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lemonup.com – pirates

The URL http://linuxresource.lemonup.com/ currently has a mirror of my blog. Disregarding the DMCA take-down notice I sent them a week ago (which is also mirrored on their own site) they have again copied the content from my site without permission (I only allow non-commercial use). But this time they go even further and claim copyright over my text!

This is going way too far. Now I’m going to ask their ISP to deal with them.

Update: Their site is now offline. Their ISP acted quite quickly and less than 3.5 hours after my complaint the entire site was offline (not only the section that had my posts). I suspect that it was the fact that they mirrored blog posts such as this one which made it appear to be willfull infringement which got such a fast response – but the only response I got from the ISP was to say that they would do what seemed right and not comment to me about it due to privacy reasons.

This is not an ideal outcome. I would much rather have had them respect my license terms without such measures. I only contacted their ISP because the first take-down request took four days to complete (after receiving a response on day 0 so it wasn’t four days of holiday for the operator) and because they then mirrored my site again under a different URL. I am still unsure of whether this was a genuine mistake (as claimed by the operator) due to lack of communication between multiple people involved in running the site, or whether they just didn’t think I would catch them.

I don’t have any malice towards the operators of lemonup, I have already offered some suggestions that may help them in future business ventures and would be happy to make some more suggestions if asked.

In response to a comment. The traditional meaning of the word pirate is violent acts at sea that don’t have state sponsorship, this usually involves armed robbery but the main criteria is violence without state sponsorship. The slang use means anything which goes against the wishes of a copyright holder.

2 comments to lemonup.com – pirates

  • Anonymous

    Whether wrong or not (and in this case they seem clearly in the wrong), that doesn’t really justify the term “pirates”.

  • etbe

    You are correct. Piracy means violent acts (often including theft) at sea without state sponsorship.

    But by the modern slang definition any unauthorised use of copyright material counts as piracy.