Dispute Between Ammoland and TCJ
BY Herschel Smith1 year, 10 months ago
I removed a post made by fellow writer PGF. I did so after receiving this note from Ammoland editor Fredy Riehl, as follows.
Hello captainsjournal100″ (sic)
You have content from our website that is in violation of our copyrights. (here is one example, you have multiple.)
The Captain’s Journal » Self-Defense Skills and Drills, The Casino Drill (captainsjournal.com)
Please remove all content and images you may have scraped from our domain at once and email us notice it has all been deleted and scrubbed from your domain captainsjournal.com
This is a poorly written letter with awful editing (e.g., you don’t end the sentence with a period if there is a qualifier in parentheses, nor put a period inside the parentheses, I don’t know what the ” is about at the beginning of the letter, etc.). But I got the gist of his offense.
I responded to Fredy as follows.
Mr. Riehl,
To avoid problems with you, the offending post has been removed. The post was made by one of my somewhat less experienced co-writers, not me, but that’s irrelevant to the main point.But let me make this clear to you. I don’t consider any other post (of which I’m aware) to have violated ANY legal stipulations whatsoever. I consider previous posts in which TCJ has linked Ammoland to be “fair use.” I make precisely zero (0) dollars or cents from my web site. In fact, I have to pay for the services. This is a labor of love for the sake of the 2A.Furthermore, I’m surprised that you would have sent this note. You clearly don’t understand the way the internet works. We ALWAYS lift a bit of pose out of articles, commentary, and observations, usually make some comments or remarks of our own, whether agreeing and expanding on the points (usually the case) or in rare cases disagreeing and explaining why, and then send the reader to the link we provide for Ammoland (or whatever other publisher). This increases (a) your traffic, and (b) your internet power (Google Page Rank). That you don’t understand this is a testimony to … frankly, I don’t know what. I rarely get notes like this except from very small publishers who get almost no traffic. Again, I’m quite surprised at you. Almost stunned at the ignorance of your note.David Codrea and I have exchanged links like this almost forever, and if I do lift some limited content from his web site or Ammoland article (or Firearms News), I will NEVER copy in a link he provides himself based on his own research. I have also helped him a bit with research (usually limited but it has happened), never demanding payment or recognition.Henceforth, I will link to Ammoland almost never.See how that works? Was that what you intended?
And I will add that the instances where I have helped David are extremely rare and the instances where he has helped me far outnumber the times I’ve helped him. But the point still stands.
For evidence of what I’m saying, go peruse Instapundit any day to see the prose they lift from articles, sending visits to the source. It’s all fair use. This is the way the internet works. PGF responded to me with this note.
Not only did I link the full article but what i did amounted to a tease and promo, even directing the reader that they had to procede to ammoland to get the main and important information.
I responded back with this note.
I know. They’re acting like a small and inexperienced publisher. This is all water over the dam. This is fair use, and they know it.
I’m not worried about it – in fact, a bit offended that he sent the note to begin with.This is why the 2A community might fail in the end. He thinks we’re siphoning traffic. Rather, we’re sending it to him.
Fredy finally responded with this: “Thank you for your fast action and for your support of our second amendment. This is all just a matter of housekeeping when we have a large site with lawyers involved.”
I don’t think so. I think the Ammoland lawyers know the difference between copywrite violations and fair use by sites who make no income (but rather, send traffic to the source). I think Fredy has a flair for the dramatic.
And thus, I won’t be linking Ammoland anymore. I thought I should explain this to readers.
On December 11, 2022 at 9:27 pm, PGF said:
This is especially disheartening because we love Dean Weingarten’s deep analysis about bear attacks involving defensive weapons use. Sharing those articles has made us all little better bushmen and might just save a life one day.
On December 11, 2022 at 9:28 pm, Herschel Smith said:
Yea, blame drama queen Fredy.
On December 11, 2022 at 9:38 pm, June J said:
Lawyers screw up just about everything.
Ironically, Ammoland is not a site I ever go to unless one of the many blogs I follow links an interesting article on there. Guess their traffic will go way down if they treat all bloggers like this.
On December 11, 2022 at 10:04 pm, Sal said:
Remember college….quotations and a documented source and all is well.
On December 11, 2022 at 10:33 pm, George 1 said:
Petty and not called for.
On December 12, 2022 at 3:15 am, Plague Monk said:
I go to about 20 firearm and militaria web sites on a regular basis, not including gunshow sites. IMHO, Ammoland’s writing quality has dropped in the last few years, dating back to early 2020. I’ve also encountered problems with some of their advertisers, to the extent that I simply go to other venues.
On December 12, 2022 at 8:40 am, Wirecutter said:
Huh. I post articles from ammoland all the time and have never gotten any type of response at all from them, good or bad.
It’s my understanding that their articles are Fair Use and the authors of articles are paid according to the number of views, so I figured I was helping them out as well as giving my readers some good information at the same time.
Like you, that’s the end of that.
On December 12, 2022 at 7:38 pm, Heywood said:
Count me out as well. I won’t visit their site anymore.
On December 13, 2022 at 2:34 pm, Latigo Morgan said:
The only time I ever even go to Ammoland is when I click on a link to them from here or a couple other sites.
I don’t have time to peruse every gun site online for interesting articles, so I somewhat depend on the various blog sites I visit to help me out that way.