Frienditto

[rm]

From several of my friends -- all of this is via them, as I've had NO DIRECT CONTACT WITH THE SITE, but feel this meritted enough concern to repost here:

Watch out for Frienditto.

This site is an archive service that claims affiliation with Live Journal BUT DOES NOT HAVE IT.

There has been some concern over this site and security of LJ accounts. If you provide it with your login information for your Live Journal you give this service permission to archive your friends only entries and ANY locked entries of your friends for which you have access.

Please read the following answer to my support request regarding this site and be informed. More importantly, inform others.

Dear user,

Frienditto is not affiliated with LiveJournal in any way. As such, this website does not have access to any entries which are not publicly viewable. If someone provides them with their LiveJournal username and password, however, it gives this site access to all non-public entries that account would have access to. We can only recommend that you do not provide your username and password to any person or website to ensure the security of your account.

Additionally, if you believe anyone on your Friends list may have provided their login information to this website, we can only advise that you remove them from your Friends list. This website will have access to your Friends-only entries as long as any person on your Friends list has given the site access. If any content is present on Frienditto which you do not wish to be there, you will need to resolve the issue with that website.

Regards,

Scott
LiveJournal Abuse Team

(Emphasis mine)


If you are using this site I will remove you from my friends list. Additionally, I will be extraordinarily cross at you, either for being an idiot, or a malicious little freak.

Comments

[auntiesiannan.livejournal.com]

Brush up on your copyright law. It takes more than a mere claim of "ownership" to prove same.

[kengr]

Go read the DMCA. A properly worded statement to a website owner *claiming* copyright requires removing the material until the matter settled. And there's a *short* time limit for the removal.

Failure to do so within the limit means you contact the company hosting the site. Which *will* remove it (and likely the entire site) since failure on their port makes them legally liable.

Also, since the mid 80s material is to be *assumed* copyright unless marked as public domain.

Proving copyright to a post in your LJ is trivial. Suing would require registering it, but that's not *that* hard.

[sebatical.livejournal.com]

Excellent summary.

And to add specificity to your last point, registering a copyrighted work allows you to sue for damages. One can still sue to cease/desist purposes without registration.

[kengr]

Last I heard the moment you want to take lewgal action, you have to register the copyright. I recall that from published legal advice to sysops and the like.

If you've got references that say differently I'd be interested in seeing them.

[sebatical.livejournal.com]

You can sue to prevent the continued infringement, but you cannot sue for punitive damages.

[sebatical.livejournal.com]

This is worded really poorly, as it appears their new site design was not for the better. I'm looking for it in easier terms, but I'm also working at the same time..

If I recall, the wording previously was that a violation complaint could be filed in court, but an infringement suit (one involving the seeking of punitive or infringement awards) required registration.

Like I said, this is worded horribly, so I'll find the part of their site I had used before, but it may take me a bit!

---

COPYRIGHT REGISTRATION
In general, copyright registration is a legal formality intended to make a public record of the basic facts of a particular copyright. However, registration is not a condition of copyright protection. Even though registration is not a requirement for protection, the copyright law provides several inducements or advantages to encourage copyright owners to make registration. Among these advantages are the following:

Registration establishes a public record of the copyright claim.

Before an infringement suit may be filed in court, registration is necessary for works of U. S. origin.

If made before or within 5 years of publication, registration will establish prima facie evidence in court of the validity of the copyright and of the facts stated in the certificate.

If registration is made within 3 months after publication of the work or prior to an infringement of the work, statutory damages and attorney's fees will be available to the copyright owner in court actions. Otherwise, only an award of actual damages and profits is available to the copyright owner.

Registration allows the owner of the copyright to record the registration with the U. S. Customs Service for protection against the importation of infringing copies. For additional information, request Publication No. 563 "How to Protect Your Intellectual Property Right," from: U.S. Customs Service, P.O. Box 7404, Washington, D.C. 20044. See the U.S. Customs Service Website at www.customs.gov for online publications.

Registration may be made at any time within the life of the copyright. Unlike the law before 1978, when a work has been registered in unpublished form, it is not necessary to make another registration when the work becomes published, although the copyright owner may register the published edition, if desired.

[sebatical.livejournal.com]

This is from patents.com:

"The registration of a U.S. copyright offers many benefits to the owner of the copyright. For example, it creates a presumption that ownership of the copyright is as set forth in the registration. In addition, if you happen to have the good luck that you registered the copyright on a date earlier than the date of an act of unauthorized copying, or under certain other circumstances set forth in the copyright law, then if you prevail in court against the unauthorized copier, you may find yourself eligible for statutory damages and for recovery of attorney's fees."

[sebatical.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm going to have to say that I'm now interpreting the copyright law information to say that you can register a complaint, but to actually file a lawsuit requires registration.

I stand corrected.

:)

[redbird]

The point is that the site says that they will remove things on proper request. So either the statement that they will never remove anything, "so don't bother" is mistaken, or they're lying.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Since it is all supposed to be anonymised, their is some difficulty in the inituial request, since they can allege they have no word other than yours that you hold such copyright legitimately.

I can think of several ways to hinder such a claim, and the promised removal.

TK