A Fraudulent DMCA Complaint from Turkey
Page created Feb 26, 2017
Weebly takes gulencharterschools.weebly.com offline without advance notice
On Feb 16, 2017, CASILIPS received the following email from Weebly, the hosting service for this website:
"We recently removed your website at gulencharterschools.weebly.com because a copyright owner sent us a valid DMCA notice alleging copyright infringement. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) dictates that we must respond to notices of copyright infringement by expeditiously removing the infringing content. However, you have the right to file a DMCA counter-notification if you feel that you have the right to such work. More information may be found at http://www.weebly.com/dmca.html"
Indeed, the entire gulencharterschools.weebly.com website, which had been online continually since 2010, and which at the time had 135 pages, had been taken offline by Weebly. This disruption removed the high search engine rankings this site had maintained for many years for a number of keywords, and caused 404 errors for a number of other sites that link to this site. Moreover, it prevented a large number of individuals from visiting the site at a time when Gulen charter schools such as the chain in New Jersey were in the news, generating interest in the topic.
In a subsequent email, the Weebly help desk wrote that:
"We received a DMCA take-down notice concerning content distributed on your website. There are two options available at this time.
1) If you do own rights to distribute this content, then you can file a counter DMCA notice, which will counter the original complaint. This process, once completed, will allow you to display the content on your website. However, it can take up to 14 days for processing.
See more here: http://www.weebly.com/dmca/
2) Alternatively, you can agree to remove the content and publish once that is done."
Notice that statement about it taking another 14 days of site downtime for "'processing."
Weebly was responding to a fraudulent DMCA complaint
After inquiries were made, Weebly explained that the action was taken in response to the following DMCA complaint sent to them (we have redacted the phone numbers that were included in this communication):
---begin quote---
Reported Site(s):
http://gulencharterschools.weebly.com/syracuse-academy-of-science.html
Authorized Signature:
Ahmet Akkaya
Infringed Work(s):
http://www.haberyildizi.com/guncel/syracuse-academy-of-science-charter-school-h181.html
Reporting Party Contact Information:
Address: Fulya Mh. Prof. Dr. Bülent Tarcan cd No:14 İstanbul, Turkey
Telephone: +90 212 356 61 76
Fax: +90 212 356 92 11
iletisim@haberyildizi.com
Unauthorized Statement: [sic]
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am the official representative of the copyright owner website HaberYildizi.com. My name is Ahmet Akkaya and I am the news director of the HaberYildizi.com News Website.
One of our article and details stolen by these blogs and using without our permission. You can clearly see the articles on HaberYildizi.com
This letter is the official notification under Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (”DMCA”), and I seek the removal of the aforementioned infringing material from your servers. I request that you immediately notify the infringer of this notice and inform them of their duty to remove the infringing material immediately, and notify them to cease any further posting of infringing material to your server in the future.
Good Faith/Accurate Statement:
Please also be advised that law requires you, as a service provider, to remove or disable access to the infringing materials upon receiving this notice. Under US law a service provider, such as yourself, enjoys immunity from a copyright lawsuit provided that you act with deliberate speed to investigate and rectify ongoing copyright infringement. If service providers do not investigate and remove or disable the infringing material this immunity is lost. Therefore, in order for you to remain immune from a copyright infringement action, you will need to investigate and ultimately remove or otherwise disable the infringing material from your servers with all due speed should the direct infringer, your client, not comply immediately.
I am providing this notice in good faith and with the reasonable belief that rights my company owns are being infringed. Under penalty of perjury, I certify that the information contained in the notification is both true and accurate, and I have the authority to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright(s) involved.
Should you wish to discuss this with me please contact me directly.
Thank you.
Ahmet Akkaya
iletisim@haberyildizi.com
---end quote---
The meaning of the phrase "Unauthorized Statement" in the above communication is unclear.
After inquiries were made, Weebly explained that the action was taken in response to the following DMCA complaint sent to them (we have redacted the phone numbers that were included in this communication):
---begin quote---
Reported Site(s):
http://gulencharterschools.weebly.com/syracuse-academy-of-science.html
Authorized Signature:
Ahmet Akkaya
Infringed Work(s):
http://www.haberyildizi.com/guncel/syracuse-academy-of-science-charter-school-h181.html
Reporting Party Contact Information:
Address: Fulya Mh. Prof. Dr. Bülent Tarcan cd No:14 İstanbul, Turkey
Telephone: +90 212 356 61 76
Fax: +90 212 356 92 11
iletisim@haberyildizi.com
Unauthorized Statement: [sic]
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am the official representative of the copyright owner website HaberYildizi.com. My name is Ahmet Akkaya and I am the news director of the HaberYildizi.com News Website.
One of our article and details stolen by these blogs and using without our permission. You can clearly see the articles on HaberYildizi.com
This letter is the official notification under Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (”DMCA”), and I seek the removal of the aforementioned infringing material from your servers. I request that you immediately notify the infringer of this notice and inform them of their duty to remove the infringing material immediately, and notify them to cease any further posting of infringing material to your server in the future.
Good Faith/Accurate Statement:
Please also be advised that law requires you, as a service provider, to remove or disable access to the infringing materials upon receiving this notice. Under US law a service provider, such as yourself, enjoys immunity from a copyright lawsuit provided that you act with deliberate speed to investigate and rectify ongoing copyright infringement. If service providers do not investigate and remove or disable the infringing material this immunity is lost. Therefore, in order for you to remain immune from a copyright infringement action, you will need to investigate and ultimately remove or otherwise disable the infringing material from your servers with all due speed should the direct infringer, your client, not comply immediately.
I am providing this notice in good faith and with the reasonable belief that rights my company owns are being infringed. Under penalty of perjury, I certify that the information contained in the notification is both true and accurate, and I have the authority to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright(s) involved.
Should you wish to discuss this with me please contact me directly.
Thank you.
Ahmet Akkaya
iletisim@haberyildizi.com
---end quote---
The meaning of the phrase "Unauthorized Statement" in the above communication is unclear.
Weebly took down an entire site with 135 pages, causing major disruption, because of a (fraudulent) complaint about one page
Before it was possible to communicate to Weebly that this claim was fraudulent, Weebly had already taken down the entire gulencharterschools.weebly.com website, even though the complaint was about only one page. It was not necessary to cause this level of disruption to the site's traffic and rankings. Weebly somehow decided that the complaint was valid, but it clearly isn't, as explained below.
Haberyildizi.com plagiarized from gulencharterschools.weebly.com
In fact it is the haberyildizi.com website that plagiarized from gulencharterschools.weebly.com Because of previous cyber attack attempts associated with the Gulen Movement, we recommend against visiting the page in question directly. It is possible to view a Google cache of the page at this link:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JuI6oYRT578J:www.haberyildizi.com/m/guncel/syracuse-academy-of-science-charter-school-h181.html
This shows that the content of the page http://gulencharterschools.weebly.com/syracuse-academy-of-science.html was plagiarized and published on haberyildizi.com. CASILIPS never gave permission for this replication of the content.
While the gulencharterschools.weebly.com site is still down as of this writing, it is possible to see its content using the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine, which saves copies of webpages at various points in time. Here is the link:
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://gulencharterschools.weebly.com/syracuse-academy-of-science.html
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JuI6oYRT578J:www.haberyildizi.com/m/guncel/syracuse-academy-of-science-charter-school-h181.html
This shows that the content of the page http://gulencharterschools.weebly.com/syracuse-academy-of-science.html was plagiarized and published on haberyildizi.com. CASILIPS never gave permission for this replication of the content.
While the gulencharterschools.weebly.com site is still down as of this writing, it is possible to see its content using the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine, which saves copies of webpages at various points in time. Here is the link:
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://gulencharterschools.weebly.com/syracuse-academy-of-science.html
Evidence that this claim is fraudulent
The plagiarized content on haberyildizi.com is framed as if it were a news article and given the false date of March 16, 2010. Were this date correct, it would seem to predate the first publication of http://gulencharterschools.weebly.com/syracuse-academy-of-science.html, which was later in 2010. However, the alleged March 16, 2010 date is clearly false because the content of the "news article" shows numerous references to the years 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, including a line saying "Note added Mar 3, 2013."
The Internet Archive/Wayback Machine shows 38 page captures for the http://gulencharterschools.weebly.com/syracuse-academy-of-science.html page, starting with September 5, 2010 up to February 19, 2017. The content was revised (mostly added to) several times, but the basic content can be seen in the September 5, 2010 page capture.
The Internet Archive/Wayback Machine also shows 43 page captures for the plagiarizing "news" site haberyildizi.com, starting with January 1, 2014 and ending at October 28, 2016:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150101000000*/http://www.haberyildizi.com/
Examination of the page captures in 2014 and 2015 shows that the site first had no content and then started showing a message in Turkish that can easily be translated with translate.google.com to read ""Our site is under construction ... Please come back soon ..."
If the site was under construction in 2015, how could it possibly have published this article in 2010?
Furthermore, Google search rankings are generally adjusted to avoid ranking plagiarized sites above original ones. Even as of this writing, a Google search of the text string in quotation marks "Syracuse Academy of Science Charter School is a publicly-funded charter school in Syracuse NY." still brings up the gulencharterschools.weebly.com page as the number one hit. The haberyildizi.com page does not even show unless you click on "If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included," and once it shows it is still ranked below gulencharterschools.weebly.com .
There is also the fact that other articles on haberyildizi.com are in Turkish, not English. So why is there this one piece in English? In addition, it doesn't have content that remotely resembles a news story.
Finally, it is possible to examine numerous other webpages on the gulencharterschools.weebly.com that use phraseology very similar to that of the page for Syracuse Academy of Science, and that have very similar content. For example, a Google search of the following phrase in quotation marks which occurs on the plagiarized Syracuse Academy of Science page:
"are shown by the multiple affiliations, both past and present, of the following individuals"
shows that it appeared word-for-word on many other pages of the gulencharterschools.weebly.com website. That is because CASILIPS wrote these words, not haberyildizi.com .
We are not the only victims of fraudulent DMCA complaints; see this article for example:
"Scammers Now Trolling Indie Authors With Bogus DMCA Notices"
The Internet Archive/Wayback Machine shows 38 page captures for the http://gulencharterschools.weebly.com/syracuse-academy-of-science.html page, starting with September 5, 2010 up to February 19, 2017. The content was revised (mostly added to) several times, but the basic content can be seen in the September 5, 2010 page capture.
The Internet Archive/Wayback Machine also shows 43 page captures for the plagiarizing "news" site haberyildizi.com, starting with January 1, 2014 and ending at October 28, 2016:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150101000000*/http://www.haberyildizi.com/
Examination of the page captures in 2014 and 2015 shows that the site first had no content and then started showing a message in Turkish that can easily be translated with translate.google.com to read ""Our site is under construction ... Please come back soon ..."
If the site was under construction in 2015, how could it possibly have published this article in 2010?
Furthermore, Google search rankings are generally adjusted to avoid ranking plagiarized sites above original ones. Even as of this writing, a Google search of the text string in quotation marks "Syracuse Academy of Science Charter School is a publicly-funded charter school in Syracuse NY." still brings up the gulencharterschools.weebly.com page as the number one hit. The haberyildizi.com page does not even show unless you click on "If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included," and once it shows it is still ranked below gulencharterschools.weebly.com .
There is also the fact that other articles on haberyildizi.com are in Turkish, not English. So why is there this one piece in English? In addition, it doesn't have content that remotely resembles a news story.
Finally, it is possible to examine numerous other webpages on the gulencharterschools.weebly.com that use phraseology very similar to that of the page for Syracuse Academy of Science, and that have very similar content. For example, a Google search of the following phrase in quotation marks which occurs on the plagiarized Syracuse Academy of Science page:
"are shown by the multiple affiliations, both past and present, of the following individuals"
shows that it appeared word-for-word on many other pages of the gulencharterschools.weebly.com website. That is because CASILIPS wrote these words, not haberyildizi.com .
We are not the only victims of fraudulent DMCA complaints; see this article for example:
"Scammers Now Trolling Indie Authors With Bogus DMCA Notices"
Even after they were presented with the evidence that this is a flagrant case of DMCA abuse, Weebly has refused to restore the http://gulencharterschools.weebly.com website. The site is being migrated to https://sites.google.com/site/gulenmovementcharterschools/