2. Review your contract for the license. Specifically if you define where your blog resides. Medium also clearly states "You’re responsible for the content you submit to Medium and assume all risks associated with it, including anyone else’s reliance on its accuracy, or claims relating to intellectual property or other legal rights. By posting, you represent that you own or have the necessary rights to post the content on Medium, and that doing so doesn’t conflict with any other licenses you’ve granted."
3. If your claim is correct, NG probably just made a mistake thinking "oh medium.com, we didn't allow that!", however if you contract very specifically dictates where the blog resides (ULR for example) they are most likely negligent. We can't let content creators simply throw out DMCA notices left and right without them doing their homework:
Think Long and Hard Before Filing a DMCA Notification or Counter-Notice
Please think carefully before submitting a claim or counter-notice, especially if you aren’t sure whether you are the actual rights holder or authorized to act on a rights holder’s behalf. There are legal and financial penalties for fraudulent and/or bad-faith claims. Please make sure you are the actual rights holder, or you have a good-faith belief that the material was removed in error, and that you understand the repercussions of submitting a false claim.[0]
Thanks a lot! I've read the consequences and have submitted a counter notice, which might lead to a lawsuit from NG against us. However, after back tracking some emails, I think the confusion is indeed caused by what is "Pixel Magazine online blog", as there is no URL specified in the contract. As the article that was taken down was indeed from https://medium.com/@pixelmagazine/where-are-chernobyl-s-chil... , and the account has Pixel Magazine branding, following the rule of one time, non exclusive uses as when it was taken down, we'll lead NG to decide if they want to file a lawsuit on this. If we don't hear back from them in 10 days, the article will be back online. I will keep you guys updated!
Our lawyer gave us a go on the counter-notice. But this has started to distract me away so we're more likely to resolve it by licensing additional images from NG. The argument was that if the article is hosted on Medium, we should have disclosed this when sining the contract - otherwise it is considered deceiving because Medium is a large distribution platform as compared to an "online blog", although we believe online blog could also be large too. So basically, they would have priced the contract differently (higher) if they knew the article will be hosted on Medium : ).
A couple of suggestions:
1. Check with lawyer.
2. Review your contract for the license. Specifically if you define where your blog resides. Medium also clearly states "You’re responsible for the content you submit to Medium and assume all risks associated with it, including anyone else’s reliance on its accuracy, or claims relating to intellectual property or other legal rights. By posting, you represent that you own or have the necessary rights to post the content on Medium, and that doing so doesn’t conflict with any other licenses you’ve granted."
3. If your claim is correct, NG probably just made a mistake thinking "oh medium.com, we didn't allow that!", however if you contract very specifically dictates where the blog resides (ULR for example) they are most likely negligent. We can't let content creators simply throw out DMCA notices left and right without them doing their homework:
Think Long and Hard Before Filing a DMCA Notification or Counter-Notice
Please think carefully before submitting a claim or counter-notice, especially if you aren’t sure whether you are the actual rights holder or authorized to act on a rights holder’s behalf. There are legal and financial penalties for fraudulent and/or bad-faith claims. Please make sure you are the actual rights holder, or you have a good-faith belief that the material was removed in error, and that you understand the repercussions of submitting a false claim.[0]
[0] - https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e...
[1] - https://medium.com/policy/mediums-copyright-and-dmca-policy-...