Google DMCA complaint follow-up

I rather suspected that when I issued a DMCA complaint to Google over the 3 websites systematically ripping off the content of currybetdotnet on the Blogger platform that it wasn't going to be a simple process.

Yesterday I hit the first hurdle with the initial response I received from Google. It was very nice and legal and polite and everything, but I'd made a mistake with the process.

"We have received your DMCA complaint regarding <snip>.blogspot.com, <snip>.blogspot.com and <snip>.blogspot.com dated 1/7/08. Our policy requires that DMCA complaints be signed by the copyright owner or an agent of such. As your DMCA complaint was unsigned, we cordially request that you re-send us a signed copy of your notice by fax to (650) 618-2680. Once we receive your complaint, we will investigate the issue and process your request accordingly".

Let us just re-cap here for a second.

These three Blogger domains each have around six months worth of entries, all entitled 'The latest from currybetdotnet', all copying word-for-word an entry from http://www.currybet.net, with all their backwards and forwards links pointing to http://www.currybet.net, with all of their embedded images served directly from http://www.currybet.net, and with a message from Feedburner included in their HTML on every entry asking if the user would like to unsubscribe from their currybetdotnet email alerts.

But Google, who own Feedburner sending the emails, Blogger doing the re-publishing, and the search engine where people can find these pages, need me to insert a GIF file of my signature into the document I fax to them, before they can check whether the 3 domains they are hosting are breaking the terms and conditions of the Blogger service.

*sigh*