This morning, I found in my email inbox a message from my web host Bluehost saying my account has been deactivated. That explains the lengthy downtime you might have seen.
The reason: "terms of service violation - copyright violation".
So, I was very shocked to see the Copyright violation notice. You'll understand why as you read on.
Kodansha Limited, the largest Japanese publisher, has complained to Bluehost regarding the use of pictures and video for reviews I've written for
Instead of contacting me to remove the material, they contacted my web host. They also complained to Youtube so I was given a Copyright strike #1 there.
In this day and age, if you're a Copyright owner, it seems you have the power to abuse them. Yeah, don't even bother to contact the person who created the content. Just go straight to the host who's hosting it so that they can shut down everything even if the only infringing material is that one piece from you. That's unacceptable.
I don't want to get into arguing whether Kodansha was legally right in their assessment of the amount of pictures or length of video used in those reviews. That's would be a waste of time since they have already shown that they are too silly to appreciate a helpful review.
So I've removed all the photos and videos used in those reviews, leaving only a photo of book cover.
Thankfully, most the of photos and videos aren't actually hosted on Bluehost. During the deactivation, I can only work on cPanel which is quite hard to find all those files. The content were on Flickr and Youtube so I could locate them easily to delete them.
Bluehost reactivated my account promptly after the removal. The reason why it took so long was because I had to wait until their Terms of Service department goes to work.
My thoughts on Copyright
I've friends who publish books and I know it's a tremendous effort to get books published.
On Parka Blogs, I make a very conscious effort not to violate the Copyright of publishers and authors because I respect their work and effort.
I do understand Copyright and how it works. Duplication of work if you're not the Copyright owner is illegal. Period. There are no exceptions except one limitation that is the doctrine of "fair use" (wikipedia.org). Work reproduced "may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research". That is the case for reviews.
On Parka Blogs, you'll notice that
- Photos of pages that I present is usually 10-20% of the book.
- Videos run for 1 minute and 30 seconds, and the pages are flipped, usually the book is not laid flat.
- I respond quickly to authors who don't want pictures/videos of their book appearing on the blog. I will take them down with no questions asked.
- I don't respond to requests for book scans.
This should give you an idea of why I don't post more pictures.
So to publishers and authors who don't want to see their books featured here, just contact me and I will remove them. I remember having to do that once because one author was afraid to that it would make his/her publisher unhappy even though I was the one writing the review, putting up the pictures.
And to publishers and authors who wish to see their books featured here, you can contact me also. Featuring your books on Parka Blogs is free. It's always great to show good work to a wider audience.
Alright, it's time for me to get back to work.
PS: The next time you see something amiss, you can visit my Twitter page or Google+ page to find out what's wrong.
