Bay 12 Games Forum
Finally... => General Discussion => Topic started by: Africa on April 30, 2011, 10:17:40 am
-
I'm cross posting this from "Life Advice" in hopes it will get more views - if that's against forum policy, sorry and feel free to remove it, but tbh this forum is about the only pool of technology-knowledgeable people I have access to and I'm hoping someone may be able to help out pretty quickly.
Short version: I found that if you google my name and college together, the first two results to pop up are a politically extremist blog with lots of inflammatory and offensive material. This is because the anonymous dickhead who runs it has posted hundreds of articles vaguely related to his topic, and I happened to have written one for my campus newspaper 2 years ago about a campus event that was connected to the topic.
I have found out it's impossible to contact a Blogger/Blogspot user who doesn't leave contact information and Google won't help you. His blog has no contact info or even an option to comment. He has another blog where you can comment, and one other guy commented three years ago with the same issue as me - no response shown. I've left a comment on that blog and tried to contact that other guy via his blog but no responses yet.
My next recourse is either to get the article removed as copyright violation, which I'm not sure it is, or to somehow try and get other pages high enough in the search results that this blog at least doesn't appear on the first page, if nothing else.
As for the former - the blog post credits my name, the newspaper's name and gives a URL to the archived story, which I believe means it's not violating any copyrights, but I could be wrong. Does anybody know anything about copyright law?
As for the latter, how are google search results arranged, anyway? I can't think of why this page would be the first to come up. And how might I go about creating other web content or influencing how search results appear that would result in this one being pushed down the ladder so it's not the first thing potential employers see when googling me? I'm going to be job searching soon and so this is a potential issue for obvious reasons. Anybody who clicked the first link and looked around would realize I had no connection to the site, but you can see why I don't it appearing as the top google result....
Thanks for any help you can give.
-
The only thing I can think of is to bring it up with the campus newspaper organisation. As they were the ones who originally published it, they might have experience of some sort in matters like these.
-
This is a very good idea. I'm going to write them now. Anybody else got anything?
-
Perform a Google search on a computer you've never used before and see what happens. Your usage alters the priority search results.
-
I prefer to use my diplomacy skills in a situation like this. If the sales pitch fails, punch the guy out.
-
I prefer to use my diplomacy skills in a situation like this. If the sales pitch fails, punch the guy out.
Sleuth Diplomacy will solve everything.
-
There's a good chance your efforts will be counterproductive. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect)
-
The people you know probably know you are not an extremist dickhead, the ones you dont, dont know you anyway. Id either tell people and have a laugh, or ignore it under the assumption that nobody who doesnt really know me would ever know both my name and the name of my college. But thats me, and im not exactly an important guy. Also if there is no mention of your name at all in the blog, you probably dont have an issue anyway unless the people doing the looking are crazy, narrow minded arseholes who you probably dont want to spend time with anyway
-
Jester, I am pretty sure the issue here is a potential employer looking him up. And this is quite frankly a legitimate concern.
Anyway, google ranks pages using the PageRank (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank#Removal_from_Google_Webmaster_Tools) system, which I am pretty sure knowledge of such does not help you here.
Really, I think your most realistic and best bet at this point is to get a hold of your campus newspaper like ed boy said and ask if they hold a copy write on your work. If they do, it should be relatively easy to get the blog pulled or at least some action taken. (http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=lr_dmca&product=blogger)
-
Yeah, I get that, but from my understanding there is no violation here unless ive read the OP completely wrong, my understanding is that the blogger hasnt ripped his work off, (generally if something is used on a blog/whatever and it is not intended for profit and/or it came from a newspaper article, as long as the quote is marked as such and credit is given to the original author then you wont have a leg to stand on copywrite wise).
If your work has been ripped and you didnt get cred you might have a chance, but bloggers are pretty much impossible to pin down, maybe you could get the blog removed, expect it to pop back up within a very short amount of time. Depending on the field you are looking to get into, dropping a small disclaimer on the bottom of your CV noting the google result, the blog and you total lack of association to said blog may be a lower stress option. Fighting it sounds nice, but it may be like trying to bash smoke
-
It could be worse..
If you google my name, you get a dutch pedophile site. With my name as their domain name :(
-
It could be worse..
If you google my name, you get a dutch pedophile site. With my name as their domain name :(
Like Vector said, your usage dictates what comes up for you on Google.
Then again, your username is 'Dutchling'. Hmmmm
-
Yeah, I get that, but from my understanding there is no violation here unless ive read the OP completely wrong, my understanding is that the blogger hasnt ripped his work off, (generally if something is used on a blog/whatever and it is not intended for profit and/or it came from a newspaper article, as long as the quote is marked as such and credit is given to the original author then you wont have a leg to stand on copywrite wise).
If your work has been ripped and you didnt get cred you might have a chance, but bloggers are pretty much impossible to pin down, maybe you could get the blog removed, expect it to pop back up within a very short amount of time. Depending on the field you are looking to get into, dropping a small disclaimer on the bottom of your CV noting the google result, the blog and you total lack of association to said blog may be a lower stress option. Fighting it sounds nice, but it may be like trying to bash smoke
This is another option. I'm sure you potential employer would understand and be at least somewhat sympathetic. Only problem is if they agree with the views on the blog.
As far as copyright goes, that's not really how it works. It isn't legal to upload the latest hit movie as long as you include the credits. There is the concept of "fair use" where you can use a PORTION of a work in your work, but copy pasting an entire article isn't kosher unless you have permission from the rightsholder. Try making a blog consisting of nothing but articles from The New York Times and see how long it lasts.
-
It could be worse..
If you google my name, you get a dutch pedophile site. With my name as their domain name :(
Like Vector said, your usage dictates what comes up for you on Google.
Then again, your username is 'Dutchling'. Hmmmm
I mean my RL name...
-
Scrap your name and get a new one; you've obviously made a mess of that one.j/k
Assuming your publication wasn't actually extremist, I would just set up a public facebook account with your real name and college, and mention that you've had articles published, and then jokingly add that it can be a bad thing for example getting associated with a website that doesn't hold your views. In fact, how about write a whole new article about it...
-
Why don't you start your own blog? No need to provide a ton of content, just something with your name and publicly available information plastered all over it. Besides, you've already written articles, right? For bonus points link the articles you've written (and don't mind having read) and try to get your paper to link you back.
If you're unable to get him to take it down or find a way to displace it, you can always lampshade it. Incorporate this as an anecdote or part of a funny story with the person who's interviewing you so they aren't surprised if/when they run a search. Try working it in when you talk about your qualifications and your writing work. "You know, the rise of micro-publishing is really astonishing. There's so much content available now, and anyone can self-publish. The only problem is that you get the inevitable wing nuts. One extremest guy even linked an article I wrote for the school paper, and now my name gets associated with his site. It's really embarrassing when someone googles me and sees his website at the top of the page."
-
So I emailed the campus paper about it and went on a 5 day hike. I came back and they'd said it was a clear copyright violation and had already requested Google to take it down. Now it's just a matter of waiting for the search results to renew or whatever so in a few weeks it should be gone. Yay!
-
Great!
Nice to hear a story where copyright saves the day, for once.
-
As far as copyright goes, that's not really how it works. It isn't legal to upload the latest hit movie as long as you include the credits. There is the concept of "fair use" where you can use a PORTION of a work in your work, but copy pasting an entire article isn't kosher unless you have permission from the rightsholder.
Actually, that's just a perversion of what BigCorp wants you to believe about fair use. There's nothing in fair use doctrine that says you can only use a PORTION and not the WHOLE. It has several criteria to determine if your use is fair or not. It depends if it's used for parody, or as a criticism, or simply because you're talking ABOUT the article in question, as opposed to just hoarding and putting it online for people to download. Or if the use is transformative.
"Fair use, a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work, is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. It provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test. The term fair use originated in the United States. A similar principle, fair dealing, exists in some other common law jurisdictions. Civil law jurisdictions have other limitations and exceptions to copyright."
Sure, if it's smaller, the bigger the chance the use is fair. Copypasting an entire BOOK because you disagree with paragraph 2 page 153 would probably not be fair use. Also unlikely that you feel the need to criticize the ENTIRE book verbatim, sentence by sentence. But people just assume it's a percentage of what you use what matters, so even if it's a quote, they go "you can't use the ENTIRE quote paragraph, at most 2 or 3 words!". That's just wrong.
So yeah, beware the Streisand effect, you might end up in Slashdot or one of those major Fair Use defense blogs as "Person pissed that someone copied a paper of his, sues for copyright, threatens to take down domain, HERE'S THE LINK"... then forget about having it removed from Google. Also just because a paper says "it's a clear copyright violation" doesn't necessarily make it true. They don't believe in fair use, period (unless they're the ones doing it). Just ask Righthaven or the Las Vegas Review Journal or the Associate Press.
-
I doubt if I have to worry about the guy intentionally reposting it. Also, this isn't some huge corporate-owned news organization talking, it's someone from the staff of a small campus newspaper, possibly a journalism professor (not sure, I didn't recognize the name)
Interesting stuff about fair use also.
-
I doubt if I have to worry about the guy intentionally reposting it. Also, this isn't some huge corporate-owned news organization talking, it's someone from the staff of a small campus newspaper, possibly a journalism professor (not sure, I didn't recognize the name)
Interesting stuff about fair use also.
Well, yeah, I'm not saying your small campus newspaper is BigCorp. I was more talking about the big 'uns spreading the FUD all around.