Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

Love Our Children USA emailed me the following misguided takedown notice:

Hello,

We found this on a google search page 10 and would appreciate you removing this as it is copyright infringement and we do not sell or promote video games. Your cooperation would be appreciated.

Video Games – Welcome to Video Games Blog (VGB)

to Love Our Children USA. Www womens accessories com Buy … Clip Series-An 827KB
mpeg. Www disney free com … This on Down syndrome is to offer …
video-games.elliottback.com/2005/10/13/welcome-to-video-games-blog-vgb/ – 27k – Cached – Similar pages

Thank you,
Love Our Children USA

To this, I wrote the following excessive reply:

Hello,

You are either extremely uninformed, in which case I suggest you simply stop reading, or else incredible stupid to write me what amounts to a certain kind of copyright takedown notice.

First, copyright protects your intellectual property, not your name. Your name is called a trademark, and may or may not be protected by trademark law.

Second, the content displayed on that page is clearly marked as originating from Google and MSN search results, and as such, is covered under the fair use section of copyright. Snippets of page text are linked back to their source–there is no infringement on your IP.

Third, to the dilution of your name, clearly your inclusion in that list is a kind of AUTOMATED mistake which no one would confuse as a partnership between my video games blog and you.

Fourth, the process is automated and I cannot remove you. Google still indexes the page as pointing back to you, but the page itself is always changing and doesn’t link to you anymore, which makes this email you sent me rather pointless.

Fifth, I have the right to link to your page in whatever context I wish. Perhaps I’ll start an adult hardcore fetish porn site and plug you as our favorite family site.

I do not know why Love Our Children USA would be concerned with a Google 10th page association with a video games blog and their name, but I strongly suggest you review the relevant rights you possess before threatening any more web site operators.

I wish I had a stupidity category for this site, because this is dumbest thing I’ve seen yet.

Update:

They write me back, but I won’t dignify a response:

Instead of being so nasty why don’t you try helping us to help America’s kids! Our mission has nothing to do with Video games. We did not threaten you but asked you nicely to please remove any mention of our organization.

The FBI will be informed of your intent to start an adult hardcore fetish porn site and plug us in as your favorite family site.

If your goal is to be obnoxious you reached your goal!

December 28, 2005
VIA EMAIL

825 Pike Street
Washington State Convention Center
Seattle, WA 98101
1-866-700-8000

Re: Continued billing of closed account

Dear Managers, Gold’s Gym:

This document is being sent separately by fax, email, and mail. You may consider this your final notice before I open formal fraud proceedings against your gym.

In late July and early August, I went through a great deal of trouble to find a manager to cancel my account, first because I was incorrectly signed into your computer system as a 1-year contract when I actually was on a signed month to month contract. Producing the original contract, according to your manager Erica, finally allowed me to change my status and cancel the account, without any additional penalties or fees.

However, I am still being billed $33.67 a month, as I found out when I returned to Phoenix from school in NY and checked the stack of bank statements that were waiting for me. It never occurred to me that although I had met with a gold’s gym manager who told me my account was canceled, that I would continue to be billed.

Therefore, I demand a full refund for August, September, October, November, and the December months during which you fraudulently billed me for services I had canceled, did not ask for, and could not possibly use. This is a total of no less than $168.35, which you must refund immediately to the billing number for my account.

You will be well-advised to comply with these demands immediately and inform me in writing of your agreement to do so.

Sincerely,
Elliott C. Bäck
607-229-0623

I’m doing some cool things for the new ElliottBack.com. One of them involves integrating a community tagging solution, to which I’ve added or modified the following features:

+ Automatic tagging
+ Related RSS search feeds now in regular HTML as well as AJAX
+ RSS search feed item descriptions

I need to add one more feature, that is, to let everyday users add tags at will, too. Once that’s done, this tagging solution will power intra-post linkage as well as draw in valuable content from offsite.