I disagree with the use of the phrase "decided to cave" to describe Boloco's response to the threat. Fighting a corporation in court would certainly cost a small company more than it can bear, and I'd hardly say it's up to the owner of a small restaurant to be expected to take a righteous stance in the current copyright/trademark/patent mess.
It would be awesome if the owner chose to fight the cease & desist, but NOT fighting it shouldn't be called "caving". Can we just call it "has decided to agree to Nutella's ridiculous and baseless demand"? That leaves no doubt that Nutella is the problem here, not the owner of Boloco.
I feel for you, because a similar thing happened to me a few years ago. I was running a site that was similar to ones run by Google, Yahoo, etc., and used APIs from those sites to build content around certain subjects, and linked DIRECTLY to the source sites, using the summary blurbs provided by the APIs to describe the article. This wasn't a site that trapped you like some do, all links were directly to the source site.
My goal, at the time, was simply to have an easy way to keep tabs on certain subject matter (such as my alma mater's football team, or new projects by my favorite Architect), but soon I was accosted by site owners who accused me of stealing their content as my own. Never mind that the links went to their site, and it was attributed very plainly all over the page, and never mind that if I found ANY "copyright" text on the page, I would include text that said "The site's content is protected by copyright, please click the link to visit the site to view this article." (Even though my understanding of Fair Use is that I could have not done that.)
There were some site owners who, once I explained all that to them, were very reasonable, and acknowledged that they were wrong in their initial assessment. But the number of those that complained to my hosting company grew, and apparently enough complained to Google, that I got blacklisted. Eventually, not wanting a fight for something that I started for fun, I bailed on it.
So I feel for you. That mob mentality takes over, and it wins too often. I wish I'd have done a better job of fighting for my rights, but I didn't. I'm sorry it's ruining (ruined?) your site the same way.
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"Decided to cave"
I disagree with the use of the phrase "decided to cave" to describe Boloco's response to the threat. Fighting a corporation in court would certainly cost a small company more than it can bear, and I'd hardly say it's up to the owner of a small restaurant to be expected to take a righteous stance in the current copyright/trademark/patent mess.
It would be awesome if the owner chose to fight the cease & desist, but NOT fighting it shouldn't be called "caving". Can we just call it "has decided to agree to Nutella's ridiculous and baseless demand"? That leaves no doubt that Nutella is the problem here, not the owner of Boloco.
Re: Lendink was not a pirate site
I feel for you, because a similar thing happened to me a few years ago. I was running a site that was similar to ones run by Google, Yahoo, etc., and used APIs from those sites to build content around certain subjects, and linked DIRECTLY to the source sites, using the summary blurbs provided by the APIs to describe the article. This wasn't a site that trapped you like some do, all links were directly to the source site.
My goal, at the time, was simply to have an easy way to keep tabs on certain subject matter (such as my alma mater's football team, or new projects by my favorite Architect), but soon I was accosted by site owners who accused me of stealing their content as my own. Never mind that the links went to their site, and it was attributed very plainly all over the page, and never mind that if I found ANY "copyright" text on the page, I would include text that said "The site's content is protected by copyright, please click the link to visit the site to view this article." (Even though my understanding of Fair Use is that I could have not done that.)
There were some site owners who, once I explained all that to them, were very reasonable, and acknowledged that they were wrong in their initial assessment. But the number of those that complained to my hosting company grew, and apparently enough complained to Google, that I got blacklisted. Eventually, not wanting a fight for something that I started for fun, I bailed on it.
So I feel for you. That mob mentality takes over, and it wins too often. I wish I'd have done a better job of fighting for my rights, but I didn't. I'm sorry it's ruining (ruined?) your site the same way.