Who would have thought. The whole Scouta team is scattered around the world, yet one city suffers a power outage, and it can take down Scouta.
So, please bare with us, we’re working with our hosting provider to restore the site, but as you can imagine, with so many people and services effected it might take a little longer than normal.
As you might expect, there’s a Scouta group on facebook. If you are on facebook, drop by and join in. I’m about to start a discussion there about the features we could put into a Scouta app for facebook. See you over there.
We received a DMCA takedown notice yesterday which is a first for us here at scouta.com. And it is a beauty.
Web Sherriff acting for the White Stripes sent us a DMCA takedown notice (asking us to remove content or links) for a YouTube video for the White Stripes’ Song Icky Thump which has been placed on YouTube by Warner Bros Records (the White Stripe’s label).
There’s a strange copyright enforcement loop here and I’m sure you can see it:
Mad, isn’t it. One arm adds something to YouTube and positively encourages sharing and the other arm issues takedown notices for sharing.
It must be a mixup or confusion or overzealous robot, surely.
Anyway, in the meantime we’ve removed the link to YouTube (that’s just sensible when dealing with the DMCA) pending and explanation from WebSherriff. There’s a link to this post instead on that scouta fave url.
I propose we call this kind of two-armed bumble an Icky Thump.
We’ll let you know what happens, and I’m sure we’ll have that item back in Scouta shortly.
More on this in an excellent article at TechCrunch.
[Update: there’s now a Scouta Group to hold media around this story. And Richard discusses the issue with Cameron Reilly on the G’Day World Podcast #259]