Linda Ikeji Tells Her Story – Copyright Infringement Allegation [MUST READ]
Amidst allegations of copyright infringement, and
claims that popular blog, Linda Ikeji Blog owned by
Linda Ikeji may soon be shut down, the woman at
the center of the storm has spoken out. She took to
her blog to address the issue.
Read her full post below:
So something has been going on for the past
couple of days that I haven’t reacted to because I
wanted to see it play out and see how far these
people will go. They have gone far and it’s now
time to react.
The only reason this is happening to me is because
I’m number one…so I am flattered. I am currently
No.10 on Alexa.com, more read than all the other
news sites in Nigeria, so I understand why I am
the target. If I were them, I’d hate me too…lol.
So here’s what’s going on. Sometime last year,
some guys decided it was time to run me out of
business (duh, like you can…lol). So they began to
spam by blog. And when your blog gets a lot of
spam, Google (which hosts my site) can take your
blog down. But instead of taking my blog down,
Google took my Adsense down for a few months
and eventually re-instated it. So they didn’t
succeed. These same people started sending strange
emails to me…looking for different ways to have
access to my blog. But I wouldn’t let them. If they
could, they would have hacked it, but they couldn’t
so they continued to look for different ways to
attack my blog. Please continue…
In April 2014, these guys decided to close down the
blog again. In the emails they exchanged back and
forth, they said ‘plagiarism is a good excuse to
finish her’. (they forget that if they succeed in
closing down LIB because I’m on blogger…I could
easily start a website). Now let me tell you who
these guys are. They are IT people, security experts
who know how the internet works. They are
hackers and cyber-squatters…and only go after the
biggest internet setups.
Immediately after I shared photos of my new SUV,
these guys re-connected again and decided it was
finally time to end LIB because there were quite a
few people who were mad that I bought the car
and they wanted to play on their emotions. The
head of this team is a guy who goes by the name
@MrAyeDee on twitter. They decided to use the
plagiarism card. He said it was the strongest claim
to make and easiest way to get support from other
people. And then the campaign started with him
claiming that I took something from him without
crediting him or asking for permission. 100% false.
If he owns a website, I’ve never visited it. He
started by writing all sorts to get people to notice…
and then he acted. Like I said these guys are IT
experts, they know what to do to get blogger/
Google to come after you. So he and his team
started filling several reports, sending links of my
blog posts and making claims to Google.
Outrageous false claims. And because Google acts
first before they contact the blog owner, they took
down some posts and asked me to file a counter
claim if I felt I had a right to re-publish those
articles. Now that my blog is under Google review,
these guys have started to spam it again.
They want Google to shut it down. That is their
aim. Will they succeed? I sincerely don’t know. I’m
not an IT expert…I know they are spamming and
filing complaints, I don’t know what else they are
doing behind the scenes but they are relentless.
Now let me give you guys a bit who this Aye Dee
guy is. He’s anonymous on Twitter. Nobody really
knows who he is but according to those
investigating him, his name is Emmanuel Efremov
simply known as EE by his friends. He’s the owner
of 15Past8.com media group. Based in Manhattan.
Gets funding from some US organization. (His
number – 212 9608127). He’s apparently been
stalking me for years now and have registered
quite a number of my domain names…
lindaikeji.net plus 8 others. He also owns
9jalife.com…yep, he owns a blog. He accuses me of
copyright infringement but when you go to 9jalife
and other websites he owns…98% of the things he
has on there are other people’s content. You see
pot calling kettle black? Lol.
Immediately he was found out yesterday, the IT
expert immediately started to redirect
lindaikeji.net to my blog. If you click lindaikeji.net
now, it will redirect you to this blog. He panicked
yesterday and quickly did it. A name he register as
far back as 2011. Lol. Choi!
Not only that, he’s also a cyber squatter. Yep, he
registers 100s of websites belonging to others
around the world and tries to make money off
them. Guess one of his aims is to run me out of
blogger so I come to him and his team and pay
thousands of dollars to get one of the several
names he’s registered. Not going to happen, boo!
Hehe
Below is an article from lawyer and blogger Uduak
Udouk of Africa Music Law about this guy and his
cyber-squatting criminal activities.
“According to a twitter handle owned by
@MrAyeDee, celebrity blogger Linda Ikeji was
accused of copyright infringement of his works. He
reported these infringing activities to Google and
what resulted was a take down of his articles/
works on her site. He also claimed with the rate
and way things looked, Linda Ikeji’s site could be
shut down within a week.
I get the fact that this guy was concerned about
Ikeji’s activities and got Google to do something
about it. What I don’t get is his very strong
response and continued massive tweets talking
about the same issue in an almost vendetta like
style towards her. This got me curious to know
who he was and what could be a motive behind all
of these.
I began by looking at his twitter page and
narrowed in on his website www. 15Past8.com.
The description of the services he offered through
his media group raised my curiosity. He says his
media group owns “hundreds of websites.” He also
claimed some of the infringing content on Linda
Ikeji came from his site. Well one of his hundreds
of websites is 9jalife.com because it has the
15Past8.com media group stamped on it. I did a
basic search on 9jalife.com to see who owns it. The
name ‘Emmanuel Efremov’ came up as the
registered owner of 9jalife.com. 9jalife.com is clear
it is owned by 15Past8.com media group,
@MrAyeDee’s company.
For my article on Linda Ikeji, many have been
saying they are surprised she does not own her
own domain. Purely out of curiosity, I looked up
Lindaikeji.com and noted it is owned by someone
else, a case of cybersquatting. I also look up Linda
Ikeji.net and see the same ‘Emmanuel Efremov’
come up. Now I am very curious. How is it that
Emmanuel Efremov owner of 9jalife.com, a
subsidiary of 15Past8.com, also owns
LindaIkeji.net? Am I missing something?
Needless to say, I google the name ‘Emmanuel
Efremov’ and lo and behold, there is a case by
Volkswagen against an Emmanuel Efremov for
cybersquatting. Looking at the description of
15Past8.com, the registered domain owner of
9jalife.com and Lindaikeji.net and the case by
Volkswagen against Emmanuel Efremov, I am left
feeling that the credibility of @MrAyeDee is shot
and very weak at best. It also makes me wonder
about any prior existing relationship between him
and Linda Ikeji as to the issue of domain
ownership i.e. cybersquatting. It is not uncommon
for cybersquatters to ask you the legitimate owner
of a trademark to pay them to own your own
website.
If you accuse someone of copyright infringement, it
is a good idea to make sure your hands are very
clean and there is no connection whatsoever with a
possible bad faith attempt to hijack their domain
name. I am curious to see where all of these
leads.” Uduak Udouk
Now talking about copyright infringement, Mr Aye
Dee feels that crediting source is not enough, that I
have to write a written permission to the website
owner. That’s laughable at best. So if there’s a
breaking news on TMZ, I will first write to the
editors and wait for the 2/3 days it will take them
to reply me…that’s if they even bother to.
I admit that I take content from other sites. Plenty
of it sef, but the question is, which website in the
world doesn’t? If you go on Bossip.com, 50% of
what is there is from other sources. Daily Mail UK
takes from other sites, re-writes and give credit. UK
Mirror takes from other sites. MediaTakeOut
quotes other sources. E! Online, Us Weekly, People
and even CNN take news from other sources and
give credit, so why is mine an offense to the extent
that my blog deserves to be shut down? Even in
Nigeria, which site doesn’t take news from other
sites? Which? That is how media runs. Perez
Hilton makes $10million a year from blogging and
50% of the content on his site is not originally his.
As long as you give credit…which I do! Except in
cases where you don’t know the original source of
the story or photo. So many blogs take content
from my site, how many of them have I gone
after? In fact, I’m happy that they do so, I have
nothing against it. If I take content from another
site and they approach me to take it down despite
giving credit, I will take it down. But that doesn’t
happen.
I try as much as possible to get as many exclusives
as I can, but because I work from home my team
is so small. I’ve been planning to employ more
hands which I will do eventually and then get a
proper office. I’m kinda glad this happened. It’s
now pushing me to act and take my business more
seriously.
So Mr Aye Dee, Mr EE, Mr #bringmedown or
whoever you are and Jeremy Weate (look who is
talking ..lol) and all the others talking, I am not
afraid of you! You didn’t bring me this far and
you’re not enough to bring me down. Like if you
dream it, speak it, act it, hope it, envision it, see it,
pray it….YOU are not enough! You can’t bring a
good woman down. You can try boo, oh please
keep trying…but you see this lady, she ain’t going
nowhere. You don’t even know who you are
dealing with. You don’t know what drives me and
how far I plan to go. I’ve been a hustler since I
was 17, doing it on my own…on my own terms.
Plus I have the backing of God…and of course my
hundreds of thousands of readers. I repeat, YOU
are not enough!
I have been blogging for close to eight years and I
plan to be around for many more years to come, so
get used it. If you manage to close down LIB, I’ll
come back bigger and better. So keep trying boo!
And enjoy all the attention you will get from this
post…you’ve earned it. Kisses!
Oh by the way Mr EE, one of your friends who you
were doing the #bringlindaikejidown campaign
with has turned against you and contacted me.
He’s a LIBer just like you…hehe…but decided it
wasn’t fair and reached out to me. God bless you
Mr Aye Dee. I hope your hustle also pays. All the
best.
To others reading this, if you want to be successful
in life, please prepare yourselves for something like
this. People don’t go after failures. You have to be
really crazy to gather to plot the downfall of an
orange seller or a gate-man (with all due respect).
These people go after successes. Once you succeed
in any field, they will come after you…it’s
inevitable. Ask everyone who has succeeded. It’s
not whether they will try, because they will…it’s
how you respond to it that matters.
Don’t you ever, listen to me, ever let anyone defeat
you. You didn’t work so hard to get to the top for
somebody who didn’t know how you struggled to
bring you down. You will be disappointing God.
You don’t even know how disappointed He will be.
How dare you let them win? They will come for
you…that’s a guarantee just make sure you defeat
them.
These people are not even haters..they are
excuses…they are the natural reaction to success…
put in this world to take actions against people
who are climbing the ladder of success. If they see
you’re about to fly, they will try to cut your wings
because when you fly, there’s no stopping you
anymore. And that’s what they want to do…to stop
you! Don’t let them distract you. Stay focused on
your dreams and keep flying.
Lastly, You know how negative voices can be so
loud that you can’t hear the positive ones? In
moments like that just quiet the noise and listen
again…listen only to the positive ones…because
they are all that matters.
May all your dreams come true! May everything
you put your hands into succeed. May your
enemies show their faces so you know who they
are…but may they never win.
Thank you so much to all LIB readers for your
loyalty all these years. I keep saying you changed
my life and I will always be grateful. Long live
LIB.
Thanks guys and have a blessed day.
Now back to blogging!
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