About to do something fairly rare for me – full on name and shame a rather unpleasant copyright abuser.
They’re not bad ideas, small local publisher offering a print advertising option for small local businesses who would struggle to get into the big newspapers.
However, it also seems that they also like to pad out their publication by copying content from ianVisits. Initially I thought it was a rather egregious one-off in their March edition, which actually made me their most prolific (and unpaid) writer in that edition.
As it’s a print magazine I would have been unlikely to notice had James (thanks James!) not sent me an email about the March edition.
Frankly, I am not going to be that irked by the odd thing here and there, but it turned out to be far worse than that. They’ve been copying content from ianVisits for years.
March 2020
- A memorial to the legend of Vincent Square
- Admire Rochester Row’s 1960s concrete frieze
- Plans to banish buses from outside Victoria Station
Feb 2020
Jan 2020
Dec 2019
Nov 2019
June 2019
April 2019
Aug 2018
July 2018
May 2018
April 2018
Jan 2018
Candidly, at this point I gave up going any further back, as I think I’ve made the point.
So, if either David, Philippa or Sarah at Eye Publications would care to reply to my email where I asked to discuss this a week ago, it would be appreciated.
If you’re an advertiser who has been told that they spend a lot of time writing original content for the magazine which then encourages people to read it, and hence see your adverts — maybe you will want to have a chat with them.
Maybe they would like to pay you for the past publication of your articles and negotiate a pay rate to license future articles.
Although copyright is automatically assigned, you could assert it more through the website. Another trick is to put up a rate card for syndication and then bill abusers for the content. It’s a shame they haven’t copied the content onto a web page because the DMCA can be an extremely powerful too against *that* no matter where the parties are based.
I believe they are called Zines in the printing trade. I’m told that they are very profitable for small printers and that they use an awful lot of ripped of articles and jokes/pictures without crediting the authors.
Just made an extra donation.
That’s pretty shitty Ian.
Hope they stop now that you have called them out.
Quite amazed by that. They seem to make enough cash to pay the three people that you mention. Hope you get some redress.
Blaggards! There’s no such thing as bad press they say but they should at least acknowledge your œuvres and chuck you a Pony or two. I copied a story from the telly for an english essay once, convinced that the english master didn’t believe in tv and got a detention. He was at a friend’s and watched with glee apparently. Learned my lesson!