Howard Forums may get shut down- help prevent it
One of the scariest things that can happen to a site owner has happened to Howard Forums, one of the best sources of information about mobile phones on the planet. It is a highly lamentable situation that all of us who run public web sites are faced with whether we realize it or not. Just a few weeks back Kevin and I were faced with a similar situation when we were notified by YouTube that someone had reported (falsely) that one of our original video reviews violated copyright and YouTube took the video down. We prevailed as we should when we contested it and proved to YouTube that the video in question was in fact one we shot ourselves of ourselves and YouTube put the video back up. It demonstrated to us how a simple statement by someone can falsely cause something like this to be taken down and in this case it is guilty until proven innocent, which we did successfully.
Howard Chui has reported through a mailing list we belong to that MobiTV is trying to take Howard Forums down for something that one of the forum members has posted in a comment. It seems that MobiTV did something stupid and set up URLs that their customers can access from mobile phones to access (paid) streaming video content. The problem is that MobiTV was very lazy and didn’t secure those URLs with any kind of login, instead depending on no one sharing the URLs with non-customers. Of course a Howard Forum member posted the URLs and MobiTV sent a takedown letter to Howard to remove the posts. Howard (well within his rights) refused to remove the comments since it is not reasonable to expect him to police every single comment that gets posted on the forums which can be hundreds or thousands every day. MobiTV then did something totally unreasonable and has notified the site host that Howard Forums are violating their copyright and is trying to get the site shut down by the host. This is looking like it might happen according to Howard and we might lose this great source of information with this false claim that a URL is copyrighted material. We can’t let that happen as a web URL can’t be copyrighted and in this case all MobiTV has to do is make those restricted URLs secured via a login just like thousands of other sites and services do.
Let’s come to Howard’s aid and Digg the story so it gets as much attention as possible to help prevent this unlawful takedown of Howard Forums. It could happen to any of our web sites and this must be stopped right now.
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This is real bad if they do shut down Howard’s site, because of MobiTV not securing there login. It’s like leaving your cell phone somewhere and if you don’t lock it and Some one gets it and makes calls, you wouldn’t blame the place you left it because they didn’t watch and stopped whoever from using your phone. MobiTV has to do there part, and that is protect its login.
I’ve been a loyal Hofo member for years. It’s the best mobile site on the web. Most of the cellular news on the web originates from those forums.
Companies like MobiTV are kept alive by the very geeks they’re trying to take down. This stuff is aggravating.
Everyone needs to Digg this story, and if you have the means, become a paying member of Hofo. Howard needs our help.
HG, the funny thing is, there is no login. They, basically, have no security. It’s just a bunch of URLs. There was no hacking involved. Someone just stumbled upon it.
If this is how they treat their, so called, “intellectual property”, I’d be worried about what they’re doing with my personal info, if I was a MobiTV customer.
First of all, any company that doesn’t make efforts to secure their copyrighted content has no leg to stand on when it comes to distribution.
Second, any web host that would authorize a takedown doesn’t deserve the customer. If I were Howard, I’d be taking my business elsewhere.
Digg my ***. Someone just call the frikkin EFF. MobiTV will be slapped down hard and fast.
I voted on Digg. Even had to set up an account to do it.
Does MobiTV not understand the Streisand Effect?
This is going to hit a lot of the blogosphere, and they aren’t going to look good at all!
Wow. HoFo is one of the best forums out there, and MobiTV is using poor security as an excuse to litigate. This is hardly what I would call hacking.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention…
Too bad I canceled MobiTV a long time ago, or they’d now have one customer canceling because of this. Unbelievable…
Very pathetic move… Maybe MobiTV should use this as inspiration to secure its service.
Dugg, bad precedent setter.
I tried viewing the MobiTV streams with VLC after reading about it on Gear Diary and it worked. Totally unbelievable how they can leave out basic authentication. More unbelievable how they reacted. They will be shooting themselves in the foot pursuing this more.
FYI, late this afternoon, MobiTV caved.
Apparently, when they saw that basically all of the major gadget blogs, Digg, Cnet, and the AP picked up the story, they backed off.
I have a feeling they’re regretting opening their mouths on this one.
Whether or not MobiTV was in the right, HowardForums should take advantage of the protection US law gives site owners for just this situation, by registering an agent for service of process with the Copyright Office:
http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/
{ProfJonathan}