I am a huge supporter of the SteemCleaners initiative, and believe that the work they do is crucial for Steemit to be a successful reputable mainstream blogging platform! This post illustrates the importance of the work that they are doing to stop users from posting copyrighted material without permission.
Someone submitted a copyright infringement claim against some of the content posted on Steemit today!
Normally this type of thing would get addressed behind the scenes and would not get brought to the community's attention, but a GitHub issue was opened, so it is now public knowledge: https://github.com/steemit/steemit.com/issues/525
Here is a quote from the user who submitted the claim:
"There are 30 instances of copyright infringement, 15 of which are completely stolen content (right down to the title of the article), and 14 where the client bought usage rights to the article from our site, but did not comply with the terms. We have two types of licenses for our customers: full rights, an exclusive license where the customer owns the content and can customize (including removing the author’s byline); the other is usage, a one-time rights license, where the author byline must be attached to the article. In the instances where Carlidos purchased usage rights, he posted the articles with his own byline."
Most importantly though, look at this:
"If we don’t hear back from you by the end of this week, we will have to take next steps to rectify the situation, such as filing a a DMCA complaint with Google."
This is really serious! If that occurred, it could cause a lot of damage to Steemit.com and the community!
Thankfully @ned has responded and is working to protect the community from the potential damage this user could have caused!
"We take copyright infringement very seriously. If you believe you have a valid DMCA claim. Please send all of the necessary details to contact@steemit.com and we will look into your claim as quickly as possible."
Let this serve as a warning to all Steemit users. If you are reusing content that you found elsewhere on the web, please make sure you are allowed to use it and you site your sources appropriately!
Unrelated to this post, @timcliff is a backup Steem witness.
If you like the work that @timcliff is doing, you can vote for him here :)
https://steemit.com/~witnesses