realize it was real, they went to WordPress, claiming that he had ignored their takedown request. Furthermore, as the article notes, under Spanish law, a link to infringing content is not, itself, infringing. In the US (where the servers were likely hosted -- so it could have an impact), links are still something of a gray area, unfortunately. Of course, it's rather amusing, as noted in the TorrentFreak article that the very first comment on that particular story complains that "the link doesn't work." So this whole thing may have been over absolutely nothing...

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]]> that's-unfortunate http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101113/16515211858 Mon, 13 Sep 2010 17:55:59 PDT WordPress Trademark Transfered From For-Profit Company, To Non-Profit Foundation Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100912/23545710983.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100912/23545710983.shtml smart and open trademark policy, in that it readily and freely licenses its trademark to many companies, with only a few small exceptions. It looks like blog provider WordPress is doing its own interesting trademark move as well. The company recently announced that it has transferred the WordPress trademark away from the company itself and given it to the WordPress Foundation, a non-profit organization charged with promoting access to WordPress and related open source projects. In other words, even if the company's current execs lose control over the company, the trademark itself won't be abused by new owners, since the mark will remain with the foundation. Given how often we see trademark law being abused these days, both of these examples of smart, forward-looking companies taking a much more progressive approach on trademark really is quite refreshing.

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]]> didn't-see-that-coming http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100912/23545710983 Fri, 11 Jun 2010 12:40:00 PDT Lawyers Who Tried To Get Into The Mass 'Pre-Settlement' Game Threaten Wordpress Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100611/0319489778.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100611/0319489778.shtml called them the "new entrants to the hall of infamy." After that, TBI "reluctantly agreed" to stop these kinds of campaigns, due to "the amount of adverse publicity" that came with it. Apparently TBI is a big law firm that's been around for nearly two centuries, and it realized that smearing its name this way probably wasn't a good idea.

However, since then, it's tried pretty much everything possible to pretend that it never did anything. Its latest move is to threaten Wordpress.com for hosting a blog that was critical of TBI. The ACSBore blog has been following the law firms involved in these types of actions and uncovering all sorts of embarrassing stuff at times.

However, in one post, the blogger behind the site put up a "wanted" poster of a TBI lawyer who had been involved in the pre-settlement letter campaign along with a blog post quite critical of the firm. Rather than go after him directly, TBI is using a bit of third party liability trickery, claiming first that using the image of one of its lawyers in a "wanted poster" is copyright infringement, and secondly, that the nature of the wanted poster was defamatory. TBI claimed that Automattic, the company behind Wordpress.com would be liable for defamation.

Of course, Automattic is a US-based company, and it almost certainly would not be liable under either issue. On the defamation claim, it's clearly protected by Section 230. On the copyright claim... well... just a year ago we wrote about an almost identical situation, with some company execs suing a guy who created "Wanted" posters out of their corporate photos. The company claimed copyright infringement, but the court noted it was fair use. Unfortunately, Automattic accepted the complaint as a DMCA takedown and removed the content to avoid liability. Perhaps the ACSBore owner will file a counternotice and get the image put back up.

TBI is also trying to find out the identity of who is behind the ACSBore blog. Wordpress is standing behind its user on that front, though, saying: "We will not, under any circumstance, disclose any contact/personal/private details of our bloggers without a U.S. Court Order, and this has not been presented to us."

For a company that was worried about its reputation, you would think it would learn that trying to intimidate critics is probably going to backfire badly and give you an even worse reputation than whatever it was you did in the first place. If TBI is really worried about bad publicity, it should ignore the critics -- not try to bully them legally into shutting up.

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]]> let-me-explain-safe-harbors http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100611/0319489778 Wed, 5 Aug 2009 08:30:00 PDT Twitter, WordPress, Ning & GoDaddy All Sued In Mistargeted Lawsuit Over Defamation Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090804/1550405772.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090804/1550405772.shtml defamatory Twitter message about a landlord made the news. This week, we've got another defamation suit involving another Twitter message and a condo building, but the situation here is quite different. First, if the alleged facts are true, it does sound like it could be defamation. It involves some condo owners, and who used Twitter, blogs and other websites to apparently accuse the condo board president of a variety of things including "murder, bribery, extortion, illicit payoffs, and corruption." Assuming those things are untrue, it would appear that the guy targeted by all this, Daniel Neiditch, has a decent defamation claim.

However, rather than just sue those folks responsible for the message, Neiditch's lawyers appear to have sued pretty much every company that these messages could loosely be associated with, including Twitter, WordPress, Ning, and GoDaddy. As Sam Bayard notes in the link, it appears that Neiditch's lawyers appear not to know about Section 230 of the CDA. That's a pretty big one for your lawyers to miss when filing a lawsuit like this. Ultimately, all four of those companies should have the case easily dismissed under Section 230, but it will be a waste of time and money in the meantime.

Of course, even if they were totally unaware of Section 230, basic common sense should tell you that these sites, hosting the content (or the domain, in the case of GoDaddy) should never be responsible for what was written on those sites. Going after them as a part of the lawsuit appears to be a blatant money grab, by trying to tie any company to the lawsuit, no matter how ridiculous the connection is between the actual action and the company. There really ought to be sanctions against lawyers who do such things, because it happens way too often.

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]]> someone-please-learn-section-230 http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090804/1550405772 Fri, 11 Apr 2008 03:34:00 PDT Brazil Bans Bully And A Bunch Of Blogs Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080410/164444814.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080410/164444814.shtml ban on YouTube to hide a single video (which a lot more people saw after the ban was put in place). Eventually the courts reversed the ban and even required the model whose video resulted in the ban to pay Google as compensation for the unnecessary ban. Even with that experience, however, it looks like the Brazilian courts are prone to overreacting and broadly banning anything it doesn't like.

First up is the news that a Brazilian court has banned the sale of the video game Bully. This would be the same video game that Jack Thompson went to court to have banned even though he had never played it -- and even though anti-bullying activists praised the game, noting that it really was no different than movies like Rushmore or Napoleon Dynamite. The judge's explanation for the ban is a bit weak: "The aggravating factor is that everything in the game takes place inside a school." I really don't see how that matters. The game is about a kid learning to deal with different cliques and factions in a school. That seems rather realistic. Does the judge think that real life cliques in schools will suddenly disappear if this game is unavailable? Perhaps Stephen King can head to Brazil and convince them why this is wrong.

On top of that, news is coming out that a Brazilian court has also banned access to Wordpress.com, one of the most popular blog hosting sites around. It looks quite similar to the YouTube situation, where the judge really just wanted a single blog banned, but without an easy way to do that, ISPs are blocking the entire site and every blog carried on Wordpress. This is, just as with the other bans, a total overreaction. Not only will it call more attention to the "problem" blog, it will piss off and inconvenience a ton of totally innocent people as well.

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]]> can't-stop-banning http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080410/164444814