Chilling Effects is an information portal and compendium of cease-and-desist or DMCA “takedown” notices, submitted by the individuals who sent or received them. The site makes for an interesting read and contains thousands of angry letters from copyright holders, ordering material to be removed.

Would you know what to do if you received a takedown notice? Are you aware of how DMCA cease-and-desist orders can be counter-productive for copyright holders? Read on to find out more.

The Chilling Effects Website

At the forefront of the Chilling Effects movement are the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the self proclaimed defenders of freedom in the digital world. Along with the EFF are several prominent universities and law schools, including Harvard, Stanford and the George Washington School of Law.

Not only is Chilling Effects home to a searchable database of takedown notices, but also contains advice and information regarding specific copyright infractions and advice on what to do if you receive a cease-and-desist order yourself.

Above all, the website recommends that you send in a copy of the takedown notice, so that it can be added to the database, analysed and publicly displayed. There are also simplified, easy to understand explanations of individual areas, such as copyright, fan fiction and defamation.

Sending & Receiving Takedown Notices

The website is geared towards those who have received and those who have sent cease-and-desist orders, and has submission areas for both receiving and issuing a notice. If you have sent a takedown notice then you’ll be asked for your details, the recipient’s details and a copy of the notice itself.

On the other hand if you have received a notice yourself then the submission process is a little more complicated. First you must find a category for the complaint, of which there are many spanning topics like defamation, parody websites and patent infringement.

Next fill in your personal information and the senders details, and copy and paste the notice you received into the C&D Notice Body box. Hit Enter to send your report, and wait. Chilling Effects, its academic foundations and the law students who attend these institutions will then attempt to provide legal feedback regarding the notice you received.

Whilst there is no guarantee that your case in particular will receive a personal reply, your report may improve Chilling Effects in the long run:

“When you send us a cease and desist notice, we will categorize it and add it to the “chilling effects” database. The law school clinics will then review the general issues raised and add to the developing set of FAQs on the subject(s). Each letter or incident added to the database also helps describe the scope of the “chilling” problem: How much legitimate activity is being stopped by meritless threats, and who is sending ungrounded claims?”

Missing The Point?

If you do receive a notice it is often best not to challenge it at all. Once you have removed the content your website is no longer liable, and you should be in the clear. Fighting the case will often require legal representation, which is often far more costly for the individual than the multi-national claimant.

There has been widespread criticism of the DMCA, many claiming that takedown notices are overpowered and make it too easy for copyright owners to remove content that may or may not be infringing.

In March 2009 Google published statistics which confirmed that over half of all takedown notices received (57%) were sent by businesses targeting rivals. It also emerged that 37% of cease-and-desist orders were not valid copyright claims at all.

In a move that’s typically Google, the company have been sending the valid DMCA takedown notices they have received to Chilling Effects for inclusion in the database. As Google is a search giant, these notices often relate to search results and website listings within the Google database.

One such issuer of DMCA notices has been Microsoft, who regularly seem to get in touch with Google over copyright infringements, especially when it comes to the Windows operating system. When these full reports are published on Chilling Effects they include offending search terms and links to websites that house this content.

I’m not advocating piracy, but many of the copyright claims against Google relate to pirated software, and these reports are public once Chilling Effects get hold of them. These reports all contain the locations of suspected pirated materials, delivered by the claimants themselves.

This presents somewhat of a catch 22 situation. Many feel it is important to have a public record of these notices (sharing filed reports does not contravene the DMCA), but each successful takedown notice points to another bit of questionable copyright.

Conclusion

Chilling Effects is a fantastic resource, especially if you run a public website (such as forums or image boards) and are concerned about your responsibility over content. If you do ever receive a copyright infringement notice then submitting it to the website can not only help you, but also others who are browsing the site for guidance.

Have you encountered any DMCA brick walls? Takedown notices? Ever filed a complaint? Concerned about intellectual property rights? The MakeUseOf court is in session, take your place in the witness box below.

Why Creative Commons?

If you’ve ever looked into open source (or any of my posts for that matter), you’ll know that it’s free software. This means both free as in beer and free as in the freedom of speech. Most commonly, open source programs are licensed under the GPL, or GNU Public License. What this license does is let anyone legally read the source code, change it to fit their needs, and distribute it to anyone whom they wish. This is great because it fosters innovation, sharing, and true security. Instead of hiding the source code in hopes that hackers won’t find a hole in the code when they can’t see the code, open source programs do the opposite. They offer their code freely and let anyone study it for security flaws, which can then be fixed. Once a hole is found, the open source nature will force the developers to fix the hole, since as soon as it’s found anyone can take advantage of it. This also reduces the amount of wait time for a patch to be released.

However, you can’t “open source” content such as pictures, music/sounds, videos, and written content. Instead, the Creative Commons license was made to be similar to the GPL, but applicable to content instead of software. There are different variations of the Creative Commons license which have different permissions. It can let you use and share the content freely. Another variation lets you do the same plus modify it freely. Then there are also variations that do the same, but with allowance for commercial use.

How to Find It

Finding Creative Commons content is easy if you know what you’re doing, but Google makes it hard to find the settings. So it’s maybe a good idea if you follow these directions once and then make a bookmark.

Whenever you go search for something, you’ll wind up with a URL in your address bar like this:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Linux

Now what you simply need to do is add this part to the end of it:

&as_rights=(cc_publicdomain|cc_attribute|cc_sharealike|cc_noncommercial|cc_nonderived)

So when you copied it to the end, your URL should look like this:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Linux&as_rights=(cc_publicdomain|cc_attribute|cc_sharealike|cc_noncommercial|cc_nonderived)

What that extra snippet of information does is tells Google to search for Creative Commons licensed content that you can freely use or share. There are other combinations of snippets that search for different variations of the license, but this one should be good enough for most people.

If you want an easier way to do all of this, as well as have a menu to search for a specific variation of the license, I suggest you use the search field on the Fedora Project’s start page.

Searching for CC Images

What if you want to look for images with the Creative Commons license? For this you must use the method I described earlier, else nothing is going to work for you. There may be a different search engine that could do the same, but then you wouldn’t be using Google anymore.

Once you go ahead, search for an image, add the snippet to the end, and hit enter, you’ll be looking for the images you want. Contrary to regular web search for Creative Commons content, if you go all the down in the left side panel, you’ll find a few new search options, one for each variation of the Creative Commons license!

I’ve also tried doing the same with video results, and although Google doesn’t barf when you add the snippet to the end, you won’t be returned any results, and it’ll suggest results that aren’t under a Creative Commons license. Maybe Google can fix that someday.

Conclusion

Using the power of Google to find content that you can legally use is a lifesaver in a world where lawsuits are popping up ever more often. Although it is more than likely that there are other sites that do the same, Google is still one heck of a search engine and it’s wise to use its power when you have access to it.

Now that you know how to find Creative Commons content, are you more likely to do so now? Are there any activities that you do where using Creative Commons content would be helpful? Let us know in the comments!

But opinions aside, you may be wondering how copy protection software works. The answer to that question varies depends from one disc to the next, but there are a number of general categories into which copy protection software can be grouped.

Region Locked Copy Protection

Optical media, particularly in the form of DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, are often “region locked”.  This means that they contain a form of copy protection that prevents a disc from playing if it is inserted into a player that contains a different region code than the disc.

There are some “region-free” players, and in the case of players such as computers, it is sometimes possible to change the region code of your optical drive. Players such as PowerDVD will ask you to change your region if you insert a region locked DVD, and players such as VLC Player ignore region locks completely (if the firmware of your optical drive allows it).

Disc Encryption

An incredibly popular form of copy protection, disc encryption protects content by encrypting it using one of a number of set encryption keys. The encryption can only be broken (in theory) if a valid key is used to decrypt the content, making it available for viewing. If a valid key isn’t used the content will be unplayable or scrambled. This also prevents users from copying a disc or burning it to another storage device such as a hard drive.

Encryption is a running game, however. The encryption keys used can be compromised, often through reverse engineering. Encryption can also become vulnerable to brute-force attacks as computing power increases. Agreed encryption standards often don’t change as quickly as computer hardware progresses. The creation of software capable of bypassing copy protection is illegal in many parts of the world, but there are still free decryption programs available.

Registration Keys and Online Product Activation

Computer software is very difficult to protect against piracy because of its nature; the software must be installed on a computer in order to function, and once installed it can be copied or altered.

Registration keys used to be the standard method of protecting software, either on disc or downloaded, but such keys are also vulnerable to being compromised. The keys are usually generated using an algorithm, and that algorithm can be reversed-engineered or otherwise compromised. This is why “key generators” are capable of creating a valid registration key for some programs.

As a result, companies such as Microsoft have moved towards online production activation. When you buy a Microsoft Windows 7 disc, for example, you receive a key in the box. This key is activated through an online server that not only checks that the key is valid but also checks that the key hasn’t been used before. If the key has been used before, the server tries to determine if the key is being used by the original buyer.

This sort of activation remains controversial. Some forms of it, such as that used by Ubisoft, require that a PC be connected to the Internet during the entire duration of the software’s use. Hence the controversy; many users feel they shouldn’t be restricted to using their software only when online.

Device Driver Copy Protection

Another form of copy protection that relates primarily to computer software, device driver copy protection installs a new driver on a computer as part of a program’s installation process. The responsibility of this drive is to validate the software and also to protect the software from attempts to circumvent it or run it without a proper registration key or disc. Some examples of this technology include Starforce and SafeDisc.

These forms of copy protection are controversial because the device driver can interfere with a computer’s normal operation in some cases. Users of software protected through this method have sometimes experienced a degradation of optical drive performance. The device drivers can also be a security risk; in 2007, Microsoft patched a SafeDisc related vulnerability in Windows XP. The driver could be exploited by malware to gain administrative access.

High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection

Developed by Intel, HDCP is a relatively recent form of copy protection. It circumvents the traditional problems associated with content encryption by moving the responsibility of encryption from the content itself (the disc, file, or other media) to the devices playing the content.

HDCP is designed to protect content that travels across a digital connection such as DisplayPort, DVI or HDMI. The device sending the content and the device displaying the content must have valid HDCP encryption keys and must authenticate. As you might have guessed, this is the form of content protection used to control Blu-Ray. Like other forms of encryption before it, HDCP has been cracked through the release of a master HDCP key, which was most likely reverse-engineered.

Conclusion

Remember, these are just the forms of copyright protection that most commonly apply to CDs and DVDs. There are other forms of authentication and encryption that are frequently used to protect digital content, such as music downloaded from the iTunes store.

There are some stunning free WordPress portfolio themes, many of which are WordPress 3.0 compatible. That said, with a few extra plugins, you can turn your WordPress blog into the ultimate portfolio. Whether it’s tweaking the appearance of your portfolio, protecting your images, or making it easier to bulk upload images, WordPress plugins have you covered.

Disable Right Click Menu

One of the main reasons so many photographers opt for flash portfolios is so that their images can’t be stolen. If you’ve decided to use a WordPress blog for your portfolio, there are other ways that you can protect your images. For one, you can disable right clicking on all of your photos with the No Right Click Images plugin. Installing it on your blog will simply take away the right click menu from any of your images. There are no settings to play around with – the plugin works right out of the box.

Add a Watermark

Another way to protect your images is to apply a watermark to your photographs. Rather than have to add a watermark to each individual photo (and permanently alter your file in the process) with a WordPress plugin, you can automatically add a watermark to all of your images. With Watermark Reloaded, you have complete control over how the watermark appears, choosing the font, the size, colour and placement.

You can also control which size images the watermark will appear on – from the thumbnail to the full-sized image.

Exclude the Date

Unlike blog posts, it is not at all necessary to include the date of upload on a portfolio entry. In fact, you’ll find that any professional photographer’s portfolio is date free.

Unfortunately, there are no plugins that deal with this in the most efficient of ways. Unless your theme already removes dates, Date Exclusion SEO makes it a little bit easier, but to really make use of the plugin, you will most probably have to tweak your theme as well.

Date Exclusion SEO removes the dates from your posts, tag, category and home pages. It also gives you the option to replace the date with any text of your choice.

While Date Exclusion SEO removes the date, it doesn’t remove the text preceding it. You will find that you’re left with something looking a little bit like this:

Unless you can find a creative way to deal with the gap in the wording, you will have to manually edit your theme’s code, making the plugin obsolete.

For example, in the default WordPress theme, Twenty Ten removing the following code from Single.php will remove the date from individual posts.

When using this method, be sure to backup your WordPress theme before editing it. Not only will have you have to edit the file, Single.php, you will have to edit every instance in your theme where the date appears. In most themes, this will include Single.php, Page.php and Index.php. A detailed guide on what to look for can be found here.

Create Galleries

Uploading images to WordPress can be a tedious task. Using a plugin like NextGen Gallery streamlines the process, while also giving you a few extra options and a little bit of eye candy to boot.

With NextGen, you can create easily create galleries, viewable as a slideshow or lightbox, add image or text watermarks to your photos, and best of all, upload entire zip files of images to your galleries in one go.

NextGen also takes the pain out of resizing your images, allowing you to set one specific size to be used for all images.

Once you create a gallery, make a note of the HTML code that will allow you to include the gallery in any given post or page in your WordPress portfolio. You can continue to add photos to any given gallery after it has been posted.

NextGen is as feature rich as a plugin comes, and should be compatible with any WordPress theme. Another advantage to using a plugin like NextGen is the freedom to use any theme of your choice, while benefiting from features usually found in portfolio-specific themes.

What plugins are you using on your WordPress portfolio? Let us know in the comments.

The photographers may enjoy some recognition but the creative license does not require it. So basically you can search the database of free images, modify them how you want, and use them in any way you want.  The only thing you can’t do is resell them in their current form.

Already this makes Morguefile an awesome place for bloggers to find images for their blogs.  Now that they have added the “Crop and post” feature, finding and formatting photos for blog posts is that much easier.

Morguefile makes finding the proper photo for the job very simple because of the search bar in the upper right corner of the page.

This way you can narrow down the type of photo you are looking for.  Once you find the photo you want, and you click on it, you are brought to the photo’s page.  All of the normal options are still there, like downloading the photo, reading information about the photo, and commenting on the photo.  The area we are concerned about that makes the blogger’s life so much easier is the “Crop and post” link.

Clicking that link will make a selection box appear over the photo.

This is where the magic happens.  You can re-size the selection box to crop any portion of the photo that you want.  You can also move the scale back and forth changing the size of the finished picture.

If you know the exact size you want the picture to be, you can check the “lock size” box and then re-size the selection box and the finished picture will still remain the size you locked it at.

When you get it to where you want it, it is time to click “Finish.”  You will then be brought to a page with several options for sharing the cropped image.

Notice that you have the option to share the direct link to the image using the shortened URL they give you.  You can also grab the HTML for embedding the image and let them host the actual file for you.

The third option, which is not as obvious but is the one I choose, is to save the photo and upload it manually.  This can be a good option because you have control of the file and if Morguefile ever goes out of business (heaven forbid), the photo doesn’t disappear from your blog.  To save the image, simply right-click on it and choose to “Save image as…“or whatever your browser says that is similar.

Before I always had to either download the whole image and do my own formatting or use a screen capture tool and capture the part of the photo that I wanted.  Both of those methods are more of a hassle than Morguefile’s “Crop and post” feature.  They basically do it all for you.

How do you find imagesimages for blogs for your blog (try these 5 Free Websites for Quality Copyright Free Photographs)?  When you find them, what method do you use for formatting them so they can be used?