self, in oz, 2005, non-academic silly hat

I did a little genealogy research some time ago, and found a distant ancestor named Tore Tinghatt. He apparently acquired the name by turning up at an assembly (Thing) with something peculiar on his head. Challenge accepted.

Right now I am off-line at 30.000 feet, en-route to Australia again, to acquire a silly hat. It will take a while, but if all goes to plan, I will post-grad from RMIT with a few years of research on information architecture and four dimensions, some aussie wine under my vest and a silly hat on my head.

Wish me luck.

I finished my bachelor in Digital Media Production at the University College Østfold, and in october 2010 recieved an email from a lecturer asking if they could buy some of my photos for their new IT-student website. I said yes, and heard nothing more.

Two months later I discovered that they had taken 13 of my photos and published on their new site without permission, credits, payment or informing me. I was not impressed. I emailed a handful of people I knew would have been involved, including the webmaster, the dean and the Chief Information Officer and asked what was going on, and asked them to remove the photos until we had come to an agreement.

No answer.

I send another email, a tad more formal, outlining that Norwegian intellectual property law had been broken, what the common practice is in cases like this, but that I would like this solved in a manner that both parts could accept. But that this is not possible without communication. Basically: talk to me.

Silence. They remove the photos from the site, bar one.

I send a letter snailmail, repeating what was in the email, and added that I would send an invoice, but I hoped that this could be solved in a friendly manner. In addition, I also said that when an agreement had been reached, they would be allowed to use 10 out of the 13 photos. The remaining three I would never have allowed them to use in any case. I also point out that it is their responsibility to get permission from the people in the photographs. You know, that is another law…

Deafening silence.

A few weeks later, I talk to them. He said he would email me an offer.

I hear nothing. I send an email reminder.

Silence.

In March I receive an email asking me about something else, some files I had worked on while studying. I take the opportunity to remind them again.

Silence.

In august I send an email saying that since I have heard nothing, I assume they would accept an invoice on what is current practice. That would set them back about USD 13.000.

No reply.

Being abroad for most of the summer, I return, and in december, with a heavy heart send them an invoice. They do not want to talk to me, I do not have any options left. If I am stuck in a corner, but I did not put myself there. According to normal practice, I should have invoiced the price of a photo times three: once for the image, once for lack of credits, once for lack of an agreement. Normal freelance price for a photo is estimated to about NOK 2000. That would have brought the total up to approximately NOK 78 000 (about USD 13.000).

I snailmailed an invoice of NOK1000x2 pr. image. 1000 kroner pr image, 1000 kroner pr image for lack of credit and agreement. This is cheap. This is getting off easy. Bear in mind they will be allowed to use ten of the images. This is, essentially, normal price for a photo.

Finally, a reaction. A phonecall. He offered me NOK 3000 for the lot as “compensation for a misunderstanding”. 230 kroner pr image. USD 38. An offence. I insist he sends that “offer” in an email. He is very reluctant to do so. He gives me time to “think about it”. He calls back a few days later, I and tell him that this is not acceptable, and that I have to consider where I will take this further. I am so angry I am shaking, but I speak slowly and calmly.

He calls back, and tells me he has talked to the university college solicitor. He repeatedly refuses to tell me what the solicitor said, but now the offer is NOK 1000 (approx. USD167) pr image. I am asked to “meet them half way”. The gall. I could have invoiced USD 13.000. I should have done that! He does not want to give me the name and contact information to the solicitor as he “does not want to bother him with this”. Finally I get the name and number of the solicitor, his rationale that me calling the solicitor could not possibly take more than ten minutes. I have no guarantee or faith in that this guy has given the solicitor the whole picture. Or that they have talked at all.

He does not want to send me this new offer in an email. I insist. He refuses, on the grounds that “he does not have the time right now”. I say he can write it as we speak, I helpfully suggest: “we offer you 1000kr pr image. Best regards, signed Mr. Weasel”. He would have had time to do that in the time it took me to argue this point. No, he does not have the time. It is friday. It is half past four.

Again, I am given time to think, and he says with a sternly, fatherly chastising tone, that “we should get this thing done with”. I have tried to get this over with for over a year! They have had a year to give me an offer and start communicating. And now I am given the impression that this is my fault. He also starts the argument that “you are not really a photographer“, and that “the images was not really on the internet for a long time“. They were only removed because I found them – through Google! 

He thinks the price is steep. It is not. It is really really really cheap for breaking the law. And if the total is large, that is due to the fact that they took 13 images. Not my doing.

Remember that one picture they did not remove? They say it was a photo taken by a lecturer. I said in that case we are not talking about the same photo. As it is a photo OF THE GUY who (they say) claims it to be his photo!

So. Where did I go from there? I had three options. Solicitor, media or the settlement office, the lowest rung on the legal ladder, where the aim is to reach agreements. I researched all three.

What they failed to see is that I could not let this go for a number of reasons.

• they have offended me personally by refusing to communicate, not taking my letters and emails seriously, and by extension, offended anyone trying to communicate with them, including the students past and present.
• They never offered and apology. The closes thing was an oral admission that “I see that we have not handled this very well“. My diagnosis is that they have not “handled” anything at all.
•  They tried to weasel away by calling it a “oral misunderstanding“, and when I produced the email with the initial request, that certainly upped the stakes.
• They tried to intimidate me by saying they had talked to a solicitor but refused to say what the solicitor said, and then tried to refuse me the contact information to said solicitor.
• They tried to belittle my work, the value, the experience and the product of years of practice by saying “you are not really a photographer“. Well. By the same token: you guys are not really educators.
• They tried to blame me: I was being unreasonable, I had misunderstood, my tiny little head could clearly not grasp this.
• They said it was merely an “internal communication error”. But did nothing to rectify it.
• They tried to weasel out of giving anything in written form, and generally just postponing, stretching time, “forgetting”, and the ever lovely “I have been very busy“-excuse. Seriously. I studied there for three years. I know how “busy” they are. And they had a YEAR.
• It is also an offence to every photographer out there. It is incredibly unprofessional, and the most depressing thing is that this is not unique.
• it IS a violation of the law of intellectual property. You know. Illegal.

 But most of all:

this is the IT-department in an educational institution that teaches their students about intellectual property law. They demand their students do their research and reference according to standards, and do not steal or plagiarise. I did my Digital Media Production bachelor there, but they obviously have no respect for the bachelor programme they created themselves, and the work resulting from it. Such as photographs. And somehow, the Norwegian law does not apply to them.

It makes me so furious I can hardly speak. And I am seldom lost for words.

They get away with this, I am sure, because most students are young and inexperienced. So I guess they are living in a tiny provincial bubble, where they can put on the “fatherly chastising”-tone, and kids will buckle. And you can buy young country-bumpkin students off with trinkets and shiny beads. You do not need the law then. They tried every trick in the book; pleading, accusing, blaming, intimidation, belittling. The thing is: I know these people. And they should know me, by now. Still: little cheap theatrics.

This whole thing has made me sick, my stomach turns every time I think about it. I am also angry at myself for not invoicing the full price. I am angry at myself for trying to be accommodating. I do want them named and shamed, and I want to warn current and future students about this himalayan incompetence, cheekyness and outright illegal behaviour.

I finally send an email saying I have nothing more to say, and that they will hear from my solicitor.

They decided to cough up.

Eirik Solheim, an editor with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation had pretty much the same thing happening to him, and he writes the story in this blog post “They stole an image of my son and just had to pay $4000“. The observant reader will see his point that the whole thing could have been averted had the violators promptly apologised and suggested reasonable compensation.

This whole thing could by and large have been solved a year ago, if, instead of burying their heads in the sand thinking it would go away and then subsequently trying to blame me, offend me, accuse me, intimidate me. A year ago, if they had given a sincere apology and a decent offer, this would never have happened.

It does not feel like a victory, I feel trampled on, misused. When the method of ignoring all my attempts at communication failed, they tried all the manipulative methods in the book. I have little interest in law, I believe in consensus, communication. But push a rat into a corner and see what gives.

I deeply regret that I tried to be accommodating. I should have invoiced the USD 13.000. I should have called a solicitor months ago.

Let this be a warning to anyone finding themselves in a similar situation. Please spread this story, as a warning and as an information about property laws.

Will they use the ten pictures they are allowed to? I doubt it. If they do, will they get permission from the people in the pictures, and will they credit me? I doubt it.

Then we shall see.

I woke up yesterday, to a flood of warnings on facebook, telling me about this deeply disturbed individual, and that several dogs had already died. Even in my grumpy pre-coffee morning haze, something smelled a little off.

A few hours later the media backtracked, and the mystery was solved. It turned out it was the commendable tradition of Oslo Hash House Harriers, beer-drinkers with a running problem. A very british ex-pat invention, the Hash House Harriers have a hare that leaves a trail, the hounds follow, and beer is consumed at the end. This, incidentaly, is maybe the only kind of fitness group I could see myself join and enjoy. The trail is environmentally friendly sawdust or flour. Figures.

But here is the mystery… how, HOW does this happen? How does the connection of “my dog sniffed some sawdust” go to “my dog sniffed some sawdust and then got diarrhea”, and then to “dogs sniffed sawdust and diiiiied!” then further to “INSANE MAN poisons dogs!” HOW does this happen? Who add that crucial sentence, “man (because that was what it said) poisons dogs, dogs have died”?!

Apparently a pet-shop had a sign up, saying this. But where did it start?! There must be a single human that added drama to the “dog sniffs stuff”, and others who escalates.

The papers contacted the local humane-societies, the veterinary institute, the food safety authority and the police. The society for prevention of cruelty to animals says they have had several reports of sick dogs. The canines are apparently listless, have diarrhea and do not eat well. A far cry from being dead, and certainly not an uncommon malady, partics with the gunky weather here now.

A dog sniffs and licks a million things outside, and some of them enjoy rolling around in dog poo. But how, oh, mystery, hooow did this canard happen?

Facebook is practically untrackable. The information there is nearly impossible to source, and one feather turns into five hens, as the saying goes. People are sentimental, they see a status warning of this terribly disturbed man, and dare not not share it. It is about social conscience. The thing is, if you do not share it, it does not mean that you want dogs killed, but it plays on our love for animals, our conscience, a social responsibility to warn others of possible misfortune. And so it generates, escalates and goes haywire. And viral.

And then the newspapers pick it up, and parrots random facebookers who cannot even spell instead of doing a little research.

Use your heads, people. If you wanted to poison dogs. Would sawdust be the first thing that springs to mind? If dogs have died, do you not think the teary face of the owner of some mutt would be all over the media within 30 seconds of said mutts demise? Dead cats? Birds? Rats? And not the least. Facebook updates with a million exclamation marks after it does not inspire confidence.

I would really like to know how this works: the gears of this process is not easily figured out; the “social media” is a messy tangle with  lots of dead ends. A curious similarity to the aim of the hares of the Hash House Harriers.

Will someone please do some solid research on this?

Note. I said solid.

..and the top pic is of highly-alive Grainne (look up the irish pronounciation), my Aussie dog-friend.

The quality drink their champagne and mockingly toasts the great unwashed people below. Do you not know what a large group of ticked off people can do? You do not even have to read history. You do not even have to leave the timespan of this week. The snowball does not care about what is fair, correct or who is or was responsible. I believe you call it critical mass.

I heard an “expert” say that the protest would never achieve anything, because it is too vague, there is no clear message, they are not united under a common banner. The expert went on to say that the protesters could not achieve anything, because it is like the messy anti-war protest in the sixties.

Come again?! ..and what happened in the sixties, children? Yes, the anti-war protests and the hippies were not exactly homogenous. But things changed.

BBC radio 4 friday night comedy; one of my favourite podcasts. Last fridays NewsQuiz edition was brilliant. Sandi Toksvig, Jeremy Hardy, Andy Hamilton and Fred MacAulay are my best friends on fridays. Pointing out that usually when there is a protest, experts say “this is a few, extremists people”. Except that this time that is not the case. Jeremy Hardy quotes various media having nothing else to say that these are “well educated reasonable people”. How to you deal with that? Funny man.

One of my favourite pictures from Wall St. is one of librarians. Yes, you know things are messed up when librarians starts marching  (I will add the image here later, if the photographer gives me permission). There are guerilla libraries. How can you not love that?

The world is off its trolley, undoubtedly. Winter is coming though, and New York gets cold. Who will continue, and who does not have a choice anymore?

Many of them say they are proud to be Americans. They should not be. They should rant, rave and create change. And then be proud.

These are well behaved people. Maybe they shouldn’t be.

edit:

I will let someone more eloquent than me sketch out some very valid points. Smile or die, from Barbara Ehrenreich, courtesy of th RSA.

 “Imagine an electronic page for each species of organism on Earth..

Encyclopedia of life is an amazing, insane undertaking. E. O. Wilson did a delightful, rambling TED-talk, and things actually happened. A lot of people apparently got together, large sums of money was involved, an awful lot of meetings, I presume, and a website was born. With a whole bunch of impressive collaborators, they started building a page for every living thing. Every living named thing, I should say. We do not really know how may species there is on earth.

Personally, I thought the site was awful. Then – Hurrah! – they rebuilt and redesigned recently. It got much better, I certainly approve. It is made by scientists and the public; we can all contribute, and the information is moderated by scientists. I love the idea, I love the insane ambition of it, I love living things, and I think it is both scientifically and individually important. This is a good start for having a positive dander through a website. Through lifeforms, actually. I excitedly open the brand new EOL. Not unreasonably, I am met with a large search box.

And there I sat. What to search for? Pathetically, I typed in “cat”. I messed around with felidae. You and me can contribute to EOL, so I amused myself looking for pics of peoples pets. I imagine a lot of people would think it wonderous to have their tabby put in encyclopedic context for all the world to see. Then I did “elephant shrew”. Because they are the funniest little things. I fiddle about with the taxonomy for a bit, but my latin is not good enough, my understanding of taxonomy a little shaky, their tree a little unclear (Taxonomy, by the way, is a scary, scary thing, but that is a different chapter). So, as is so often the case, finding something specific, the known-item-search is wonderfully easy. It is the discovering that is a problem.

UI & UX. Unknown terms to many. It stands for usability and user interface; we all know when these things do not work. It is a bit like only noticing the surface you are driving on when it is full of potholes.

I have to say, EOL is not full of potholes. They are doing a lot of things right. But here is what I would have liked to play with, what I would like to discover. If I was the president of the universe, EOL would have these things for me to explore… find living things that have the colour green. All things with fur that lives in Marocco. What creatures are parasites, what have symbiotic relations? (The disturbing Cymothoa exigua, the tongue-eating louse springs to mind) Who eats who? What species overlap where? What is the food chain for a deepwater anglerfish, a bobcat, a tapir? What do humans make and eat of various species? Why are there no green mammals? What species have their closest relation on another contient? Show me all creatures with wings. How many species of dragonflies? What species are directly dependent on each other, and which species are mutually beneficial? I can go on and on and on. I am a little Napoleonic here maybe, EOL is a massive undertaking as it is.

And maybe it is a good thing they do not have this. If EOL ever get these things, I would never leave the site, and get nothing done.

Of course, making this would be either the nightmare of a lifetime, or the most fun you could possibly have. A million potholes, and a million things that can go wrong, I see piles of technical problems, itches and conundrums. But I mean; imagine… dream…

If you wish to study a granfalloon, just remove the skin of a toy balloon

The researcher that wrote the book on media we used in my digital media bachelor, tweeted an article from Discovery News via ABC a while back. Apparently, a bunch of other researchers in USA have researched Facebook, using it as a tool for personality analysis – or more popular term; personality test. They state some depressingly obvious things, but elegantly jump to what I will describe as utter loony-off-their-trolleys conclusions. And no-one bats an eyelid.

They use the methods and categories of sociology (I will not say “traditionally used in..”, as this lends it an air of antiquity which it does not deserve or merit), and from the information people give about themselves, they test if that is consistent with other personality tests. Apparently. Apart from the fact that I suspect a lot of personality tests are utter rubbish, this seems a little scientifically thin to me. “Sociology Mickey-Mouse-science looks through tech”. Nevermind. Let me quote a conclution from ABC’s article:

“The researchers also found that people with long last names tended to be more neurotic, perhaps because “a lifetime of having one’s long last name misspelled may lead to a person expressing more anxiety and quickness to anger,” according to the study, which is being presented this week at the Computer Human Interaction conference in Vancouver.”

Read that again. We take these people seriously? We pay them? We let them play in their labs for this? They spend electricity, occupy space as they come up with this? I find a lot of sociology methodology highly questionable, but this is bonkers. Hot air conjured up from hot air. Oh, wait, .. duh. I actually checked the publish date on this article, to be absolutely sure it was not an aprils fool.

But the rant does not end there. The guy who tweeted, whose books was on my curriculum, is the guy the media calls when they need a “social media expert” (how the meta-levels on this works is mind-boggling). I tweeted back to him, asking if he seriously thought that people with long surnames are more neurotic than others? His disturbing answer was “science has spoken!”

As I said, it is a granfalloon.

Maybe I got it all wrong. Maybe this is an endlessly intelligent study, a wonderfully insightful paper and wondrous presentations. If so, the journalist at Discovery News should find something else to do. Communication: it is so hard that not even journalists and communication media PhD’ers can do it.

HistoryPin is a nifty little site, that gives you the opportunity to load historical pictures in streetview. I think it needs more work and refining, but it is a splendid thing, informative and fun.

This map shows the worlds most interesting remote places from touristiness. It exemplifies basically a heat map, that shows density. This particular map is curiously interesting because it shows interesting remote places, while as the natural instinct would be to go for the – say – most popular places (they do that too). In that sense, it is a “negative” map, and therefore a tad more interesting. The idea is to show you where you are less likely to meet other tourists. As a way of showing density, heat maps are brilliant. Intuitive, easy to understand, and highly flexible.

I also learned about fusion tables, and how Google includes the Similie timeline. This feels a little ironic, as we looked into Similie in 2010 as a potential solution for this project for the Smithsonian. We then decided against it, mainly because it was unnecessarily large, and the documentation a little shaky for our project. Now, it seems, it works directly with fusion tables… so it goes.

I also learned about other things, such as shapefiles (shp), Google Earth Builder, intensity maps with own defined borders and space-time. I have to look into all of it. Exciting times, and indeed thanks to Mano Marks.

You have the Apple fans and the – until recently slightly guilty – Microsoft followers. The MS crowd seems to have gained some confidence back recently, and they yell as loud as the macApple clan.
The two biggest companies have become, as most other complex situations and multinationals, personal. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (No, it does not matter that Bill Gates no longer works for/at MS). They are these companies. It is a sort of anthropomorphism. But here is what kills me every time: Sooner rather than later the argument gets to ethics. Bill Gates is an altruist. Therefore Microsoft is best. Apple apparently uses child labour in appalling conditions. This makes Apple evil. Therefore, Microsoft is best. Microsoft was for a long time the king of proprietary formats. Evil. Therefore, Apple is best. Ad nauseam.

Chew on that one. Evil.

Arguments are usually pointless and based on emotions, that again are based on coincidences, what you are used to, grew up with. As in religion, the newly converted are always the worst. Apple and Microsoft are big, big, big companies. They want to make money. Pretty much like every other company. But somehow, we think their ethical conduct more essential and important than others massive systems. We somehow seems to expect better or otherwise from them. It is fundamentally absurd.

Though I too would want to see a more ethical world, and wishes for multinationals to be responsible, intelligent, I do not comprehend why all these emotions are spent on these two, and how that transfers to the software and hardware. When will you protest the awful practices of the producer of your food-processor, hair-dryer, the proprietary software in your car? The paint you use for your house? Diamonds? (“nothing says I love you like a superficial…”) Why not a public outcry against the s/w control-thievery of a squillion other things in your house, your pockets, your office?

Where is your outrage?
Wasted on bickering over the tools that was supposed help us change the world.

And, yes. We are all sheep. Geeks included.

Websites. it is everything and nothing. Not everyone needs a website. But by god, how much shite is out there – it is baffling; it begs belief.

There are reams, piles and buckets of resources on usability, rules-of-thumb. Endless, boring description of best-practice. And yet, I cannot find the address of the shop. The map on how to get there. The products. It drowns in FLASH, animations. I can hear the customer saying “make something that lives“. Vomit.

So I can’t find the phone number, a simple list of products. Xkcd describes it perfectly in the chart above.

..and of course, there is The Oatmeal’s how a webdesign goes straight to hell

Why this rant now? This is nothing new. In fact, small businesses in USA tends to be the worst. I do not know how it works, if they all have a cousin that “are really good at webdesign” (QUICK! RUN! HIDE!) or whatever. I was simply trying to find a bakery in D.C.

It annoys me that so much time, energy, money and talent goes to waste on making shite. These are simple sites. I want to find a bakery. I wonder what sort of stuff they have. When they are open.

I found a couple of bakeries. But because it is all FLASH, I cannot send links to specific content. I have to send the index url, and then write down all the clicks necessary to find the danish pastry. Do you think I will bother?

To all your FLASHdevelopers out there: fucking stop now! If you cannot do most of it in HTML you are idiots. Stay away from making websites.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.