Time to Cut My Losses

If any of you read the pages of ElectroTech (which I only recommend for comedy value - its technical merits are rather suspect), you may have noticed my missing posts have been re-instated. The ISP refused to maintain the DMCA-takedown unless I filed a lawsuit. Although the copyright violation is clear and the takedown would be upheld in a court of law, it's just not worth the effort.

It's amazing that ElectroTech's webmaster would fight so hard to continue to display material he called advertising, spam and harmful to his website. Well, not so amazing if you look at the content of the website. It's nothing but posts by the readers of the site. Aside from the forum, there is little technical content and nothing contributed by the webmaster himself.

I must point out some further unethical behavior by the webmaster. His website benefits by having my copyrighted content on it, but he denies me any benefit of that content. When search engine webcrawlers catalog a web site, links from that site are tabulated and add to the linked site's status. However, there is a way to inhibit this, designed to prevent cataloging of private and limited-access pages. "No-follow" tags tell the webcrawlers to ignore a link. Look at the source code from a page on ElectroTech:

Notice the no-follow tags in front of the link to Digital-DIY and in front of my Clever4Hire page. The ElectroTech webmaster is using my content but denying any attribution by automatic page ranking systems. Of course, his dirty tricks are hardly surprising anymore.

As a final comment, the ElectroTech webmaster has made many changes in the Terms of Service agreement and web site rules to enforce his "It's my ball and I'm going home" way of doing business. The TOS now state:

...You also agree that any content posted to Electronic Circuits Projects Diagrams Free, unless source quoted, is licensed to the forum...

...We reserve the right to update and modify these rules as the needs of the community dictate to ensure the smooth operation of this community...

And from the "forum rules" section:

Electro Tech does not allow spamming in any forum, if we find spam it will be removed and a warning or ban will be issued on your account. We also do not allow any form of advertising (or deliberate types of promotion to benefit a third party site) unless it is in the "Buy, Sell and Trade" forum and prior arrangements have been made. Please also note that while we do publish all links to external sites without using "nofollow" tags, this is considered to be a privilege to members and not a right, in severe violations or abuse, this privilege maybe revoked.

I wonder how much the ElectroTech webmaster makes from Google Adsense advertising. Google doesn't reveal much about its payment structure but from other webmasters I know the income can be substantial. I wonder what the people who "contribute" financially to the operation of ElectroTech would think if they knew the operational costs were more than covered by the ad revenue....