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5:34 AM
zimbio
It looks like this company has been scanning websites (aggressively) to see if there is any infringing copy-written material. Recently, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) began to step down from the fight on piracy. [1] Now, it seems as if the "Attributer Corporation" has stepped in as a front line defense mechanism for piracy on the Internet.
Yet, many believe Reuters is not fully aware of the extortion like tactics Attributor Corporation uses on their behalf. [2] Recently, a member of the "God Like Productions" forum named "DMCA guy" released an email received from "Attributor corporation" concerning the matter, it reads as follows: [3]
fairshare@attributor.com to adsense-dmca-notifications@google.com
Dear Sir/Madam,
I certify under penalty of perjury, that I am an agent authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the intellectual property rights and that the information contained in this notice is accurate. I have a good faith belief that the page or material listed below is not authorized by law for use by the individual(s) associated with the identified page listed below or their agents and therefore infringes the copyright owner's rights.
I HAVE A GOOD FAITH BELIEF THAT ADVERTISING ON THE INFRINGING PAGES/MATERIAL IDENTIFIED BELOW IS DELIVERED BY YOUR SERVICE AND I HEREBY DEMAND THAT YOU ACT EXPEDITIOUSLY TO REMOVE OR DISABLE SUCH ADVERTISING.
This notice is sent pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the European Union's Directive on the Harmonisation of Certain Aspects of Copyright and Related Rights in the Information Society (2001/29/EC), and/or other laws and regulations relevant in European Union member states or other jurisdictions.
Note that in some cases the pages/material may have been removed after the sending of this notice but prior to your review.
My contact information is as follows:
Organization name: Attributor Corporation as agent for Reuters
Email: fairshare@attributor.com
Phone: 650.306.9474
Mailing address:
1775 Woodside Road, Suite 100
Redwood City, CA 94061
INFRINGING PAGES/MATERIAL WHERE ADVERTISING SHOULD BE REMOVED OR DISABLED:
The email goes on listing several dozen articles which they believe should be removed. Attributor Corporation has also managed to get God like Productions Google adsense account removed, crippling the sites income and hosting fees. Godlikeproductions has begun an email campaign to Reuters urging all of it's members to send an email expressing their disgust with Reuters decision to hire a company which is known for "bullying web-masters and using extortion like tactics." Godlikeproductions encourages "free and open discussion of news in it's forums" and sees this issue as a breach of "freedom of information." On the other hand, Attributor Corporation aggressively hunts and prosecutes such websites. It is said that if you refuse to adhere to Attributor Corporations policies, they will run you out of business by attacking your advertisers.
Attributor corporation is known to send out harmful bots to crawl websites. I recently found an article by a network administrator who has discovered how to block their bots. It reads as follows. [4]
This weekend I noticed a bot from Attributor Corp was pounding my server. So I went ahead and disallowed the bot by adding the following code
User-agent: attributor.com
Disallow: /
to the robots.txt file. I checked back a little later and noticed the server was still being crawled heavily by this bot, leaving me to believe that this bot was a bad behaving bot and ignoring my robots.txt file. So I decided I wanted to block them at the firewall level. So I went ahead and looked up their IP range and quickly found it was from 64.41.145.0/24 . I have a startup script that I run on the server that does certain tasks for me such as adding rules to the firewall. I opened it up and added the following to it:
ipfw add deny ip from 64.41.145.0/24 to any
This seems to have taken care of the problem. I also added Cyveillance and Twiceler, which also seem to be bad behaving. It might be overkill but nothing annoys me more than bad bots. So now my startup script now looks like this:
#block attributor corp
ipfw add deny ip from 64.41.145.0/24 to any
#block cyveillance
ipfw add deny ip from 63.148.99.224/27 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 63.148.99.0/24 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 65.118.41.192/27 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 65.118.41.0/24 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 65.222.185.0/24 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 65.222.176.0/24 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 38.112.21.0/24 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 38.118.25.0/24 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 38.118.42.0/24 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 38.118.25.56/29 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 38.118.42.32/29 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 207.87.178.0/24 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 216.32.64.0/24 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 63.100.163.0/24 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 151.173.221.0/24 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 68.48.24.0/24 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 4.35.201.0/24 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 63.148.99.224/27 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 38.100.41.64/26 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 65.118.41.192/27 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 65.205.32.0/24 to any
#block Cuill/Twiceler
ipfw add deny ip from 64.62.136.0/24 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 38.99.13.0/24 to any
ipfw add deny ip from 38.99.44.0/24 to any
I hope other webmasters and network Administrators incorporate the same method and block Attributor Corporations webcrawlers from their domains. I hope this article was helpful, and if your a member of Godlikeproductions like me, please take a moment to email Reuters. Trinity, one of the forum administrators on Godlikeproductions, posted addresses you can send your email inquiries to. [5]
You can email your comments to Reuters general inquiry email address here:
general.info@thomsonreuters.com
I suggest you also send a copy of your comments to their investor relations email address here:
investor.relations@thomsonreuters.com
Reuters Big Dog Personal Emails:
david.thomson@thomsonreuters.com - Chairman
thomas.glocer@thomsonreuters.com - CEO
chris.ahearn@thomsonreuters.com - President (guy who hired attributor)
Sources:
1. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122966038836021137.html
2. http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1139887/pg1
3. http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1137694/pg24
4. http://www.dancatts.com/articles/dealing-with-bad-bots-at-the-firewall-level.php
5. http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1139887/pg1
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