[borisbadenov]

Recently I have discovered Russian amateur website called lens-club.ru which contains lots of tables and graphs from photozone.de. The creator of lens-club.ru, Sergey Borodin, also made English version of lens-club.ru called allphotolenses.com, which also contains many materials from photozone.de

 

Some links (actually there are lots of them):

 

http://lens-club.ru/news/item/c_320.html

http://lens-club.ru/news/item/c_200.html

http://lens-club.ru/news/item/c_435.html

http://lens-club.ru/lenses/item/c_1538.html

http://lens-club.ru/lenses/item/c_146.html

http://lens-club.ru/lenses/item/c_107.html

http://lens-club.ru/lenses/item/c_269.html

http://lens-club.ru/lenses/item/c_1999.html

http://lens-club.ru/lenses/item/c_196.html

 

According to photozone.de disclaimer "The copyright in this website is owned by Mr. Klaus Schroiff (the “copyright owner”). No part of parts hereof may be reproduced, distributed, republished, displayed, broadcast, hyperlinked or transmitted in any manner or by any means or stored in an information retrieval system without the prior written permission of the copyright owner provided that permission is granted to use and/or print the materials on this website for personal, non-commercial use only provided you do not modify the materials and that you retain all copyright and other proprietary notices, where applicable, contained in the materials."

 

I asked Klaus and he said he didn't authorize lens-club.ru to republish the materials. He sent a letter to lens-club.ru and asked to remove all photozone.de materials and hyperlinks from lens-club.ru but didn't receive any reply.

 

Guys, maybe we somehow could work this situation out and punish that Russian violator?

 

 

[mst]

Thanks for the hint, Boris. As you already mention, they were contacted by Klaus a while ago, but never found it necessary to answer or react in any other way.

They way he uses our material is clearly a violation of our copyright, since he does not simply link to or embed our graphs (which we'd still dislike), but actually copied all the data over to his own server.

Any idea how to approach the issue?

-- Markus

[borisbadenov]

Of course it not a 100% perfect idea of mine but for a start... I am not racist but the easiest approach could be to block all Russian IPs to make photozone.de unavailable for Russians. Of course it's kinda not fair because for sure not all the Russians are copyright violators but it definitely would stop the subsequent infringements. The Russians then could simply say "Thanks" to lens-club.ru and personally to Sergey Borodin for that...

 

Another approach could be like that. On their site they have links to photozone.de. Okay, let them stay, but when somebody enters photozone.de FROM lens-club.ru OR allphotolenses.com, you could display a special message for that person like, for example: UNFORTUNATELY, YOU HAVE COME FROM LENS-CLUB.RU - THE SITE WHICH VIOLATES OUR COPYRIGHT TERMS AND CONDITIONS. WE ARE SORRY BUT OUR SITE IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE FOR YOU NOW, and the IP of the visitor should be blacklisted................... Simple but effective I think..

[mst]

Well, to be honest, both approaches don't sound attractive to me. Because in both cases we'd block (and punish) our readers, not the copyright violators. The results would most likely be the opposite of the intention: instead of coming here, russian readers would navigate to lens-club.ru instead.

I'm afraid we'll have to check the available legal options if Sergey Borodin does not stop the copyright violations himself.

-- Markus

[Guest]

Of course it not a 100% perfect idea of mine but for a start... I am not racist but the easiest approach could be to block all Russian IPs to make photozone.de unavailable for Russians. Of course it's kinda not fair because for sure not all the Russians are copyright violators but it definitely would stop the subsequent infringements. The Russians then could simply say "Thanks" to lens-club.ru and personally to Sergey Borodin for that...

Now he is showing some graphs from review and translates some text parts.

In links above he clearly links to review source, so you can check out all graphs and read everything.

Many guys in Russia do not know English so such translation is useful for them.


If Photozone will block Russian IPs - some guy will just copy whole reviews & make some cash on ads - i don't see any gains for Photozone in it.



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I checked allphotolenses.com and was not able to find any Photozone material in 10 min.

 

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Markus, this site shows text ads via Yandex Direct service on pages with Photozone material.

([url=]http://direct.yandex.ru,[/url] look for english variant in bottom left)

This is hightly public & respected company that shall listen to your complaint unless letter will go to some lazy manager

I think they will listen and at least will force Sergey to remove ads from pages with your material.

In best case they will block ads on whole site until copyright issue is resolved.

 

Another way would be to find out hoster of offending site & complain to them with links to all material that should be removed.

But small hoster may just ignore you or Sergey may jump to another hosting (several times will make him think a bit).

 

Looking at news there is some punishment in Russia for copyright infringment, but successful court processes are started by local guys (music/cinema/software) or big companies like Microsoft or Adobe with their offices in Moscow.

If I were you I would not bother.

[admin]

Interestingly ... he is using google adsense ... let's try something ...

[Guest]

Interestingly ... he is using google adsense ... let's try something ...

I see only Yandex Direct ads (russian varian of adsense, see link to their site above)

But this may depend on viewer's country.


Also keep in mind that you may need to get some solid proof regarding copyright infringment for translated texts.

[admin]

Well, the copied charts and images are the really important part here. 

The Adsense ad is just below the search field at the top.

And he is violating Adsense terms & conditions by using copied images.

I just filed a violation report.

[borisbadenov]

I checked allphotolenses.com and was not able to find any Photozone material in 10 min.

 

Doroga, It could be easily found if you'll google photozone site:allphotolenses.com


 

You are right, it's not so easy to find the copyrighted material there because the volume of the stolen material is quite small at allphotolenses.com in comparision with lens-club.ru, nevertheless it's still there...

 

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I'm not sure if I should mention that but also there are many copyrighted materials from great Polish website lenstip.com (optyczne.pl) at lens-club.ru and allphotolenses.com. Mainly MTF charts of course.

[Klaus]

It could be easily found if you google photozone site:allphotolenses.com


 

Just a few examples:

 

As long as the review is properly cited and no charts are copied this is Ok.

They have copied very few charts (just one on the first search result page on google).

 

e.g. 43rumors has also our permission to use the images as long as they link properly.