Your Medium Stories Are Being Stolen
This website is using your content without permission
If your name, publication, or one that you have published in is listed above, your work is appearing on Ichi.Pro, an international website that is available in 14 languages. It seems that the bulk of their content is lifted wholesale from Medium writers and publications. I couldn’t find a way to contact the website directly, but a search of Whois.com reveals that it is registered to NameCheap, Inc., based in Panama. Although Panama is a signatory to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaty and ostensibly takes copyright infringement seriously, the Panamanian Copyright Office has been described by a 2001 US report as “small and ineffective”. (1)
None-the-less, upon discovering that my entire publication, Inside Elle Beau was being used without my permission, I contacted [email protected] to complain. Minutes later, I received this response:
Hello,
Thank you for contacting Namecheap Legal and Abuse department. We confirm the receipt of your ticket.
Please be assured that we will investigate the matter you reported and take action based on the results of our investigation. Please also be aware that, while Namecheap investigates every complaint, we cannot always respond with the results of the investigation and your ticket might be closed accordingly.
Important: In order to support the process of investigation, please review the instructions below depending on the type of the abuse you are reporting. To help us fully investigate your claim, please ensure your submission includes all of the requirements we describe. If you have submitted a complaint and realize that information is missing, please simply reply to this message and include the additional information:
Information required to support our investigation https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/9196/5/how-and-where-can-i-file-abuse-complaints
How does Namecheap investigate Suspected Email Abuse/Spam? https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/10184/5/how-does-namecheap-investigate-suspected-email-abusespam
Copyright and Trademark Policies https://www.namecheap.com/legal/general/copyright-trademark-policies/
Namecheap Court Order & Subpoena Policy (including customer personal information disclosure requests) https://www.namecheap.com/legal/general/court-order-and-subpoena-policy/
If you do not receive a response and would like to know the status of the investigation, we recommend that you first check the status of the ticket online at https://support.namecheap.com/index.php?/Tickets/ViewList
Kind regards, Legal & Abuse Department Namecheap.com
My husband, a lawyer, tells me that this is the kind of reply is the type that one might expect from a legitimate company. I am hopeful that it will lead to my stories being removed and no longer posted without my permission. If all Medium writers and publications who are similarly affected also complain, that likelihood becomes even bigger.
I’ve also reported this situation to Medium and asked for their advice, but based on what they have said to other writers with similar issues in the past, each individual’s direct action is likely to be the most impactful. The Medium Staff confirms that they are aware of the problem and recommends this action:
You may need to start higher up the food chain, possibly by contacting their DNS registrar, as copyright violation should be against their terms.
The website is hosted by https://www.hivelocity.net/.
You can file a report at [email protected]. We did as well.
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed in the US in 1998. It gives your work copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. In other words, it does not have to be more formally copyrighted in order to be protected. “You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section ‘Copyright Registration.’” (2)
Here are some other ways to potentially address this kind of copyright infringement that I have yet to pursue, but that I probably will:
The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) accepts complaints from either the actual victim or a third party. It tells you what type of information you will need and provides a link to file a complaint.
Google has a place to report alleged copyright infringement as well. “It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the text of which can be found at the U.S. Copyright Office Web Site, http://www.copyright.gov) and other applicable intellectual property laws. Our response may include removing or disabling access to material claimed to be the subject of infringing activity and/or terminating subscribers. If we remove or disable access in response to such a notice, we may notify the owner or administrator of the affected site or content so that he or she can make a counter notification. It is also our policy to document all notices of alleged infringement on which we act, including by sending a copy of the notice to one or more third parties or making it available to the public.”
This website, Ichi.Pro, was discovered when Yael Wolfe Googled one of her stories and discovered that it was right there at the top of the results — on a website she’d never heard of and being used without her permission. I think that this is a wise practice for all of us to undertake from time to time, since even if we can get our stories removed from Ichi.Pro, they are not the first or only ones to think of stealing stories from Medium writers and publications.
As she said in What I Learned From Having My Writing Stolen, “I’d also suggest that you write to Medium support about this. They do know about it and many of us have written to them (I haven’t received a response yet), but it’s worth letting them know how many people this has affected.”
Yael has a couple of other good suggestions for monitoring your writing and protecting yourself online. It’s well worth it to read her story as well as the additional story I’ve included at the bottom of this page on the same topic. Although we’ve all been doing our best to let our friends and Medium colleagues know about this situation, I am tagging the people and publications mentioned in the Ichi directory in the hopes that even more people will demand that the fruit of their efforts not be stolen by someone else. If we all band together and complain, perhaps we can get this website shut down.
I work too hard, as I know you do also, to have our creative efforts simply lifted and used to benefit someone else.
Let’s make them stop!
Edit: This morning I heard from hivelocity.net that I needed to submit a properly formatted DMCA takedown notice. Here’s a link as to how to do that: https://www.name.com/support/articles/205190608-Filing-a-DMCA-complaint
Latest news: The website is down (for now)
© Copyright Elle Beau 2020 Elle Beau writes on Medium about sex, life, relationships, society, anthropology, spirituality, and love. If this story is appearing anywhere other than Medium.com, it appears without my consent and has been stolen.
The Startup, Adrian Drew, Dr Mehmet Yildiz, Faisal Khan, Trey Huffine, The Bold Italic Editors, Ben Le Fort, PCMag, Analytics Vidhya, Jenny Justice, Andrei Tapalaga ✒️, Mishael Witty, Humungus, The Narrative, LLC, Natalie Frank, Ph.D., TDS Team, Sam Kimberle, Meredith Arthur, The Post-Grad Survival Guide, Personal Growth, Willem-Jan Ageling, Literally Literary, Netflix Technology Blog, David S., Lit Up, Matter, Android Developers, Good Advice Publishing, Jeff Barton, Thomas Brand, Zack Shapiro, UX Collective, Nicole Akers, Justin Chan, Andjela Djuric, August Birch, Page Barnes, Mission, S. Stefan Karabacak, julian rogers, Nicole Bedford, Starkey, IPG Media Lab, Justin Deming, Lisa Marie Fuqua, The Ascent, Sexography Editorial, Steve Spring, Tenderly, The Writing Cooperative, Slackjaw, Kyrie Gray, Harsh Light News, James Finn, Dr. Christine Bradstreet, D&D Editorial Team, Medium Blogging Guide, ITNEXT, Stephen Muskett, M.S.Ed, Paul Dughi, Susan Brearley, Bridget Webber, Emma Austin, Deborah Christensen, Arc Digital, Predict, Jun Wu, Scott Stoll, Benny Lim, Ethan Siegel, Eric Elliott, Refinery29 UK, Kay Bolden, Gillian Sisley, Sunil Sandhu, The Junction, Mark Starlin, Zuva, Coach.me, Jonathan Greene, @DFRLab, Faun, Sherry McGuinn, Mac O'Clock, Katie Couric, Elijah Meeks
