by davidrobertlewis - Digital Rights -

Creative Commons take down notice

I have just received word from Bretton Vine of the ISPA secretariat in South Africa that they have complied with my request and enforced the by-nc-nd license conditions by removing material under a CC license from a site owned by the Mail and Guardian. This must rate as a first in the country and I dare say, a relevant and well thought-out use of the service provider ‘take down’ notice (which for obvious reasons can cause a lot of trouble if misused). I urge you all to do likewise in enforcing the Creative Commons licensing system, and to limit outright theft of creative material or alienation of the CC licence.

Regards

David Robert Lewis

My correspondence is below.

Dear Jason,
Thank you for your consideration and apology accepted. However, I would definitely like to see a stronger public statement with regard to the upholding of the Creative Commons licensing scheme by your company since there has been a good deal of debate about this in various public forums. Perhaps you don’t know how this problem came about, but to fill you in. Originally, all material posted on M&G Blogmark was licensed under Creative Commons 1.0. In fact this license attracted writers who needed some form protection and assurances that the posted work would not be used for commercial purposes while allowing non-commercial use such as free viewing of the material.
The idea behind the Creative Commons for example http://creativecommons.org/license/ is you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit — and only on the conditions you specify! Creative Commons is not a free-for-all end of copyright (some refer to it as copyleft) and it does not mean the work enters the public domain. Alienating a creative product from its original license is the greatest crime one can commit in cyberspace and this is exactly what happened when all material on Blogmark moved over to Amagama sans the license and without consultation.
As regards the deleted book review. Basically, a former SADF military intelligence agent complained about a review I had written of A Secret Burden in which I referred to him as an embedded journalist and former NIA spy. The book review was yanked by staff and presumably deleted into atoms without my permission causing some consternation amongst users about the violation of rights. I gained legal advice from Mallenicks and it came down to my rights under the CC vs the hosts rights under the terms and conditions. This is where the legal action stuck, as I was unable to afford further civil litigation or communication with M&G. Then I found out about the ISPA procedure and it became clear that what CC lacked was a take-down process. This is now being rectified and I hope the CC community will be bolstered by the precedent set and support from service providers in South Africa.
I would appreciate it if you could be Jesus and resurrect my book review which was posted sometime in November/December 2006, failing which some form of compensation for its destruction would surely be in order? I hope the outstanding issues will also be resolved with the kind of fortitude that made the gremlins wake-up an listen.
Regards
David Robert Lewis

— On Mon, 19/1/09, Jason Norwood-Young <[email protected]> wrote:

From: Jason Norwood-Young <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: ISPA Take-Down Notice TDN.#81: IS, M&G Media (amagama.com)
To: “David Lewis” <[email protected]>, “Nadia Reyneke” <[email protected]>, “Carlos Henriques” <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected]
Cc: “Dean Kerr” <[email protected]>, [email protected]
Date: Monday, 19 January, 2009, 3:27 PM

Dear DavidI’m glad that the problem has been resolved. On behalf of the M&G Online I formally apologize that the situation continued for so long, and that you had to go to so much effort to attain your goal. As soon as I became aware of the problem I attempted to resolve it in the most expedient manner possible.Unfortunately both Vince and Matt had left by the time I started here, so I have no background on your problem. I have not deleted the account on Amagama just yet, so if there is content on that account that you need to get please let me know and I will retrieve it. However I will need more information – such as what book review you are talking about. If it’s there I will send the copy to you via email.Kind regards
Jason

—
Jason Norwood-Young
Technical Manager
M&G Online
t: 011-250-7510
c: 084-680-3445
e: [email protected]

On 1/19/09 2:47 PM, “David Lewis” <[email protected]> wrote:

Dear Jason,

Finally some action and congratulations on making history. Due to the complete nerve of Vince and Matt et al in being disobedient net-brats and ignoring the creative commons notice, M&G i.e. Amagama have gone down as the first Creative Commons Take Down in SA ISP history. I’ve blogged about this, complained and railed for 24 months. About 12 months ago, Vince made an undertaking to take the work down and to return the book review, which he did not. For obvious reasons, I take exception to any form of Internet censorship and find the whole way this issue was dealt with troubling to say the least. I would appreciate an apology and some statement to the effect that your company supports the Creative Commons, and has no intentions of ripping off people. Also, some compensation for the deleted book review would also help. Hope you see things my way, its been a long journey but I think we’ve finally got there.

Regards

David Robert Lewis

Confidentiality Notice and Disclaimer
The provisions of Section 11 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 apply to this email notice and make it enforceable and binding on the recipient/addressee.

Dear Bretton,

Thank you so much. I feel a lot better now, knowing that somebody on Amagama side deleted the account as per the original agreement with Vince Maher some 12 months after the fact and am grateful to ISPA for enforcing the Creative Commons by-nc-nd http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/za/ ; licence. I will be reporting back to Creative Commons directly and to board member Joi Ito personally. The only way Creative Commons is going to get anywhere in South Africa is if there is strong support from service providers. I urge you to examine the license in particular the non-commercial, no-derivatives section. I guess one can see this as a bit of history unfolding in cyberspace,

Thanks once again,

David Robert Lewis.

From: ISPA Complaints
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, 15 January, 2009 10:23:45
Subject: Confirmation of content removal: TDN.#81: IS, M&G Media (amagama.com)

Dear David,

You recently submitted the attached take-down request to the Internet
Service Provider’s Association (ISPA), and the request was forwarded on
to the service provider concerned.

ISPA has been informed by the service provider that the content has been
removed, and we have confirmed that this is the case. This message
serves as notification that your take-down request has been processed,
and that we now consider this matter to be closed.

(refer attached screenshot)

Should you have any questions regarding this process please feel free to
contact us via the contact details listed on the following page:
http://www.ispa.org.za/code/how_to_request_takedown.shtml

regards
Bretton Vine
ISPA Secretariat
The Internet Service Providers’ Association
http://www.ispa.org.za | complaints at ispa.org.za

—————————————————————————
Take-Down Notice TDN.#81 (lodged via the ISPA website):
—————————————————————————

name:
David Robert Lewis
Address:
PO Box 4398, Cape Town 8000
Telephone:
0214480021
Cellphone:
+27824251454
email:
[email protected]

NameOfISP:
amagama.com

ProblemActivity:

Spam, Rights Violation, Theft

I started blogging at the M&G blogmark under a Creative Commons licence.
About 24 months ago, a book review of A Secret Burden was deleted
without my permission and user access to the rest of the material was
blocked.

Over two years of my postings then migrated to Amagama without bothering
to consult me. The creative commons license was replaced without
notification with another license scheme under “terms and conditions”
and Amagama proceeded to sell hits and page impressions to advertisers
without my permission.

Despite numerous phonecalls and promised by Vince Maher and Mathew
Buckland to
1. Return the work.
2. Remove the work attributed to David Robert Lewis,
nothing has been done to date and the material is still at
davidrobertlewis.amagama.com. I am now being spammed by the site and my
inbox if filling up with crap. I am extremely annoyed.

ProblemDescription:

My rights under the Creative Commons
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/za/ have been violated.

I started blogging at the M&G blogmark under a Creative Commons licence.
About 24 months ago, a book review of A Secret Burden was deleted
without my permission and user access to the rest of the material was
blocked.

Over two years of my postings then migrated to Amagama without bothering
to consult me. The creative commons license was replaced without
notification with another license scheme under “terms and conditions”
and Amagama proceeded to sell hits and page impressions to advertisers
without my permission.

Despite numerous phonecalls and promised by Vince Maher and Mathew
Buckland to
1. Return the work..
2. Remove the work attributed to David Robert Lewis,
nothing has been done to date and the material is still at
davidrobertlewis.amagama.com. I am now being spammed by the site and my
inbox if filling up with crap. I am extremely annoyed.

RemedialAction:
Please remove all material under licence from the amagama.com site.

goodfaith:
The above information is to my knowledge, true and correct and has been
provided in good faith

From: David Lewis
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, 8 January, 2009 14:55:49
Subject: [cc-community] Creative Commons Take Down Notice

CC Comrades,

I started blogging at the M&G Blogmark under a CC non-commercial, attrib, no-derivs licence. Then 24 months ago a review of a Secret Burden was deleted without permission, user-access was blocked and two-years of material simply migrated to Amagama.com under a different licence scheme where it was used for advertising purposes. I tried to resolve the matter but could not get anyone on the same page in South Africa as far as CC was concerned.

I have now requested ISPA to issue a take-down notice. The remaining material can still be seen at http://davidrobertlewis.amagama.com, in clear contravention of the no-derivs licence.

Will keep everybody posted as events unfold.

David Robert Lewis

—–Inline Attachment Follows—–

_______________________________________________
cc-community mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply