Posts Tagged ‘copyright infringement?’
2 items.
Apr06
So a very strange thing has happened. Whimville dot com has returned to the internet. The thing is neither myself nor Joey Manley put it up, had anything to do with it or even knew about it. When the domain name expired four or five years ago we didn’t renew the registration and eventually it got snapped up. What appears to have happened is that, someone, presumably Santa Barbara Chiropractic hired someone to raise their google ranking (some voodoo called SEO that I’m not entirely familiar with) by using Whimville’s accumulated google ranking. Weird!!
Right now my first episode (with some mangled code obfuscating one of the table images) can be seen on the site and a post which links to Santa Barbara Chiropractic three times. What the hell?! Is someone actually making money off of this? That would really piss me off if they are considering I’m on unemployment and STILL not able to pay all my bills (especially my rent, which is LATE AGAIN THIS MONTH!).
The images from my first installment of Whimville on this site are hosted on my own domain (the inkwell) but I don’t want to have to take them down and mess up my archives.
I just want answers. What should I do? Should I sue? I can’t afford a lawyer. If I do have a case is there a lawyer out there willing to help me? Is there someone at Google that knows what I should do about this or is there someone at Google I should contact about this? This is copyright infringement, no?
A lot of strange things have happened to me on the internet over the years, but this is pretty random.
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Apr07
So no one’s heard back from the chiropractic center that paid someone to use my old url to get them a better Google ranking. I did, however, write them a note on their contact form on the site. It goes a little something like this:
i’m delighted to see whimville.com alive again but a little disappointed i wasn’t warned that my artwork would be used ahead of time. because of this, unless you are willing to pay me for the usage of my name and original artwork, i ask that you kindly remove my images. thank you.
I probably could have written it better, but I have a few other people who have written them as well. If you’re so inclined and have the time please do so as well, but be polite. Ultimately I can’t be angry about this. I let the URL go a while back and didn’t renew it. I am upset about having my images used, even though I’m given full credit, without my consent in this way. It’s a very grey area. Joey Manley spells it out WAY better than I can here.
Gary Tyrrell at FLEEN has picked up the story and so did Comixtalk as of this writing. I appreciate all the great discussion going on over at the Magic Inkwell Livejournal feed as well as over on my Facebook. Thanks for all the support, opinions, encouragement, advice and e-love everyone! I don’t know where this is all going, really, but it’ll be interesting to find out.
As a slightly ironic side note, remember that Nite Owl Watchmen tie-in coffee I was saying I kinda wanted to try? Well, they’re getting sued by Chock Full O’ Nuts, whose label design they stole, apparently.
Crazy world we’re living in, folks. CRAAAAAAAAAAZZYYYY!
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