from the ai-powered-[adjective]-[top-topic-on-Techdirt]-letters-threat-really-just-[top-topic-on-Techdirt] department
This headline is like a Mad Libs version for Techdirt titles.
We’ve been covering the issue of copyright trolls for many years. And lately, we’ve been covering the fraudulent uses of generative AI tools. And we’ve absolutely covered some SEO scam stories, where people try to use some scam or the other to influence search results.
But here’s a story that has all three.
It starts with a Fediverse thread by Ernie Smith of the website bored (which is worth following, by the way). Received a DMCA email, claiming that an image on Tedium infringed on someone’s copyright:
But as Ernie was quick to point out, the image is actually from Unsplash, a stock photography website where images can be used freely under the site’s license. There are other curiosities in the threat letter as well. First, just the fact that it’s coming from a “trademark attorney” seems odd, given that this is a copyright issue. But, even more strange is that they don’t ask for the removal of the image or even the payment. Rather, all they want is a link to some random site?
Ernie looked at the website of the supposed “law firm,” “Commonwealth Legal Services,” which doesn’t just look stupidly generic:
But the part showing his lawyers looks very obviously created with artificial intelligence.
Ernie also looked up the address of the alleged law firm and it looks, well, quite different from the picture on their website.
So it quickly becomes clear that this is just an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings through deceptive means. It’s just an SEO scam. It is trying to trick bloggers into adding links to random websites by threatening copyright infringement claims.
These false claims come up all the time. We get them on a semi-regular basis, although I haven’t seen one in a while.
Four years ago, we saw something similar, where SEO scammers used surreptitious changes to Wikipedia to claim copyright for Wikimedia Commons images and to solicit links to spammy websites. But this one is a little different as it now adds in fake AI lawyers into the mix.
Jason Koebler at 404 Media confirmed that the “lawyers” on the Commonwealth’s page are generated by AI. He also confirmed that the alleged Commonwealth phone numbers are disconnected and not in service. He also spoke to the operator of the website the fake threat letter requested a link to, who insisted he was not behind it, although he appears to have experimented with SEO spam techniques in the past
Barczak told me that he had previously been buying backlinks on his website for SEO, but said he didn’t know who was doing this or why. “I have no idea; it certainly has nothing to do with me,” he said. “However, recently someone has been creating spam links against my site that I have been dealing with.”
“I’ve mastered on-page SEO, but unfortunately I’m buying links because of a lack of time,” he added. “I had a bad link builder in the past. I wonder if he’s mad at me for letting him go… It’s hard to say the web is massive and anyone can link whenever they want.” Link building is an SEO strategy designed to get external websites to link to your website.
He added that “bad links can hurt [the site’s] profile in the eyes of Google.” In this case, however, the “lawyers” were threatening a well-established tech blogger, and a link from Tedium would likely be treated as a positive in the eyes of the search algorithm.
Meanwhile, Kevin Purdy at Ars Technica pointed out that the Commonwealth website was only registered on March 1 this year.
Stories like these are among the reasons we find copyright trolling so insidious and problematic. Copyright remains the one legal tool most people have to threaten website owners to remove content from websites. Copyright threats (both real and imagined) have become so commonplace that almost everyone understands the associated threats.
Add to that the mind-boggling amounts most people have heard about copyright awards and court settlements. When most unsophisticated people receive a threat, they pay attention. So the scam is just changing slightly here, using the broken copyright system as a wedge to try to get something else entirely: SEO spam backlinks.
And, when combined with fake AI-generated lawyers, it gives at least a semblance of legitimacy to unsophisticated recipients. This story only makes the news because Ernie knew enough to know it was all bullshit, and then he was able to do the initial research and then post it online.
Filed under: ai, copyright, copyright trolling, generative AI, search engine optimization, seo, seo scam, spam
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