Early this morning, Behindthechairmansdoor (BTCD) received a notification from his hosting company that his site had been taken down for copyright infringement. The complaint came from the Christian Science Monitor (CSM), duly taking note of the fact that a recent post from BTCD quoted their story. While I agree that BTCD was wrong to post the entire CSM story on his blog, he did, in fact, credit CSM and link back to their original story. What’s funny about this is that there is no way BTCD would pretend to be the author of said story, and in fact, the article was posted as a blockquote within his post. The Monitor, in fact, allows republishing of their stories, but for a small fee ($40 for one month on your blog, for instance). Unlike many others, the Monitor doesn’t believe in sharing…
Fortunately for BTCD, the excellent hosting company restored the blog within a few hours on the understanding that content from CSM would be removed. I would have thought, however, that there was no need to go to such lengths for what CSM claims is a copyright infringement. I do think that they understood that BTCD is run by a muslim blogger, and like their President, they preferred to shoot first and talk later. I wonder what their reaction would be have been if the blogger had been a ‘god-fearing’ good Christian boy, leaning so far to the right that he’s in danger of toppling over?