Has anyone ever heard of a site called Clipmarks? It’s a social bookmarking type site except they seem to give the full content of the pages being submitted. For instance here is a Clipmark of my 18 Lessons I have lernt about Blogging which has the full content of the article I wrote in a little scrollable box – including the comments! It even pulls in the images from my post. To give them credit they do give a link back etc – but I wonder if they’re going to get themselves in trouble reposting full posts from blogs etc.
They do have a copyright policy in place but it seems to heavily put the onus on the owner of the copyright to enforce it. It’s not just as simple as sending them a ‘please remove my content’ email. Here’s what you have to do:
If you believe that your work has been copied, framed or otherwise used in a Clipmark in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, or your intellectual property rights have been otherwise violated, please provide Amplify’s agent for notice of claims of copyright or other intellectual property infringement (“Copyright Agent”) the following information:
1. an electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright or other intellectual property interest;
2. a description of the copyrighted work or other intellectual property that you claim has been infringed;
3. a description of the material that you claim infringes on the intellectual property and the location of such material;
4. your address, telephone number, and email address;
5. a statement by you that you have a good faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright or intellectual property owner, its agent, or the law;
6. a statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in your Notice is accurate and that you are the copyright or intellectual property owner or are authorized to act on the copyright or intellectual property owner’s behalf.
My reaction is not overly positive. I don’t mind excerpts of my content being reproduced but to have a full page reproduced goes too far. This is why I have partial RSS feeds. To set up a service that has at it’s heart the reproduction of others work seems to me to be an unwise move – I can just imagine the legal fights they will have on their hands.
What do you think?
I think that a quick email to their host indicating that they were using material that you produced without your permission would see it removed very quickly.
And I doubt that their copyright policy has any standing in law.
A little research and I see that they’re based in the US – an email to their hosts would certainly produce results without the need to jump through the hoops that they want to impose on you.
Yes, I agree. They are going beyond the “fair use” laws by copying your entire work.
That would be no different from me checking out the latest magazine article, reprinting the whole thing on my site with a small blurb at the bottom about the author (or current magazine issue). That practice wouldn’t last very long.
I have a feeling this isn’t going to hold up well, especially if there are a lot of sites who do care about their content.
Coincedently, doesn’t it seem like this is taking after Google’s book copying enterprise? Maybe it’s just me.
Vic
I tried out clipmarks and I think it’s a great concept – but I would only have used my clippings privately for my own use, rather than published for the world to have access to. When it’s published, they’re running into big copyright sagas and what they’re asking you to provide them is ridiculous.
Darren,
Hey, it’s eric goldstein here, co-founder of clipmarks. I appreciate what you’re saying and wanted to respond directly. I find that this is a murky issue as every Clipmark is not created equally. Some are saved privately, some publicly. Some contain very small excerpts and some the whole page. And some come from publishers who accept/want the exposure and some from sites that may not. We can’t anticipate this these variables in advance, but we’re certainly going to try to react reasonably when a publisher complains.
My shorthand interperatation of that jargon above is that it’s basically the legal way of saying that if you believe that a Clipmark has violated your copyright, please tell us what the work is, which clipmark you’re referring to and verify that you are the owner of the work.
Regarding your specific example of someone including an entire blog post in a clipmark, our hope and intention is that this type of thing proves to be a way for people to find interesting blogs that they otherwise would not be aware of. The net effect hopefully being more traffic to your blog. No doubt though, i’d certainly rather see people clipping excerpts and allowing people to click the source link if they want to read the entire post. One reason i have recently been using clipmarks is to save specific comments that i or others make on blogs. By doing so, i’m able to retain these interesting comments and can easily navigate back to the post to see if people have responded. That has definitely caused me to pay repeat visits to blogs more than i used to.
We are trying to get our hands around this whole issue too, as we are certainly not looking to offend publishers or violate their copyright. I think the web in general needs to tackle this issue because i strongly believe that people need to be able to better manage specific information they find online without having to save/bookmark the entire page. Delivering that solution is something that i think is in everyone’s best interests.
I had never heard of this site until now… And I see one of my articles is #3 on their “Public Clipmarks” page.
I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand they are straight up stealing my content, but they do give a link back…
However, I don’t think I will be doing anything about it. They took the time to make a nice little site there… one I might even use in the future.
I’m not too big on copyright issues. If they want it that bad, they can have it.
Yes, I would definitely send off a letter to their host from my attorney if I found they had done that to me.
I expect them to either change or be shut down.
“Delivering that solution is something that i think is in everyone’s best interests.”
You don’t speak for me Eric.
From a blogger’s perspective, I think this site might be quite useful as a research and bookmarking tool. It definitely sounds like they’ve got some public copyright issues to sort out and I hope they do before they run into some trouble.
But for storing private clips that you might want to return to for posting, this actually looks like a pretty good solution.
Not surprisingly, there seem to be differing views on this. Just want to respond to what Miles posted.
First, you can certainly send a letter to our host from your attorney if you’d like. But if you send an email to [email protected] we’ll try to resolve it much easier than that. If that doesn’t work, then perhaps send the letter. We’re not looking to waste your time and money with this.
Second, i think it has to be acknowledged that clipping small excerpts from web pages is incredibly common within the blogosphere. Photos and text are very often copied and pasted from one place to another without anyone complaining. In many/most instances, this is all that a Clipmarks user is doing. When it goes overboard that’s a different story and we will definitely try to address those instances.
“because i strongly believe that people need to be able to better manage specific information they find online without having to save/bookmark the entire page”
As Miles says — don’t speak for me Eric — bookmarks work just fine — allow users to publicly store and display the relevant URLs yes — the actual content no way.
That they give a linkback does not justify that they and their users steal the content linked to.
I agree that excerpts are very commonplace. However, how could you keep it from going overboard? Maybe by putting a certain limit of words/characters that a person can copy? I would think by doing this, it would defeat the whole purpose of clipmarks.
Sounds like an interesting task ahead of you.
Vic
Perhaps we need a standard system for denoting the copyright restrictions specific to a blob of content, like Creative Commons (be it a post, a whole site, etc).
Then such sites as ClipMark simply detect and force adherence to such embedded copyrights.
BTW, you still need a Preview Comment button…
It is a grey area but only because infringement of copyright is so widespread and “mainstream”. Copyright law is pretty strict – if you copy something you are in breach – however the fact is that most people do it without thinking (bloggers are the worst offenders). Using licences like the Creative Commons helps the sharing become authorised and encourages proper acknowledgment of the creator which can only be a good thing.
If you are very protective then sending a “take down notice” to their host is probably the first step.
I claim copyright just so that if I want to rely on it I can – but don’t “enforce” it if I don’t want to.
Darren, I’ve experienced a similar frustration before when I have found Web articles of mine copied without my permission to, say, a free article repository. Even though they sometimes link to me, I still don’t like the fact that they are making money off of my work without permission. I hope we’re able to get this situation resolved.
I’m certainly not looking to speak for anyone, and like i said, i’m sure that people will have differing views on this. I guess when i say that it’s my belief that people need a better solution i’m not literally referring to all people. If it turns out that i’m wrong and people are happy with bookmarks, then there won’t be anyone clipping and this whole issue will be moot.
I think the Bernes Copyright Convention has some people confused about copyright laws. I have a feeling a lot of people regard works that aren’t “copyrighted” as free for the taking. That would be one thing I thnk should be cleared up.
I think that for private use, as it is, clipmarks is fine, however, as a publisher point of view, it has the potential to create copyright infringement. Therefore, I would certainly hope that either: the clipmarks plugin or software keeps track of the page where the content was taken from so that when it is displayed on their website it gives a trackback url, as it is done among “real” bloggers. Furthermore, the users should be given the warnings of not clipping entire posts without prior permission from the author, and there should be an automatic report system in place (similar to blogger’s inapropriate content button).
Great idea, but implementation is lacking in my opinion.
brem
thanks for the comments everyone – and to eric especially for coming over to tell us your side of things.
My suggestion eric would be to make public clipmarks excerpts only. I think you’re going to run into real problems with bloggers who go to the effort of displaying copyright notices on their blogs who take offence in people reading their content in a place that is elsewhere.
I have no real problem with people clipmarking my content for their private use – it would mean they’ve been over to my site already but when it is being reproduced in another place for public consumption without my permission or knowledge I begin to feel uncomfortable.
I do like the idea of the service and think with some tweaks to ensure that it not only provides benefits to the readers of content but that it benefits and protects the interests of publishers that it could work for everyone.
Thanks Darren. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss this here. There’s no question that we’re aware of this predicament and are trying to work through it. Hearing people’s opinion is very helpful and will be taken seriously.
Much like a search engine might drive traffic to your site, i hope that rather than simply being a destination, clipmarks proves to be a hub from which interesting content is found and new sources are discovered. If that proves to be the case then i think that Clipmarks, our users and web publishers will be happy. If not, and people end up going to clipmarks instead of to the sources, then i fully expect and understand that publishers will be unhappy and we’ll have to figure out a way to change the way we’re doing things.
I think the idea of sending traffic to publishers is a great one and something that will not only make publishers happy but will make them promote you. I mean look at the way bloggers have embraced digg and del.ico.us which send them loads of traffic.
The key to sending traffic though is that you don’t give everything away and give peopele a reason to surf over to the links.
I’ve just checked my stats and can’t see any traffic coming from the link I pointed to above with my content yet. Maybe that’s because no one’s found it – or maybe it’s because they’ve read it all there….
I’d strongly urge a different model for public clipmarks if you want bloggers to engage with it.
Tricky topic though – I understand the predicament.
I run a couple of Members Only type websites and I can see it won’t be long before all of the content is distributed on a service like this. Grab a free email address from somewhere, create a Clipmarks account, then login to a website you have a membership to and copy all of the content into Public Clipmarks for everyone else to have for free.
Darren, we’re going to take a look at making the source URL in the Clipmark more prominent and attractive. For many reasons, i am very hopeful that Clipmarks becomes a hub through which quality sites are found and not a mere destination.
I’ll continue to listen intently to people’s reactions and suggestions about this issue and try to find the right balance. Thanks again Darren.
FYI: our Chief Designer is originally from Brisbane, Australia (we play a game of pseudo crickett in the hallway when we’re working late…he uses a ruler as the bat). I’m going to get him playing softball with me this summer.
Tim – it doesn’t take a service like Clipmarks for that to happen. Anyone can do the exact same thing (copying and reposting protected work) anonymously with a Blogger account, or a WordPress.com account, or a…. etc, etc, etc.
I think all we can do is take as many steps as we can to prevent it (not running full text RSS feeds, etc), then be vigilant about it happening, with a view to taking action if it ever does.
In your case, I think that if somone has already gone to the trouble of paying for access, they’re less likely to steal that content and repost it somewhere else. But that’s just my gut feeling.
Yes, Barry, there are numerous other ways to duplicate content, however with services like this it just takes two or three clicks. All formatting, images, HTML code are instantly retained whereas on blogger or wordpress.com you would need to copy the images or relink. (Or view and copy the source.) This service just makes it much easier since you can just click a button to make a public copy of the page.
As for people not wanting to distribute content they have paid for, this already happens. People purchase software then post the serial number on newsgroups, purchase ebooks and offer them on bittorrent, etc.
I totally agree that there are numerous other ways this can already happen, but this type of service makes it much easier.
[…] Darren did posted an entry about Clipmarks and the comments came from everyone including Eric Goldstein, co-founder of Clipmarks. This discussion got me curious about this piece of blog-marking tool. When you find something on the web that you want to save or share, you probably bookmark the page. But you usually don’t want the whole page, right? Maybe you just want a couple of paragraphs from a news article, a photo, a recipe, or an excerpt from a blog post. […]
I’m indifferent to blogging and copyright issues (not about people who steal content and don’t link back and are evil, but more about bloggers who hypocritical about it and use blockquote to copy text and offers a link). Now, don’t go ranting over that comment and I do not disregard copyright notices, it just does seem odd that’s it’s “O.K” to steal SOME text, just not ALL of the text.
Anyway, I did a search for HART and came up ‘nothing’ .. so I guess I’m either safe, or extremely unpopular because I don’t come up in the other social bookmark sites either. I’m not sure what I’m trying to say here and now. But – here’s something. I prefer Internet Explorer. I have and use the Favorites or Bookmarks in my I.E.browser. I have many links and many bookmarks in my Favorites. Not once is there an entire copy of a site that I can pull down from the top menu of this browser version I am using. I just don’t get this social bookmarking.
Mind you, on one of my sites I am using that wordpress plugin to add it to del.icio.us (i don’t think anybody ever added my content there).. so maybe I’m the hypocrit.
Hmm..
I don’t have any problem as long as they don’t use my post for commercial purpose the day when they will start to display ads or other commercial stuff; I will ask them to remove my posts.
This is the Google opt-out approach to stealing content. None of the normal copyright laws have been fully tested online yet, so some people are taking advantage of the confusion. It’s good that the website owner is engaging with you frankly, though. But if you are uneasy about this, as I would be, ask them to withdraw it and see what happens.
The problem for specifically “probloggers” is that they write for traffic, so if the website sends traffic, that would seem to be fair-dealing. If you’re writing in a more traditional sense, you may have a different view.
You’re right, Darren. Just I have deleted your clipmark content. I tried out clipmark without thinking about the implications.
Klaus, Munich, Germany
Suggestion: Contact Eric Goldstein a.k.a. Clipmarks.com and let them know they may not reproduce any of your works in part or whole if that is what you wish.
From the GoDaddy.com WHOIS about Clipmarks.com:
eric goldstein
156 West 56th
new york , New York 10019
United States
[email protected]
2125822209
NS:AUTH01.NS.COLOSPACE.COM
My objection is he is going to try to make money off the work of other people without just compensation. A link back is just not good enough. If I write an article I don’t want someone else making the money off of it, I want to make the money. Simple economics.
Frankly Clipmarks looks like a solution looking for a problem.
My second problem with what he is doing is the little note at the bottom: “Patents Pending”. I am very against the patenting of software. Even hardware is of dubious validity for patenting – e.g., multliple people can come up with the same idea at about the same time completely independently. Software is even worse. We won’t even talk about the patenting of life forms…
Eric, you leave a very bad taste in my mouth. Please do not store or distribute any of my past, present or future works in any form in part, derivative or in whole. I said it politely but that is still a command. Got that? No touch.
On the plus side I appreciate it that you, Eric, took the time to participate in this forum. I hope you listen to people, learn and address their concerns in your policies, that you’re able to change your business model so as to stay out of court. Copyright infringement can get very expensive.
Like i said earlier, i respect this issue and am sensitive to it. I don’t, howerver, think it is nearly as black and white or broad as Walter says. For one, there is no conceivable way we could preemptively block ‘all of your past, present and future works in any format in part, derivate or in whole’. So if i stated here that we would grant that request, i’d be being disingenious.
I also think that your statement about “a link to the source not being good enough” is a bit shortsighted. If that source link proves effective at driving traffic to your site (and we are going to try to make that source link as noticeable, enticing, effective as we can) then i can’t see why you would view it any differently than Google. I’m sure that a search on Google for content relating to your work results in excerpts (aka “clippings”) of it being served on the page alongside advertisements by others. In this instance, Google and the advertiser are profitting from your work. I assume that doesn’t bother you because you want to be included in their search results because of the “link to the source.” If our links are effective, i expect that you’ll feel the same way about Clipmarks. We don’t have 1/100,000,000,000 the traffic of Google, so i can’t really form a judgment on that yet. I can tell you that we are working on ways to make the source link more attractive so that it is more effective. We should have a first stab at something new out in a week or so. I’d love to know your feedback.
Lastly, I don’t see how you could feel so strongly about the right to profit from your work and then criticize our right to seek patent protection for technology we invent. That seems very imbalanced.
I don’t have much more to say about this at the moment. I assue you that i am and will be seeking advice, opinions and suggestions from people about this issue and will continue to listen carefully to everyone’s concerns.
Finally, Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukka to everyone!! I’m off to spend some time with my wife and daughter so i won’t be checking this until later.
Eric, you may need to find a way to solve the preemptive blocking since with your current model you’re violating copyrights and you’re probably going to face a lawsuite on that. It may require significantly changing how your system works to make it legal.
You ask how is it different from Google: the answer is you’re storing and distributing a lot more content. If all you did was a sentence and then a link you would be doing something like Google. What you’re doing is far beyond what Google does.
On the patent issue, I’m critizising the whole system.
Merry Christmas,
-Walter
in Vermont
[…] Clipmarks and Copyright […]
I have been using Clipmarks for a couple of months and find it very useful.
I stumbled on this post after reading about the amblogger incident. While reading through these comments, it appears that the biggest problem was the actual clipping of whole pages. I took this to mean “archiving” the whole page versus bookmarking. I tend to think that the reason people use Clipmarks is it allows them only to save snippets to refer to later. When I’m clipping it seems silly to save the whole page because then I would just bookmark it. Of course, there will be people that will save(archive,cache) the whole page and this is something they can already do with hanzo:web, furl, and spurl. In fact, that is the main purpose of these sites. Anyway, I know this post is a month old, but just wanted to comment.
What about Google’s cache? Is not the cache infringing copyright? Is not cache done by Google a copy of a website that may even not exist anymore? My thought is when Google is removing its cache service, then public Clipmarks may be questioned. I am a user of Clipmarks and to me it’s just a way to privately archive useful content that I find while exploring the world wide web. Bookmarking is not enough, since the content may go away next time I visit that URL The public aspect of Clipmarks is a wonderful way to promote the websites that people have clipmarked, so why the fuss? If Clipmarks goes down, I will go back to converting content to PDF documents for my private archive, but the content creators will miss the traffic. My 2 cents.
Hi,
I don’t understand it… Why do you feel so about clipmarks while accepting google, google/yahoo cache, google/yahoo images and wayback/internet archiv?
I don’t get it…
Clipmarks is a wonderfull tool and there is or will be traffic if people clip a part of your work and make it public. And I think london2020 is absolutely right.
[…] An interesting point, which I have thought about, was raised by Problogger. When does a Clipmark become a copyright breach? Copying copyrighted images and text (in quantities larger than an excerpt) surely isn’t fair use. A problem is finding the person responsible for this. It is a little like P2P software; is LimeWire LLC responsible if someone decides to use their software in copyright theft? […]
Don’t bother with junk like clipmarks. Scrapbook is a much better application for firefox and doesn’t risk breaking any copyright laws. The owner of clipmarks seems to be out on a pr campaign to supress honest evaluation of it’s potential reprecussions. Don’t buy into it.
Calling what is done at Clipmarks stealing is small minded and silly.
Your precious content is being duplicated in another location with full credit and links. How is that theft? I have discovered, and visit regularly, sites that I might never have otherwise found because of content found at Clipmarks.
You’re essentially getting free advertising and you’re talking about theft. Unbelievable.
Godfrey Daniel is a proud advocate of content theft out stumping for clipmarks because of his vested interest as a part of the clipmarks community of thieves. AliBaba might have had 40 thieves, but it was still theft nonetheless, Godfrey.
Clipmarks= RIPMARKS
dale and cynthia – I appreciate that you might not have a good experience of clipmarks – but can you please refrain from leaving multiple comments under different names – I can tell that you left both of these from the same computer. There’s no need to do this – simply say what you have to say – all comments are welcome here without having to do that kind of thing.
Darren – can’t say I’ve had a good or bad experience with clipmarks personally. I’m just disgusted with opportunists trying to jump on the web 2.0 bandwagon at the expense of content creators. What Clipmarks is doing with other’s content is gross infringement with a spit in your face attitude to top it off.
So disguting that my cat had an opinion too.
Hi Darren,
I recently started bloggin ( 1 month back) and looking at feedback I recieve on my blog http://becomeappsdba.blogspot.com I started a site with technical stuff for Oracle E-Business Suite i.e. http://teachmeoracle.com
I was surfing net today & realised that someone from chine copied my complete site pages & blog pages & pasted in his blog i.e. http://ebsdba.blog.com/ I don’t understand what to do now . He has copied every bit word by word of my pages .
I don’t know what to do in this situation , I am bit frustracted as well at this minute & seek you help about what should I do now & how to stop future copying of my technical material from blog .
I’ll really appreciate your help & comment on this.
Regards
Atul
[email protected]
I use delicious to manage bookmarks and remember interesting pages. I don’t mind what clipmarks does, as long as it is not a full page clipping. Lately 3 posts of us have been copied completely, including images. According to me, this is not fair use any longer (considering US law – in other countries something like fair use doesn’t exist and this would be a clear copy right violation). In 24 hours the recent clipmarks resulted in 16 visitors coming via clipmarks. Clipmarks should improve their software and prevent full text clippings, which should not be too difficult if the source is a blog posting.
Since clipmarks.com is legal, I have a great idea!
I’m going to do tvmarks.com, musicmarks.com, bookmarks.com, and imagemarks.com, podcastmarks.com.
Anyone can upload or direct me to “clips” of related content which I will host and distribute freely. This includes music, movies, tv shows, published books, photos and artworks.
I will link to the owner of the content (if I host a song by Switchfoot then I will link to their website). The link will be all that I provide and they should be grateful for the traffic I send them.
Now I will not be responsible if users post full “clips” or “illegal” content. I will happily remove any “illegal” content after proof of ownership and copyright is provided. I can’t control what others do on my sites.
I will “clip” clipmarks.com functionality and format and features. I might change the site design a little by “clipping” a design from somewhere else. The main difference is that instead of articles and written material it will be content people prefer like movies, mp3’s etc.
Thanks for the idea Clipmarks.com. Lets have a race who can get bought out first and make millions.
I too joined Clipmarks and I was surprised to see full pages of content being clipped. Is this not a violation of copyright?
I’ve been reading what everyone has written commenting on clipmarks, and it’s silly for everyone in my opinion to get bent out of shape out of a site offering a clip and store program to showcase good content on their own site. If clipmarks are used correctly a link is put on the site redirecting the user back to where the material was originally copied, therefore it’s not copyright infringement if you aren’t claiming props for the work or other artistic value created. Many times I’ve referenced other people’s work, giving a link back to them, showing a snippet of their article, redirecting viewers to their own page. And really the bottom line for those of you who have seen your work published in full on another site, without a link sent back giving you credit as the author and they are stealing your work. Then enforce copyright yourself. We as a society are baring our souls on the internet, we are putting our work out there because we want others to read it. So we are taking chances, that we bloody well know we shouldn’t be taking when it comes to copyright protecting our work.
I’m a writer. If I feel that strongly about my work, about a novel I’m doing, I do not, at all, post it to the web. Aside from clipmarks, there are other ways to steal, copy and paste, programs like microsoft one note which I use to save clips privately on my own computer, and my favorite the good ole (right click save as) to your hard drive. So many of you want to hold Clipmarks responsible for creating another portal for copyright infrigement. The entire internet is copyright infrigement, as there is no real way of knowing who printed what, where it came from, or how that person obtained it. I think the responsibility of preserving copyright should fall on the onus of the owner of such publications to be aware they are taking a chance at having their work either stolen or showcased on another site if they decide to publish it to the web. Clipmarks is just doing what many other sites have already been doing for years, trying to keep up with the competition.
By the way I’m not saying it’s right, to clip and save something and show it on your site. I’m simply saying we as artists, designers, web builders, authors and so forth, need to protect our own work, and if we post to the web it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that isn’t the best way. It’s like saying here I’m leaving this cookie here, filled with yummy chocolate chips, and I’ll be back later to check on it, but don’t you dare eat it… give me a break!!!
Hi there,
I’m pretty new to blogging itself, though I’ve been writing online at one place or another for quite a while. I recently found clipmarks, and wonder what the more current discussion/opinion on it might be.
Of course, it can be abused. I don’t know that it’s a reason to hate the thing itself. As people have said, if someone wants to steal your work they don’t need a special tool like this. Sure, it makes it easier, but it isn’t actually real hard.
At any rate, my thought was to use it… I think… the way a public version of using was intended.
If I see a good blog post or article, I can just use clipmarks and get a bit of teaser, add my own two cents, and post it right to my blog.
Is this frowned upon by and large?
I’m just not sure what is actually different if I were to post a small blurb about a topic recommending another article with a small quote without using clipmarks.
Is that frowned upon too?