Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are You? So I may have told this story
Speaker 1: on tech stuff before, but if I had, it was
Speaker 1: years ago, because that's when it happened. So a friend
Speaker 1: of mine was in a job search and they were
Speaker 1: unhappy in their current work situation at the time. They
Speaker 1: wanted to find something with a better company that better
Speaker 1: utilized their skills and knowledge and didn't make them feel
Speaker 1: like crying at the end of every day, and so
Speaker 1: they started looking online for various opportunities. They used LinkedIn
Speaker 1: and some other tools to try and find something that
Speaker 1: was stable and appealing basics for a job search right well.
Speaker 1: Along that search, they encountered some scam artists and predators.
Speaker 1: So my friend would sometimes ask my opinion of some
Speaker 1: of the responses that they received. They would send me
Speaker 1: on a little bit of a hunt to find out
Speaker 1: is this a legitimate offer or is this company doing
Speaker 1: something shady and underhanded. They were worried that some of
Speaker 1: the responses they got were a bit too good to
Speaker 1: be true. So I looked into it, and often they
Speaker 1: were too good to be true. And I'm sure a
Speaker 1: lot of you out there are familiar with similar scams, right,
Speaker 1: where someone gets offered one position, when they go into
Speaker 1: interview for it, they are offered something totally different. Right.
Speaker 1: It's a bait and switch, where it's a different position
Speaker 1: with different pay. They're not going to get nearly the
Speaker 1: stuff that they had been promised or suggested through the
Speaker 1: whole job search situation. That sort of stuff, unfortunately, is
Speaker 1: terribly common and it's really crappy. So often when I
Speaker 1: would look into these offers that my friend was getting,
Speaker 1: I would find that they frequently linked to a website that,
Speaker 1: at least on a very casual surface glance, looks somewhat legitimate.
Speaker 1: But even just a cursory look at the site, especially
Speaker 1: clicking around a little bit to the different pages in
Speaker 1: the site, would reveal that the whole thing was just
Speaker 1: a facade. I remember one supposed I think it was
Speaker 1: a real estate company that was offering my friend an
Speaker 1: incredible starting position and salary. And when I went to
Speaker 1: the website, the website did look pretty slick, The office
Speaker 1: space looked really nice, the folks, and the photos looked
Speaker 1: really photogenic, and immediately I thought something was fishy. For
Speaker 1: one thing, like me, my friend is based in the
Speaker 1: metropolitan Atlanta area, and yet the building that I saw
Speaker 1: on the website didn't look like it was in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: even though there was an Atlanta address that was on
Speaker 1: the website. Now you could argue, well, maybe it's in
Speaker 1: a part of Atlanta I'm just not familiar with, or
Speaker 1: maybe this was a company that has offices in different
Speaker 1: cities and what I was really looking at was an
Speaker 1: HQ building in some other city or something. But I
Speaker 1: used the address that was listed on the site to
Speaker 1: look up the location online, you know, get a street
Speaker 1: view look at this supposed place, and not only did
Speaker 1: the building look totally different, there were no businesses matching
Speaker 1: the name of the one that was contacting my friend
Speaker 1: at that particular building location. I was able to find
Speaker 1: the businesses that were in that building, and none of
Speaker 1: them matched the thing that was sent to my friend.
Speaker 1: So then go back to the website to click around
Speaker 1: some more. I find that some of the links, like
Speaker 1: links to bios for the leadership team or whatever, led
Speaker 1: to unfinished pages. I just had stuff like lorum ipsum
Speaker 1: style gibberish in them. So the more I looked, the
Speaker 1: more it appeared to be just a hastily assembled trap
Speaker 1: designed to lure hopeful people into taking the bait. Now
Speaker 1: what the scam was, I don't know, Like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if it was going to be a bait and switch.
Speaker 1: I don't know, if it was really some other company
Speaker 1: that was just looking to get you know, cheap labor.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was like a phishing attempt
Speaker 1: to get my friend's personal information. That doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: What was clear was that there was something shady happening.
Speaker 1: The real clincher was when I did a reverse image
Speaker 1: search on some of the photos that were in the page,
Speaker 1: because some of the reverse images went to stock photography sites,
Speaker 1: but others linked to identical websites that had businesses with
Speaker 1: different names in different cities, but otherwise the website was identical,
Speaker 1: with the same language and everything, to the point where
Speaker 1: the same mistakes were showing up on some of these pages.
Speaker 1: And clearly this was just a scam that was being
Speaker 1: run over and over and over again in different locations.
Speaker 1: So I warned my friend, and I also got very,
Speaker 1: very very angry about the scam. Now, I hate scams
Speaker 1: and cons and deceit, but I really hate the ones
Speaker 1: that prey upon people who have the most to lose.
Speaker 1: If you're going to scam the billionaire out of a
Speaker 1: million dollars, I mean, what you're doing is wrong, but
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be sad for the billionaire. But if
Speaker 1: you're scamming people who are trying to make a positive
Speaker 1: change in their lives because they're currently in a bad situation,
Speaker 1: that's just the worst. Now, from the con artist viewpoint,
Speaker 1: I totally get it, because you want to target people
Speaker 1: who are already highly motivated to buy into whatever it
Speaker 1: is you're selling. But when you consider the people who
Speaker 1: are typically looking for a job or in a situation
Speaker 1: that is already pretty tough, and then on top of
Speaker 1: that you throw a scam at them, that just makes
Speaker 1: my blood boil. So why did I bother telling this story. Well,
Speaker 1: it's because there's a similar scam that I read about today,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know about it untill I saw an
Speaker 1: article by Kevin Purdy on Ours Technica. Y'all know I
Speaker 1: love Ours Technica. I don't have any connection to the website,
Speaker 1: but I love their work. And the article is titled
Speaker 1: fake AI law firms are sending fake DMCA threats to
Speaker 1: generate fake SEO games, which is a heck of a title.
Speaker 1: And yeah, this con game gets a bit convoluted. It
Speaker 1: starts to make me think of some of those films
Speaker 1: like that you would see, especially around the nineties and
Speaker 1: two thousands, of like these scams that would be scams
Speaker 1: on top of scams on top of scams, where following
Speaker 1: it starts to get a little challenging. It's similar in
Speaker 1: that way. So let's give you a little scenario that's
Speaker 1: kind of an analogous to what we're talking about. Imagine
Speaker 1: that one day you go out and you check your
Speaker 1: mail because sometimes you still get stuff in the mail,
Speaker 1: and you find out there's a notice that's included in
Speaker 1: your mail that day, and the notice claims that you
Speaker 1: are under investigation for a supposed crime that you have
Speaker 1: committed against a person you have never heard of. What's
Speaker 1: even more strange is that this notice is coming from
Speaker 1: a police department that has a weird name. It doesn't
Speaker 1: match the one that's actually in your area. It seems
Speaker 1: kind of odd, so you decide, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: going to look into this, and you look up that
Speaker 1: police department and you find out there's no police force
Speaker 1: in your city that has that name. Then you look
Speaker 1: and you find out there's not any person by the
Speaker 1: name of the supposed victim that you can find anyway.
Speaker 1: You would think that was really strange, right. That's kind
Speaker 1: of how the scam we're going to talk about worked,
Speaker 1: and not that it worked. It didn't work because the
Speaker 1: person they sent it to was far too smart for this.
Speaker 1: But we'll also talk about why the scam exists in
Speaker 1: the first place later on in the show, because it
Speaker 1: wasn't just to you know, phish information or get money.
Speaker 1: In fact, that wasn't the key to it at all.
Speaker 1: The article covers the story of a journalist named Ernie Smith,
Speaker 1: so not the musician or producer or anything. It's the
Speaker 1: journalist Ernie Smith, and Smith author is a newsletter called Tedium,
Speaker 1: which is a nice little fun way of piggybacking on medium,
Speaker 1: I guess, or at least like kind of slyly acknowledging
Speaker 1: medium with your own. I gotta admit, that's exactly the
Speaker 1: sort of name I would have picked if I were
Speaker 1: writing a newsletter I will say that, based upon what
Speaker 1: I've seen of the newsletter, which I've just subscribed to it,
Speaker 1: because again I was unfamiliar with Smith's work until I
Speaker 1: read this article, I will say that, based upon what
Speaker 1: I've seen, it's well worth checking out. He does cover technology,
Speaker 1: but he also has articles on lots of other stuff,
Speaker 1: like Neapolitan ice cream and its role in the space industry.
Speaker 1: It seems like a cool dude. So anyway, Smith will
Speaker 1: often use images in his newsletter, which is pretty standard online,
Speaker 1: and he makes sure to source those images appropriately and
Speaker 1: then to credit those sources, as is very much not
Speaker 1: standard online. I don't have to tell y'all that tons
Speaker 1: of folks out there on the web will just grab
Speaker 1: whatever images they can just doing an image search. They
Speaker 1: won't even spare a second thought about it. They'll PLoP
Speaker 1: it into their own stuff. So technically, this is what
Speaker 1: we would call stealing, and it's been explained to me
Speaker 1: a society only frowns upon it. So for that reason,
Speaker 1: we've got things like stock photography databases, and you can
Speaker 1: access these typically you access them for a fee, and
Speaker 1: then you can get images that you can include with
Speaker 1: all the permissions that you need to do so, the
Speaker 1: most rule abiding creators out there will go to that
Speaker 1: kind of trouble. Everybody else steals. Now, a lot of
Speaker 1: people will steal until they get a DMCA notice, and
Speaker 1: that scares the stealing right out of them. Now, the
Speaker 1: DMCA is the good old Digital Millennium Copyright Act of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight here in the United States, and here
Speaker 1: in the US copyright law has gone through quite a
Speaker 1: few revisions over its history. Now we can just oversimplify
Speaker 1: that whole history by saying that typically large media companies
Speaker 1: like Disney have lobbied big time, really again and again
Speaker 1: in order to extend copyright protections for longer and longer periods,
Speaker 1: and this lets them maintain an exclusive grip on certain
Speaker 1: ip You probably have heard that the Steamboat Willy version
Speaker 1: of Mickey Mouse is now in public domain. That's true.
Speaker 1: It's the only version of Mickey Mouse that's currently in
Speaker 1: public domain. Other versions will enter into public domain as
Speaker 1: time goes on. But it doesn't mean that every version
Speaker 1: of Mickey Mouse is in public domain. And the reason
Speaker 1: it took so long to get to the point where
Speaker 1: the Steamboat Willi version would enter public domain is because
Speaker 1: companies like Disney would lobby very hard to get legislation
Speaker 1: passed to extend copyright protection beyond what it was running
Speaker 1: up against. Well, eventually we kind of hit the limit
Speaker 1: on that and everyone said, you know what, I think
Speaker 1: we pushed this as far as we can and so
Speaker 1: now we're not seeing that happen quite as much. Now.
Speaker 1: A lot more stuff has been added into copyright law
Speaker 1: besides just making it longer, and that particularly became true
Speaker 1: upon the dawn of the World Wide Web. So remember
Speaker 1: DMC gets passed in nineteen ninety eight. That's when the
Speaker 1: Web was maturing. It had yet to go through the
Speaker 1: Dot Com crash, but like it was definitely a big factor.
Speaker 1: So the DMCA introduced quite a few new concepts into
Speaker 1: copyright law. So, for example, there's the paradoxical nature of
Speaker 1: digital rights management or DRM. So with US copyright law,
Speaker 1: we have this concept of fair use. There are exemptions
Speaker 1: of copyright in which it is fair to use copyrighted
Speaker 1: material that does not belong to you, but they are
Speaker 1: very specific and it only comes up when you are
Speaker 1: actually defending yourself in a court case. It's not something
Speaker 1: you can proactively put out there anyway. One of the
Speaker 1: concepts of fair use. Is that it is totally legal
Speaker 1: for someone to purchase a copy of something like an
Speaker 1: album or a piece of software or whatever it might be,
Speaker 1: is totally legal to make a copy of that thing
Speaker 1: for the purposes of a personal back That's completely within
Speaker 1: the rights of citizens, which seems pretty straightforward. But certain
Speaker 1: companies will use DRM protections that make it difficult or
Speaker 1: impossible to make a copy of their stuff unless you
Speaker 1: first strip out the DRM. But if you were to
Speaker 1: strip out the DRM, it makes the DRM moot. So
Speaker 1: the DMCA says, hey, it's illegal to strip out DRM.
Speaker 1: If in fact there is DRM on the stuff you buy.
Speaker 1: That means that, yeah, it's legal for you to make
Speaker 1: a backup copy. However, DRM is preventing you from making
Speaker 1: a copy at all, and it is illegal to remove
Speaker 1: the DRM. So by extension, you're legally allowed to make
Speaker 1: a copy, but technically you can't because laws are fun
Speaker 1: and fair and it makes sense, all right, I'm getting
Speaker 1: way off track here. So the DMCA also includes processes
Speaker 1: for sending takedown notices, and this, again on the high level,
Speaker 1: is pretty straightforward, at least if you assume that the
Speaker 1: party that sending the takedown notice actually has the authority
Speaker 1: to do it. So basically, it goes like this. Let's
Speaker 1: say that you are the creator of some kind of content.
Speaker 1: Might be a photograph, that might be music, it might
Speaker 1: be writing, whatever it is. You hold the copyright for
Speaker 1: this content, or maybe you don't. Maybe you didn't actually
Speaker 1: copyright it, you just created it. In fact, a copyright
Speaker 1: is not necessarily required to send to a DMCA takedown notice. Now,
Speaker 1: let's say that you find that someone else has made
Speaker 1: use of your content without your permission. You have the
Speaker 1: right to process a takedown notice against that someone else.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a cease and desist letter, and
Speaker 1: it indicates that if someone else doesn't take down your material,
Speaker 1: you could pursue a legal claim against them. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of like the first step toward initiating a more
Speaker 1: serious legal action against someone perpetrating copyright infringement. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: a lot, and there's a bit more to it, but
Speaker 1: we'll get more that after we come back from taking
Speaker 1: a break to thank our sponsors. Okay, we're back. I
Speaker 1: just described before the break the process of sending a
Speaker 1: DMCA takedown notice to someone who's using material that does
Speaker 1: not technically belong to them. So a DMCA notice has
Speaker 1: several factors that the content creator or the creator's agent,
Speaker 1: right whomever it is that's pursuing this DMCA takedown, they
Speaker 1: have things that they need to include in their takedown
Speaker 1: notice in order for it to actually be valid under
Speaker 1: copyright law. You can't just send someone a handwritten note
Speaker 1: on a bar napkin that says, hey, take down that picture.
Speaker 1: You don't own it. I do. That's not enough. So
Speaker 1: if the takedown notice is missing some of these elements,
Speaker 1: then the entity that receives the notice can just refuse
Speaker 1: it or not pay attention because the notice itself didn't
Speaker 1: follow the law in the first place. It has to
Speaker 1: follow the rules in order to apply. And typically when
Speaker 1: we are talking about this, we're not actually talking about
Speaker 1: the copyright holder sending a DMCA takedown directly to the
Speaker 1: content creator that used that material. Instead, you're talking about
Speaker 1: a notice that is sent to some sort of service
Speaker 1: provider that is responsible for giving the content creator a platform.
Speaker 1: This could be any kind of company, from an Internet
Speaker 1: service provider to a web hosting service to a platform
Speaker 1: like YouTube, and then the service acts as a kind
Speaker 1: of liaison between the injured party, the copyright holder, and
Speaker 1: whomever made inappropriate use of that material. This is why
Speaker 1: platforms like YouTube are pretty lickety split when it comes
Speaker 1: to responding to DMCA takedown notices. YouTube has a history
Speaker 1: of acting very quickly in this regard because YouTube slash
Speaker 1: Google slash alphabet doesn't want to be held legally accountable
Speaker 1: for allowing copyright infringement on the platform. This dates back
Speaker 1: to the very early days of YouTube, and YouTube doesn't
Speaker 1: exactly have the desire or the ability to spend the
Speaker 1: money in time it would take to investigate every single
Speaker 1: DMCA claim to make sure that it's a legitimate claim.
Speaker 1: So often you will hear stories from YouTube creators who say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got a DMCA takedown notice, but the company that
Speaker 1: issued it doesn't even own the material that I used. Like,
Speaker 1: there's some crazy stories out there, and in fact, a
Speaker 1: lot of people have weaponized DMCA takedown notices in an
Speaker 1: effort to silence channels they don't like. It's pretty nasty
Speaker 1: out there, and there are ways to appeal the whole situation,
Speaker 1: but it's time consuming and there's no guarantee that you're
Speaker 1: going to actually get the results you want, and that's
Speaker 1: really another tangent. It's another episode for another day. Now.
Speaker 1: Most of the time the people who are sending a
Speaker 1: DMCA notice want one of two things, or possibly both
Speaker 1: of those things. Most of the time they want the
Speaker 1: someone else to just take down the material that isn't theirs,
Speaker 1: to remove it from whatever it is, whether it's a
Speaker 1: video or a website or whatever. Sometimes they also want
Speaker 1: to be compensated for their works use in someone else's stuff.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they want both of these things. They want to
Speaker 1: be paid and they want the material gone. But that's
Speaker 1: not exactly what was happening with Ernie Smith's case. So
Speaker 1: Smith received a DMCA notice regarding a photo that he
Speaker 1: used of a keyfob, or as the photo description on
Speaker 1: unsplash claims, a quote close up of a cell phone
Speaker 1: on a car dashboard end quote. So this was an
Speaker 1: image that Smith was using in connection with the story
Speaker 1: he was relaying about a somewhat odd ride he had
Speaker 1: while using a ride hailing service unsplash just in case
Speaker 1: you're not familiar, because I wasn't. It's a stock photography
Speaker 1: site and technically getty Image owns it. Getty Image purchased
Speaker 1: on splash I think back in twenty twenty one, if
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken. So Getty is a huge name in
Speaker 1: photography in general, stock photography in particular. Getting your images
Speaker 1: from Getty typically requires a substantial subscription fee, particularly if
Speaker 1: you want to be able to use an image in perpetuity.
Speaker 1: Most folks do want to be able to use an
Speaker 1: image in perpetuity. It means that you get to use
Speaker 1: it forever and ever for whatever purpose you want, because otherwise,
Speaker 1: if you're not having the agreement keep it in perpetuity,
Speaker 1: it means that you have agreed to a limited amount
Speaker 1: of time where you are allowed to use that image,
Speaker 1: and then once that time is up, you would need
Speaker 1: to go in and remove the image from whatever was inside.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you, if you're running a website or
Speaker 1: a blog, or a video series or whatever, you do
Speaker 1: not want to have to keep up with a complicated
Speaker 1: database of image rights and then regularly remove pictures from
Speaker 1: your various works. That's a huge hassle. You're just asking
Speaker 1: to miss something and leave yourself liable for legal action
Speaker 1: down the line simply because it got so complicated and
Speaker 1: convoluted that you overlooked one of those images. So most
Speaker 1: people go with the in perpetuity option. But unsplash is
Speaker 1: a stock photography site that licenses use of images for free.
Speaker 1: You are allowed to make use of those images even
Speaker 1: for commercial purposes. Like if you have a site that's
Speaker 1: selling something, you can still use images on unsplash. Like
Speaker 1: a lot of licenses say hey, you can use this
Speaker 1: as long as it's not for commercial purposes, Unsplash you're
Speaker 1: allowed to and you can use those images in just
Speaker 1: about any way you want. There is an exception I'll
Speaker 1: talk about in a second. You don't even have to
Speaker 1: credit the photographer while you're doing so. You can just
Speaker 1: use it unattributed. And this is kind of like what
Speaker 1: people were doing on the web in general, but in
Speaker 1: this case it's actually okay because it's covered by the license.
Speaker 1: It's a licensed use. The only thing you're not allowed
Speaker 1: to do is you cannot take images from unsplash and
Speaker 1: then sell those images to other people. That would be
Speaker 1: against the policy. You can use them again for commercial purposes,
Speaker 1: like if your newsletter is a paid newsletter, that's fine.
Speaker 1: You just can't troll through unsplashed, download a ton of
Speaker 1: photos and then sell those pictures somewhere else. That's against
Speaker 1: the rules. So Smith was following the rules. He had
Speaker 1: pulled an image from a source that allows for that
Speaker 1: kind of use. So imagine his surprise when he gets
Speaker 1: a DMCA notice about this very image. Now, I want
Speaker 1: to be clear, something like this could potentially happen, and
Speaker 1: it could be on the up and up. It could
Speaker 1: be possible that some photographer took a picture, someone else
Speaker 1: grabbed that picture, and they submitted it to unsplash, but
Speaker 1: they didn't do it with the photographer's permission. It's possible
Speaker 1: that photographer might find out that their image is now
Speaker 1: being used somewhere else and it wasn't licensed from them,
Speaker 1: and maybe they're using some sort of detection or search
Speaker 1: algorithm that's pulling up instances of that image. But typically
Speaker 1: that photographer would then need to go through by sending
Speaker 1: a notice to unsplash directly in order to get the
Speaker 1: image taken down from unsplash, because going after folks who
Speaker 1: have used the image from unsplash would be kind of
Speaker 1: like treating the symptom but not the disease, because as
Speaker 1: long as that image would stay on unsplash while other
Speaker 1: folks could be making use of it. So partly you
Speaker 1: would say, well, DMCA takedown notice should really go to
Speaker 1: the photography site, not to Ernie Smith. So Smith gets
Speaker 1: this notice and immediately he's somewhat skeptical of it, as
Speaker 1: he should be. And the notice threatened to quote unquote
Speaker 1: activate a case and a reference to section of the
Speaker 1: DMCA called DMCA Section five twelve s. And you might say, well,
Speaker 1: what the heck is that. Well, that section of the
Speaker 1: DMCA is titled Limitations on Liability relating to Material Online,
Speaker 1: And just from that title, if you just critically break
Speaker 1: down that title, it should make your eyebrows go up,
Speaker 1: because it's not the sort of title that sounds like
Speaker 1: it would give a copyright claimant a lot of leverage.
Speaker 1: In fact, the phrase limitations on liability seem to indicate
Speaker 1: that this is something else entirely. This is something that
Speaker 1: applies to a party that is potentially on the other
Speaker 1: side of this issue. They have limitations on how they
Speaker 1: are liable. In fact, if you really read through the
Speaker 1: section of the DMCA, and I did, I don't recommend it.
Speaker 1: It's not good reading. But if you did read through it,
Speaker 1: it would be hard for you to figure out a
Speaker 1: way where that section has any application to Smith, because
Speaker 1: really it's more about how system providers. Again, things like
Speaker 1: ISPs or YouTube or whatever would not be held liable
Speaker 1: for monetary relief or quote injunctive or other equitable relief
Speaker 1: end quote for the actions someone takes using their service.
Speaker 1: In other words, the idea is that the platform isn't
Speaker 1: held responsible for the actions of folks who are using
Speaker 1: that platform to transmit material that isn't theirs. This is
Speaker 1: like the concept of safe harbor, right that if you
Speaker 1: operate a service and someone uses your service to do
Speaker 1: something illegal, you didn't do the illegal thing. Your service
Speaker 1: might have facilitated it, but you didn't do it. You
Speaker 1: didn't commit the crime. Someone committed the crime using your services,
Speaker 1: and that that person should be held responsible for the
Speaker 1: criminal act, not you. So the section is called limited
Speaker 1: liability because there are cases where you can be held
Speaker 1: to account, right Like, it's not like you get out
Speaker 1: of jail free. It's not that these platforms have no
Speaker 1: responsibilities to answer to. If the service were to take
Speaker 1: an active role in copyright infringement itself in some way,
Speaker 1: then it would be liable. There are other ways as well,
Speaker 1: But again, if we assume the provider is just doing
Speaker 1: the job a facilitator. Then generally speaking, they're kind of
Speaker 1: off the hook from a legal sense. But in other words,
Speaker 1: this section doesn't really apply if you're trying to intimidate
Speaker 1: somebody with a DMCA notice, right, Like, why would you
Speaker 1: cite that part of the DMCA. It doesn't even carry
Speaker 1: with it any like threat of legal action or consequences.
Speaker 1: But that was not the only weird bit about the
Speaker 1: takedown notice. The really weird thing, at least in my mind,
Speaker 1: is the notice said it wouldn't matter if Ernie Smith
Speaker 1: removed this picture or not from the newsletter. Removing the
Speaker 1: picture would not stop the hurt train that was barreling
Speaker 1: down the tracks towards Smith. In fact, the only way
Speaker 1: to avert calamity would be to credit the image by
Speaker 1: including a link that would go to a site called
Speaker 1: tech for Gods. And that's tech the numeral for gods.
Speaker 1: That seems weird, right that the real response that the
Speaker 1: takedown was seeking was just a link to the site
Speaker 1: that's supposed le generated the image in the first place.
Speaker 1: You think they'd be asking Ernie Smith to take it down,
Speaker 1: or asking him for money or maybe a licensing fee
Speaker 1: something like that. But no, and it was weird, and
Speaker 1: it prompted a bit of an investigation similar to what
Speaker 1: I talked about when my friend told me they thought
Speaker 1: something hinky was up with the company website that they
Speaker 1: shared with me, and some of the same issues I
Speaker 1: found back in those days, or variants of those issues,
Speaker 1: had emerged upon a casual investigation into the website of
Speaker 1: this supposed law firm. First, the alleged law firm's name
Speaker 1: was Commonwealth Legal, but the HQ that the website listed
Speaker 1: the actual physical address for the company was supposedly in Arizona.
Speaker 1: Now that's already a huge red flag. Here's why. The
Speaker 1: United States has only four states in it that are commonwealths.
Speaker 1: Those four states are Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Massachusetts. You
Speaker 1: will notice that Arizona is not on that list. So
Speaker 1: there's no reason why a law firm in Arizona would
Speaker 1: be called Commonwealth Legal. And in fact, the four states
Speaker 1: I mentioned, for those of you not familiar with US geography,
Speaker 1: they're all in the eastern half of the continental United States.
Speaker 1: Arizona is way out west. You would think, like territorial
Speaker 1: legal would make more sense to talk about territories rather
Speaker 1: than commonwealths. But no, so the name itself already was like,
Speaker 1: why would you call your law firm that in a
Speaker 1: state that is really far away from any states that
Speaker 1: are known as commonwealths. So there are historical reasons for
Speaker 1: the whole commonwealth versus state thing. But even though that's
Speaker 1: really fascinating, I am sensitive to the fact that I've
Speaker 1: tangented about as much as any reasonable person would tolerate already,
Speaker 1: so I will not go down that fun rabbit trail.
Speaker 1: We'll get back to the hinky nature of this takedown notice.
Speaker 1: So the name of the law firm is already suspect.
Speaker 1: The website for the law firm claimed that the founders
Speaker 1: established the company in twenty eighteen. However, looking into the
Speaker 1: website you would find that it had a registration date
Speaker 1: of March of this year. Also, it was registered in Canada,
Speaker 1: an odd thing for a law firm located out of Arizona.
Speaker 1: The images of the site of the supposed lawyers in
Speaker 1: the firm included ones that didn't look totally natural. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, there were some visual cues that perhaps
Speaker 1: some of these images were computer generated or AI generated,
Speaker 1: and in fact, according to the ours Technica article. A
Speaker 1: company called Reality Defender looked into the matter and said
Speaker 1: every single image of a person on that website appeared
Speaker 1: to have been AI generated. Similarly, the lawyer bios were
Speaker 1: all over the place. Some of them were listed as
Speaker 1: having unlikely specialties, so like, you can be a copyright lawyer.
Speaker 1: A friend of mine is a former patent lawyer. These
Speaker 1: are real things, So seeing copyright lawyer on a site
Speaker 1: like this that would seem to give legitimacy. However, some
Speaker 1: of those lawyers were listed as being like both a
Speaker 1: copyright lawyer as well as an expert in criminal law.
Speaker 1: Those are just two very different branches of law, and
Speaker 1: if you're specializing, it means you kind of you know,
Speaker 1: have to focus on a specific branch, not two unrelated
Speaker 1: branches of the law. So it seemed like the biographies
Speaker 1: were actually meant to send a really intimidating message like
Speaker 1: you got to do what we say, or you're going
Speaker 1: to be in deep trouble, mister Smith. So again another
Speaker 1: red flag. We're not done with the red flags yet,
Speaker 1: but we do need to take another quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsors. We'll be right back. So we're going
Speaker 1: through some of the red flags that were on this
Speaker 1: website that kind of indicated that whatever this was, it
Speaker 1: was not an act actual DMCA takedown notice, at least
Speaker 1: not a legitimate one. The website for this supposed law
Speaker 1: firm also states that the company is on the fourth
Speaker 1: floor of a building in Arizona, and again it lists
Speaker 1: the address. So Ernie Smith did what I did when
Speaker 1: I was investigating this supposed real estate company that my
Speaker 1: friend had me look into when they thought that maybe
Speaker 1: they were getting a job offer. So Ernie Smith checked
Speaker 1: Google street View to see what actually is there at
Speaker 1: that physical address. When he did this, he found a small,
Speaker 1: single story building with a banner outside of it that
Speaker 1: said insurance. So if this building had a fourth floor,
Speaker 1: it would have to be underground. Get another strike against
Speaker 1: this law firm for being a real thing. So we
Speaker 1: have all the earmarks of a scam. You've got a
Speaker 1: note that carries a threatening implication that this is your
Speaker 1: way of motivating a target to do whatever it is
Speaker 1: you want them to do. You threaten them, you engage
Speaker 1: their fear, They stress out, and they hurdly do whatever
Speaker 1: it is that you're trying to get to do. You
Speaker 1: also have a website that, at least on casual glance,
Speaker 1: seems to indicate that you mean business and you've got
Speaker 1: the legal firepower to make your target pay for failing
Speaker 1: to comply that your threats have teeth to them. And
Speaker 1: the request itself is so darn painless. You just have
Speaker 1: to include that little load link back to tech for
Speaker 1: Gods and all this goes away. This might raise a
Speaker 1: question in your minds. It did for mind, which is
Speaker 1: what the heck is tech for Gods? So I decided
Speaker 1: I'd check it out. It's a site that's run by
Speaker 1: a guy named Daniel Bartzak, who's bio on the site
Speaker 1: says is a home automation expert, computer programmer, and blogger.
Speaker 1: The site has got articles on it with like tips
Speaker 1: and tricks for tech stuff, some reviews for certain products,
Speaker 1: some DIY projects, that kind of thing. Like there are
Speaker 1: articles if when I check today, that include stuff like
Speaker 1: how much does a smart mirror cost? Or how to
Speaker 1: clean a smart toilet for hygienic blome. So what's the
Speaker 1: goal here, right? Why are these links the big part
Speaker 1: of the whole threatening DMCA action? And did Bartzak have
Speaker 1: anything to do with it? Well, let me answer the
Speaker 1: second question. First, now you might think that perhaps there's
Speaker 1: something to this and that Bartzak might have some involvement.
Speaker 1: If you look at Tech for Gods and you scroll
Speaker 1: all the way to the bottom, there is a notice
Speaker 1: at the very bottom of the website that says, quote
Speaker 1: all right reserved unless stated explicitly, Any graphic can be
Speaker 1: used in your own content as long as link is
Speaker 1: included back to this website end quote. So here's precedent, right, Like,
Speaker 1: the site administrator is asking that sites that uses graphics
Speaker 1: link back to his site, And if you dig around
Speaker 1: on his site you can also see some other things
Speaker 1: that are interesting that might make you think, oh, maybe
Speaker 1: this is someone who's using some questionable means to pressure
Speaker 1: someone to link back to their site. It's not a
Speaker 1: guarantee and it's not a you know, like catching someone
Speaker 1: red handed, but it just starts raising questions. For example,
Speaker 1: he makes use of quote unquote AI writing assistance. Now
Speaker 1: that actually makes sense to me because he puts out
Speaker 1: a lot of content and it would be very difficult
Speaker 1: to do that without the help of someone or something else.
Speaker 1: He does say that every piece goes through a rigorous
Speaker 1: proofreading and editing process before it's published. So while the
Speaker 1: writing might be AI generated, supposedly it has gone through
Speaker 1: an editing you know, pass or two before being published.
Speaker 1: And according to Bartzak, he didn't take or own the
Speaker 1: image in question, the one that prompted the whole DMCA
Speaker 1: takedown in the first place, nor did he direct this
Speaker 1: supposed law firm to go after Smith. What he did
Speaker 1: do was he paid a service to buy backlinks to
Speaker 1: his website tech for gods. So backlinks are just buying
Speaker 1: links so that other websites will link to your page.
Speaker 1: And you might say, well why do that. Here's why.
Speaker 1: When it comes to ranking in searches, one of the
Speaker 1: many components that determines where your site will pop up
Speaker 1: within search results is the number and quality of links
Speaker 1: that are going to your site. So if you launch
Speaker 1: a website and there are these really big, reputable sites
Speaker 1: out there that link to you, that's a huge boost
Speaker 1: to your credibility and thus to your search rankings. Right Like,
Speaker 1: if lots of reputable sites say that you know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about, then sites like Google are going to say, well,
Speaker 1: this person knows what they're talking about. Maybe you've got
Speaker 1: some esteemed journalists who link to your work. That's going
Speaker 1: to be great news from a search engine optimization standpoint,
Speaker 1: And that's really what this all comes down to, search
Speaker 1: engine optimization, making sure you rank high enough in search
Speaker 1: that people see your stuff. We all know that if
Speaker 1: it's below the fold, like, if it's below the point
Speaker 1: where you would have to start scrolling down the list
Speaker 1: of search results, a lot of folks aren't even going
Speaker 1: to bother going that far. They certainly won't bother going
Speaker 1: beyond the first page, and the very few who do
Speaker 1: aren't going to go beyond page two, right, Like, that's
Speaker 1: just general wisdom. There's very few people who will bother
Speaker 1: diving deep, deep, deep into search results to try and
Speaker 1: find a link that works for them. So you need
Speaker 1: to rank high if you're going to be getting any
Speaker 1: real traffic coming from search engines. Boy howdy, it's hard
Speaker 1: to get those links, right. It's hard to get these
Speaker 1: reputable sites to link to you. Like, you really need
Speaker 1: to put out great content, and it has to be
Speaker 1: stuff that people would want to link to. You have
Speaker 1: to be discoverable in the first place. This can lead
Speaker 1: to a catch twenty two situation, right because you can't
Speaker 1: get discovered until you get more sites linking to you,
Speaker 1: but more sites aren't going to link to you because
Speaker 1: they haven't discovered you yet. That's a really frustrating experience
Speaker 1: to be in. So what do you do well, Maybe
Speaker 1: you purchase back links. Maybe you hire a company that
Speaker 1: will make sure that these links go up on different
Speaker 1: websites that link back to your site and thus boost
Speaker 1: your search ranking. Maybe you employ the services of a
Speaker 1: company that might use some underhanded tricks to get those
Speaker 1: back links in place, by tricking people into including links,
Speaker 1: because that works just as well as the legitimate link does.
Speaker 1: Google doesn't know if a link to a website is
Speaker 1: there because the person running the original linking site really
Speaker 1: likes the linked content, or it's because they had been
Speaker 1: intimidated into including a link to that content in order
Speaker 1: to avoid a lawsuit. Google does know. Google just sees
Speaker 1: the link, which, in Google's eyes, is like the linking
Speaker 1: site is validating the linked site. Site A is saying, hey,
Speaker 1: this is worth seeing, even if that link is really
Speaker 1: Site A saying hey, I don't want to get sued
Speaker 1: by site B, and they said that I needed to
Speaker 1: do this link in order to avoid a d takedown.
Speaker 1: It's sneaky, it's unethical, and again I don't necessarily think
Speaker 1: this actually links back to Bartzak directly. He was likely
Speaker 1: not aware of how the company he was using to
Speaker 1: get those backlinks was actually going to go about doing it.
Speaker 1: It does strike me as being similar to those companies
Speaker 1: that would boost follower accounts on social media platforms. You
Speaker 1: might remember back when that was a thing. You would have,
Speaker 1: like a would be influencer who would then pay a
Speaker 1: company so the company would link like hundreds or even
Speaker 1: thousands of fake or low quality social media accounts to
Speaker 1: follow the influencer and thus boost their follower numbers, which
Speaker 1: makes the influencer appear more attractive to brands that want
Speaker 1: to partner with them. This is pretty much the same
Speaker 1: sort of thing we're seeing here, but with backlinks instead
Speaker 1: of followers, and I get it. I understand the motivation
Speaker 1: because it is hard out there. Getting discovered is really hard.
Speaker 1: This podcast would probably have a fraction of the number
Speaker 1: of listeners I get had I launched it just the
Speaker 1: past few years. But when we started tech Stuff back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, the podcast space was way
Speaker 1: less crowded. Most people didn't even know what a podcast was,
Speaker 1: and hardly anyone had found a way to monetize it,
Speaker 1: so it really wasn't a business yet. So I had
Speaker 1: an advantage right when I launched tech stuff because it
Speaker 1: was not that big of a crowded field. And today
Speaker 1: it's far more difficult to get noticed. Particularly, it's hard
Speaker 1: to get noticed because you've got people who are already
Speaker 1: famous from some other form of media who are wading
Speaker 1: into the podcast space. Right. You've got actors and writers
Speaker 1: and like again, influencers, people who have already made a
Speaker 1: name for themselves and they're like, well, heck, let's do
Speaker 1: a podcast too, which I get. There's no shade on them.
Speaker 1: It just means that it does get harder for those
Speaker 1: normal schlubs like me who aren't big, famous celebrities to
Speaker 1: stand out in that field. So I do understand the
Speaker 1: motivation here, because even if you do all the work,
Speaker 1: and even if you do that work really well and
Speaker 1: you put out great stuff, there is no guarantee anyone
Speaker 1: will find out about it, and that is tragic. So
Speaker 1: the temptation to take shortcuts or to find ways to
Speaker 1: boost visibility is extremely high. Now, to be clear, there
Speaker 1: are ways to boost visibility that aren't underhanded or shady.
Speaker 1: For example, reaching out to other podcasters and guesting on
Speaker 1: their show, or having them guests on your show. Things
Speaker 1: like that. These are generally pretty common and accepted ways
Speaker 1: to boost visibility. They don't come with deceit, but they
Speaker 1: do require a lot of work, and honestly, you only
Speaker 1: have so many hours in a day or so much
Speaker 1: energy to spare. Sometimes that work is just too much
Speaker 1: on top of already making the thing that you want
Speaker 1: to make. So I do sympathize with folks who want
Speaker 1: to find a way to offload this effort so that
Speaker 1: they can focus on the stuff they actually wanted to
Speaker 1: do in the first place. I one hundred percent get it,
Speaker 1: and goodness knows, I'm in a fortunate position. I am
Speaker 1: a podcaster at a big media company where we have
Speaker 1: entire departments dedicated to stuff like sales and marketing. I
Speaker 1: couldn't do all that on my own, certainly. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: thought I would talk about this because it does play
Speaker 1: into the things I do find irritating about people in general.
Speaker 1: You know, that desire to achieve a goal through trickery
Speaker 1: and deceit, And it's worse now. Right back when I
Speaker 1: was helping my friend. I was looking at things like
Speaker 1: stock photography. I was looking at stuff that could be
Speaker 1: traced to other sites. In the world of AI generated
Speaker 1: images and AI generated content. Now you're far more likely
Speaker 1: to come across a website that has unique images because
Speaker 1: they were AI generated, And you're less likely to come
Speaker 1: across unfinished web pages because someone didn't take the effort
Speaker 1: to write something out. They could just have a content
Speaker 1: generating AI create that material. So it is harder now
Speaker 1: to suss out the scams from the legit sites. It's
Speaker 1: really unfortunate. I do recommend if you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about this story, definitely check out that Ours Technica
Speaker 1: article by Kevin Purdy again, it's titled fake AI law
Speaker 1: firms are sending fake DMCA threats to generate fake SEO gains.
Speaker 1: And also make sure you check out Ernie Smith and
Speaker 1: his newsletter Tedium. Smith comes across to me as a
Speaker 1: very smart and very funny journalist. I hope you are
Speaker 1: all well and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows,