Warning to anyone who’s published add-ons at the Chrome Web Store. I just received an automated take-down notice for my LMUR script, apparently because it infringes on a Google copyright. The email is written in such a way as to make it bloody difficult to work out exactly what the infringment was, however I think It was triggered by the use of either the word “Waze”, or use of some Waze-copyrighted visuals, somewhere in the script details.
As the takedown process has gone straight from first warning to removing the script from the CWS without giving me any opportunity to do anything about it, I now can’t check the script page on CWS to try and work out what the hell the takedown process might have got its knickers in a twist about.
So be warned, if you’ve got a Waze-related script hosted on CWS, it might be a good idea to completely sanitise it of any reference to anything that could be interpreted - correctly or otherwise - as a Google/Waze copyright infringement. Or alternatively, might just be easier to pull your scripts from CWS entirely and require any of your Chrome users to install Tampermonkey so they can run the unpackaged version of the script from Greasyfork etc…
Pretty sure this all falls foul of the fair-use principle, given that any reference I would have made to Waze text/visuals would only have been as a way of demonstrating how the script would work with the relevant Waze product. Bloody stupid overzealous legal crap :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:
In the spirit of accuracy and fairness (something the CWS takedown process could do with learning a bit about…), I should now add that the takedown didn’t occur without any prior warning, as I’ve just found a takedown warning email sent on the 2nd. Not sure why that one didn’t cause a new email notification to appear on my phone unlike apparently every other bit of crap that lands in my gmail inbox, but I genuinely wasn’t aware of that email having been sent until today when, prompted by the arrival (and notification) of the second email, I searched back through my inbox and found it…
So whilst they might not have gone straight from first warning to takedown, having now read the original email I’m still absolutely 100% none the wiser as to WHY they thought LMUR was infringing any Google/Waze copyrights, and therefore I’d have still not had any clue as to what changes I might have needed to make in order to prevent the takedown occurring anyway :?
Google surprisingly responded pretty quickly to my request for the takedown to be reversed, and although they haven’t done so yet, they did at least explain the reason for the takedown was the use of the Waze logo in the script icon.
So to those script-writers whos CWS-hosted scripts are still using something which could be recognised as the Waze logo, no matter how much you might have edited it away from simply being a verbatim copy of the original, I suggest replacing it asap…