Member-only story
Custom Domains on Medium!
No, Copyright Violation Caused by Rogue Script
A cautionary tale for publication owners and app/script developers
It seems that several of our recent spate of widespread copyright violations can be traced to a script that was purportedly designed as a workaround to Medium’s discontinued support of custom domains, and appears to have been introduced in April 2020:
In other words, maybe we’re blaming the wrong people — or at least people who did not intend harm. You know what’s paved with good intentions?
The likelihood that the users of this script did not intend to commit copyright violation and do actual harm doesn’t mean they did not commit copyright violation and do actual harm. It does mean (maybe) that we shouldn’t ride them out of town on a rail (just yet).
In fact, it was the owner of one of these sites who figured it out and brought this to my attention directly. They explained what had happened and apologized. I do believe they thought they were just redirecting their own publications and their own stories to their own domain names. Their Medium account is currently suspended, pending further investigation. I’ve asked Medium to consider restoring it.
