Posts tagged Rant
Why I have left Twitpic, and why you should too.
May 10th
Well as you can probably tell from the image on the right, this is all to do with a matter of copyright. As a photographer copyright is very important to me, it’s how I make money from photographs and it’s what ensures thatI get credit for my work which brings in more work. It also ensures that I have control over the final look of an image, if it is to be associated with my name, so that I can protect my name or brand.
I saw a retweet of an update frorm @iA this afternoon which pointed me towards the terms of service of Twitpic stating that as of 4th of May they were claiming copyright license on all images uploaded to their service. Understandably annoyed at this, I followed the link and had a read, to find the following paragraph (emphasis mine):
You retain all ownership rights to Content uploaded to Twitpic. However, by submitting Content to Twitpic, you hereby grant Twitpic a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and Twitpic’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the Service a non-exclusive license to access your Content through the Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such Content as permitted through the functionality of the Service and under these Terms of Service. The above licenses granted by you in media Content you submit to the Service terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your media from the Service provided that any sub-license by Twitpic to use, reproduce or distribute the Content prior to such termination may be perpetual and irrevocable.
What this means
That first bold bit there essentially says they can do whatever they like with the image, at no cost, including selling it or transferring their license to any and all third parties which they chose, including the ability to make derivatives works (which would cover removing any watermark you may happen to have placed on the image).
The second bold bit basically covers them for anyone they like to be able to use their images, you have no say in who can use or license the image.
The third emphasis says that even if you delete the image, if they already have a sublicense in place then there is nothing you can do about it, and that license will still stand.
Imagine these scenarios:
- You happen to be there when something major happens, they can sell your images to the news services.
- You upload images of a friend, they sell those images and they are used without yours or your friends permission to advertise something unsavoury or adult.
- Your image / likeness is used to promote a product or service you feel strongly against (a pregnant mother in anti-abortion ads, when she is pro-choice)
- Those “Meet singles in your area” adverts you see on the right of Facebook, how would your husband feel to see you in one of those?
- A photo you took of a product is used, and the trademark owner decides to sue for that use, you as copyright owner could potentially be dragged in to it.
- An image of yours is used in a negative way, and the stigma of that is associated with you name which could affect business if you are a photographer.
Those are just the uses I can think of off the top of my head, there are bound to be plenty more.
Reaction
I immediately deleted all of the images I had on Twitpic, thankfully none of which had been uploaded since the change of terms on the 4th, and removed Twitpic’s right to access my twitter account. I uploaded one final picture which simply said in huge letters “Bye Twitpic You Bunch Of Thieving Bastards” which I can categorically say I have no qualms about if they wish to sublicense or allow the use of by anyone, anywhere.
One of the main reasons I used Twitpic was because of it’s ubiquitous support in Twitter clients, and the fact I had been using it for so long (813 days according to the oldest picture I deleted), and that it is the only choice for picture service native within the Android version of Tweetdeck which I use.
What to use instead
Thankfully the wonderful @alittlebit recommend Posterous, which I have now signed up for and will be using in the future to post pictures on Twitter, probably as well as a few short video clips and suchlike.
Like Twitpic it automatically sends out the tweet for me (as well as also being able to automatically post to a myriad of other services), and there is a handy app for my Android phone which will upload them for me, so in usability terms I lose nothing, but gain the ability to also upload pics via email and to add extra content or information to the post / pic before it is published and obviously retain the copyright, as it should be.
And just in case you’re wondering what Posterous terms of service have to say on the same matter;
You shall retain all of your ownership rights in your submissions; however, by submitting material to Posterous you grant Posterous fully transferable rights to use, reproduce, distribute, modify, transmit, prepare derivative works of, display and produce the material in connection with Posterous and Posterous’s business, but solely in accordance with these Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy.
The key difference there is that you are granting license only in so far as may be deemed appropriate for the promotion and advertising of the Posterous service (which is likely to cover them for screenshots in news magazines etc), and not that they can sub license the images for any other use.
Final thoughts
You think that Twitpic would have learned from the mistake that Facebook made when they attempted much the same thing last year, and then very quickly withdrew the clause from the terms of service after massive outcry from their userbase. You can bet that Twitpic have something in mind for this, you don’t add something like that to your terms of use without having a reason to do so, but I for one don’t intend to be around to find out what that is, and hopefully neither will you.
If you want to sign up with Posterous you can do so by clicking here
You can follow me on twitter by clicking here.
UPDATE: There is a follow up to this article here: http://www.shepy.co.uk/blog/2011/05/twitpic-why-i-wont-go-back-and-why-you-shouldnt-either-a-follow-up/
~Shepy
Mounted police charge protesters
Nov 26th
Whilst I don’t agree with a lot of the goings on at the student protests lately, which often have just degraded into outright vandalism, there is an acceptable level of reaction from the police, and this goes far beyond that.
Today I saw a @paul_a_smith retweeting a link from @arlloyd which was an article, with video on the guardian site showing mounted police charging on the protestors, one of whom is pregnant (and though they had no way of knowing that, they should assume the possiblity of potential risks such as this). Here is the video from the article:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgxwTF-qeAo&feature=player_embedded
While some of the damage and material loss caused by the protest is deplorable, nothing warrants these people being charged by officers mounted on horses. For the Met Police to then deny that the crowd were charged shows a level of incompetency and underhandedness that is simply unacceptable.
In my opinion, there should be an external investigation which covers:
- Why the order was given to charge
- What risk assessment was done prior to the order
- Why the charge was hidden and denied afterwards
- What injury was caused by this charge
- How will those responsible be brought to task (criminal or professional).
The original article on the Guardian website can be found here for anyone wanting to read more.
~Shepy
If your captcha isn’t human readable, it’s broken!
Nov 13th
I’ve been signing up a new gmail account for someone tonight, and forgot just how bad Google’s captcha system is, as thankfully I haven’t had to use it in a long time. Take a look at these:
|
|
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Those are just three examples from page refreshes. Dont get me wrong, I hate spam as much as the next guy, but if your captcha is so bad that it is unreadable, or even causes someone to have to stop for 20 seconds to try and read it, then your system is broken. At least with systems like re-captcaha there is a refresh button so you can quickly and easily get a new one if the current one is too bad, but no such option exists with google other than refreshing the page.
Come on google, sort it out.
~Shepy
Stop telling people where you live!
Nov 10th
With things like Foursquare, and now Facebook Places, people are routinely sharing every moment where they are. Now don’t get me wrong, I use Foursquare and often check in when I’m out at the pub etc and find it a great way to meet up with friends, but when I see check-ins from people on foursquare or facebook places and the location is tagged as “Home” it quite honestly makes me cringe. The internet is full of some sick and twisted people at times, and though you might not have upset anyone so far, there is a fair chance that you might one day, and they just might decide to come and have a ‘gentle word’ at your conveniently tagged home location. As most people tend to also tweet / facebook status update when they go on holiday, you’ve then not only told people where you live, but now that you’re not in the house and it’s prime for burgling.
Likewise, it scares the bejesus out of me that some people leave geotagging enabled on their smart phone, then upload photos to any of a plethora of image hosting services or send them directly. Now this isn’t such a problem most of the time if you’re out and about, but what if you’re at home and sharing a photo of something so obviously at home, like say the meal you just cooked? (I’ve seen plenty of people putting pics of similar up), or even worse, some girl chatting to someone online does a ‘self shot‘ (NSFW Google Image Search) pic to some guy she is flirting with online and doesnt realise it has GPS data logged in the EXIF of the image telling that guy (who could potentially be a not-very-nice kind of bloke) just exactly where she is?
Sometimes technology makes life enriched, entertaining and wonderful, but sometimes it can make it down right dangerous and worrying. Unfortunately the latter seems to come about all to often through people not quite understanding the full ramifications of the technology, or the information it is sharing. Please, think carefully before you chose to enable geotagging / location data in any application or device, and think about who may be able to see that information (and what they may chose to do with it) before you next check in at a location.
~Shepy
Lets talk about science… carefully.
Feb 11th
As some of you may or may not be aware Richard Dawkins, the popular science author, spoke at the Lib Dem conference in September about the blight of the UK libel laws stifling the international scientific community.
Dawkins explained how many companies are using the draconian libel laws to silence, financially cripple and ultimately hinder any scientific study or paper which might damage their business in any way. What is especially galling about this is the fact that the large corporations are going after the individual carrying out the research in many cases and not the publishing entity, generating hundreds of thousands in legal fees for the scientist. Obviously this can cause a reluctance to publish findings for fear of being sued, and can lead to the slow down in advancement of our knowledge, understanding and development as a people. The very thought that someone may avoid some particularly innovative research into something such as cancer simply because they can not afford the financial problems that it may bring when they are sued is simply staggering. Case in point being Simon Singh, a widely respected author who had the audacity to challenge the chiropractors claims of being able to help with sleeping problems, ear infections and asthma through chiropractic treatments. Mr Singh is now wrought in a legal battle with the British Chiropractic Association which has cost him at least £100,000 to date alone. More info can be found on Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Singh#Chiropractic_lawsuit
Today I received an email from a friend highlighting a new petition which is aimed at changing all of this, bringing about real change in the libel laws with an aim to improving free speech, scientific debate and publishing of findings. As someone with a deep interest in science in its many facets, and living in Newcastle which is often dubbed the City Of Science I felt it almost a duty to sign the petition and I think you should too.
The petition, and more information, can be found at: http://www.libelreform.org/sign and after you’ve signed the petition the site will even send an email to your local MP on your behalf if you so wish.
Thanks for taking a moment to read this, from myself and no doubt future generations who would be helped by the scientific advances made by the removal of this fear of ill founded libel claims.
~Shepy
It’s your choice.
Sep 15th
Ok, so in the past hour or so I have taken a wee bit of flak from people on twitter, facebook etc. Why? Because I made a few jokes about Patrick Swayze dying. Those jokes were:
——————————————–
All i have to say on the matter of Patrick Swayze being dead is that it has to be a lie.
Nobody puts Patrick in the coroner.
——————
Twitter is announcing Patrick Swayze as dead. Demi Moore’s new business said to be ready to produce lots of pottery with a silent partner.
——————
Patrick Swayze in final talks for a second movie. He is agreeing the final terms to appear in Ghost 2. His agent, Mystic Meg open for calls.
——————
Patrick Swayze’s last words reported to be: Dont worry, i dont mind being dead. I’ve had the time of my life.
——————
Jimmy: Prepare to die.
Dalton: You are such an asshole:
Shepy: Bet his advice is looking a lot more sensible right about now, eh?
——————
Am I heartless? Perhaps.
Is it insensitive? Perhaps.
Do I care? Not in the fucking slightest.
You see, I am a firm believer in only directly reacting to things that happen in my own life, things I experience, things that I should react to. I’ve never met Mr Swayze, I’ve never met any of his family, in fact as far as I know I have never even met anyone that has met him.
Why then should I feel any kind of remorse of the passing of a man that had zero influence in both my own life, and the lives of anyone I know?
Granted, having no remorse and openly mocking are poles apart, however I am a firm believer in the theory that “Anything is far game for comedy, as long as there is no malice”. I would quantify that “no malice” part in so much as anything I say here is essentially of no consequence, it can in no way affect ‘how dead’ he is, my refraining from these jokes is not going to bring him back to life.
Are the friends and family of Mr Swayze likely to be upset by his passing, sure! Are those people ever likely to look at my blog, twitter or facebook accounts? I sincerely doubt it. The chances of what I say reaching the eyes or ears of those directly affected are so very slim that they are almost incalculable.
Twitter, Facebook, reading a blog and essentially every other form of communication on the internet is very much a democratic system. Your vote is with your eyes. If you like the content, then you follow the person, add them as a friend or read their blog. If you don’t like the content then the answer is simple…don’t.
If you don’t like my tweets… unfollow me.
If you don’t like my status updates… unfriend me.
If you don’t like my blog posts… stop reading.
If you don’t like me…. go fuck yourself.
I have always, and will always, say what I like, I pride myself on being an open and honest person. To me that includes not censoring myself in a public forum, if you are too delicate to read these things then perhaps the internet is not the place for you.
No doubt I will lose a few readers, followers, friends, whatever. I could care less, for I know that those that DO chose to stick around do so because they are interested in what I have to say, my opinions, the real me. Not some false, fabricated and PG rated diluted version of my opinion.
To those reading this as their last communication from me: Sorry you didn’t appreciate my jokes or how opinionated I am, however I guess I won’t miss your friendship, we are obviously incompatible anyway.
For those sticking about: Cheers for appreciating when someone is joking, being able to distance yourself from the shock and awe of the daily mail type crowd, and congratulations on being able to form you own opinions, I look forward to talking to you next time.
~Shepy
DesignQuotes.co.uk are fucknuggets
Apr 16th
So i just received the following spam:
—Begin Quote—
Good Afternoon A
I’ve just visited your website shepy.co.uk and wondered if you are considering getting any brochures/printed material designed?
We specialize in sourcing local Design agencies to help clients reduce design costs and save time in locating a good design agency.
If you would like a free quote or chat regarding how to put designs together, visit our website at www.designquotes.co.uk or phone 0845 224 9061.
Best regards,
David Blackburn
Graphic Design Quotes
http://www.designquotes.co.uk/
t. 0845 224 9061
—- End Quote—
Who does brochures / leaflets for their blog ? What the hell is this guy smoking? Still, i did have some printing requirements i thought he could help with, so ive dropped him a mail asking for a quote.
—Begin Quote—
Certainly,
I have a requirement for 4 thousand flyers saying “DesignQuotes.co.uk are spamming fucknuggets who are obviously a shit design company or they wouldnt have to troll for customers” and another 4 thousand saying “David Blackburn loves the cock, as does his hermaphrodite partner”.
Could you provide a quote for this please? Your discretion and speedy response in this matter would be appreciated.
Regards
Shepy
—End Quote—
Any guesses on how much they might charge? :P
~Shepy
Tweepme, actually, no dont!
Mar 17th
So there is a huge buzz going about at the moment regarding http://www.tweepme.com – and the premise is basically this:
You sign up on the page, using your twitter username and password. Your account auto follows every other TweepMe user over a period of time, as does theirs meaning that everyone ends up following everyone.
So basically, I only really see it being useful for people that actually care about the follow count and want to increase it, or people that want to try and spam out their stuff to a larger audience. Whilst I can understand and appreciate the latter, is blindly adding several thousand people to your timeline / updates really the best way to do that?
To get it kick started, they are offering “free lifetime memberships to the first 5,000 Tweeple who register.” so straight away you know this is going to turn into a paid for service later, which will bring its own problems.
For a start you’re going to have 5,000+ followers, think about how hectic your timeline gets now and how hard it can be to keep up and see what you want from certain people, that’s only going to get worse with huge numbers of followers. Most of those people who are following you will be people who care about high follow count, which often goes hand in hand with high post count, lets say 30 per day (which isn’t overly generous) and you’re already at 150,000 tweets a day from people you don’t know and potentially share no interests with. The people who are not there for a high user count are ones that want to reach a large audience, so you can be sure of a tweet or two a day from them about their services or site or whatever. And that’s just public feed…
If you are following them and likewise they are following you, be ready for the incoming spam DM. How long do you think it will take for spammers to realise they can *AUTOMATICALLY* get 5,000+ followers and be able to spam them? Not long at all, you can be sure of that!
Whilst I realise you can un-follow anyone who annoys you, or even the bulk of the auto adds, how quickly do you think you can go through and manually un-follow all the people it added and avoid those you want to keep / already had? The service doesn’t even offer the ability to auto delete them, instead making it out like a good thing that you keep the followers if you leave – “If at ANY point a member no longer wishes to participate, they can end their subscription and KEEP their followers!” – Yet no mention of the ability to remove entirely, and have the service un-follow all those that it followed.
And while I’m on about what isn’t mentioned on the site, how about these for glaring omissions:
- Privacy policy
- Spam policy
- Abuse policy
- Terms and conditions
You’re expected to put your twitter username and password in a site with none of these available, no mention of what else is done with your username and password etc. Certainly not for me.
Twitter is becoming bigger and bigger every day, and with all the current media attention that’s only going to escalate at a rate of knots, which means an influx of the ‘myspace users’ type of account. This is exactly the service they will gravitate towards, and therefore be followed by your account.
Personally I like to keep my timeline relatively clean, it consists of tweeple that I have a shared interest with, that tweet about things I like or perhaps even just share geography with. Whatever the reason, every person I’m following I’ve chosen to have in my feed because I’m interested in the things they have to say, and I would assume the same for those that follow me.
If this service was as opt-in as it claims to be, then it would simply send you a mail with the details of say 20 tweepme users a day, and you could select if you wanted to follow them or not, instead of just automatically adding them all, that would make it a much better service in my opinion.
If you want a good way to find people that are interested in the same things as you, then I would suggest you try the TweeterTags service I mentioned in my Top Ten Tools to Twitter post. There you can search for people that have tagged themselves as being interested in a certain topic, and if you tag yourself with all of the things that interest you then you will find that your follow count increases as others find you in the tags and follow you from there.
Likewise, if you want to find people who are geographically close to you (and can even sub filter by keyword) then take a look at NearbyTweets and take a look through those people who live nearby and see what they are tweeting about.
I find it interesting that the @tweepme account has been suspended, no doubt for triggering some limit on number of follows per day / per hour / whatever. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this happened to some of the users of the service as well. Remember, its your username and password being used, you give them authority to do whatever they wish with your account, and that includes adding so many people in such a short time as to get your account canned.
All comments and suggestions welcome in the comments below…
~Shepy
Starbucks are Greedy Bastards!
Nov 5th
Sometimes the ethics and actions of some companies scare me, they really do. Right now though im seething at Starbucks, and sadly not for the first time.
I stopped drinking at Starbucks 7 years ago, out of moral objection to their actions on September 11th. Now don’t get me wrong here, I hate the whole ‘this is a post 911 world’ crap that you hear as justification for everything from a delayed flight to why you can only get this particular T-Shirt in this particular shade of teal, and everything in between. Yes, I realise a lot of people died that day and a lot of families were changed forever, but I don’t feel the need to continuously bring it up. That said though I still feel strongly enough about the actions of one particular Starbucks on the day to boycott the brand forever. For those who are not aware of the incident I’m referring to, it essentially boils down to an ambulance worker asking a Starbucks store for bottled water for the victims of the tragedy and him being charged $130 out of his own pocket for that water. Granted Starbucks did go on to donate coffee and a substantial amount of money to the operations following the attack, but I see that more as trying to make up for and cover the initial snafu than anything else. For that reason i have refused to step foot in one ever since, and have actively encouraged everyone I know to do the same should the conversation of coffee houses ever arise. I would urge you now to look for alternative vendors, especially the little places that often serve far superior coffee anyway. In Newcastle you cant go far wrong with the Coffee Trader. If you want to read more about the water incident there is a good write up over on Snopes.
Anyway, back to the point in hand about Starbucks and the recent elections. Whilst I think its great they were giving away free coffee and actively encouraging people to vote such as these two tweets:
We hope there is a record turnout on Tuesday and look forward to celebrating with our customers over a great cup of coffee.
I’m glad everyone got their cup of free coffee today! Happy voting day. It feels a little surreal after watching this for the last 18 months
Then to have all of that good feeling be sharply taken away by the next tweet:
btw, don’t want this to be lost in the chatter today … Gold Cards are available today in all US stores! Register at starbucksgold.com
They don’t want something as trivial as a loyalty card for a coffee chain to be lost ‘in the chatter’ of what is arguably one of the most seminal and pivotal elections in living memory. I can barely find words to express how crass and inappropriate I find that statement.
Coffee isnt the only thing that Starbucks is boiling today, my blood is doing much the same right now.
Their twitter feed is here is you want to go and take a look for yourself.
~Shepy
Urbex n00b may have cost us a site.
Jul 11th
No doubt if you are into Urbex you have already come across the story in the news at the moment about the X-Rays etc found at Law hospital in Carluke, near Edinburgh. Whilst I can appreciate that the X-Rays being there is not a good thing, talking to the press about it and making a national story of it is most definitely not the way to handle it. If he was genuinely concerned for the confidentiality of the information then he should have simply notified the NHS and not discussed it at all with the press.
Some guy who is seemingly new to Urbex (I’m basing this assumption on him only having two sets on his flickr, both of the same site) wanted himself a little bit of fame and glory by having a picture published by the BBC, and then managed to royally stick his size 9′s in his big mouth and get the local NHS in uproar about the site, have them searching it and will probably lead to a tightening of the security at this location.
To quote him directly: “Ring Ring, it’s the BBC on the phone. They tell me they want to do a photo gallery of the hospital using my pics, and it will feature info on urbex, a little about me and the camera, etc etc. I was naturally chuffed, absolutely ecstatic in fact.“ If you are into Urbex for the fame and glory, then you should quite frankly fuck right off and go audition for X-Factor or something if you cant keep your mouth shut and must have your little bit of fame. That majority of us are into it for the love of the buildings, their history, their architecture and the pleasure of being there and photographing it ourselves, not if we can get 5 minutes of fame by having one of our pics on a site.
More quote from this guy:
Throughout the course of the convo, he asks various questions. What type of camera do you use, how long you been into this, have I plans for any other urbex stuff, and finally, the question which resulted in my foot being jammed halfway down my throat, how many photos do I have.
I excitably tell him, ‘I have loads of photos. Some of them are totally unreal too, peoples X-Rays and stuff’. At that point his tone changed, and he put me on hold. About a minute later, he explains to me that he wants to “extend” the feature, but needs to get permission from his editor. I say cool, and we end the call.
Ring Ring, it’s the BBC on the phone, again. This time, a girl, a journalist, and she wants to interview me on the telephone. I agree, and after a few photography related questions, I get the security issues thrown at me.
Do you think security was sufficient?
Nope.
Did you ever see security inside the building?
Nope.
Do you think it would be easy for kids to access?
I guess so.
How surprised were you to find X rays and other personal files.
Surprised I guess? I would have thought it would have all been shipped to the new hospital, or destroyed.
Anyhoo! After several other phonecalls from the original chap who called (who apparently still wants to run the photo feature), and from some of his colleagues, I agreed to be interviewed on site…and whilst I think I have probably ruined this place for photographers in the short term, I hope maybe something good comes out of this.
I really hope for my own sake, the original caller does see some merit in the photos I took. It would suck to have been duped into what is simply a page filler due to slow news. The fact that my photos had nothing personal in them leads me to believe he was originally genuine, and it was my admission to the x rays etc which led to their story.
I am both excited that a wider audience MAY get to see my photos for what they are, and very nervous about any comeback from all this. I dunno if i have done the right thing or not, time will tell.
The amount of self involvement, excite at possibly seeing his name on the BBC with a photo and disregard for other photographers and Urbexers absolutely disgusts me, this is the kind of selfish retard that the hobby definitely does not need. Its thanks to selfish actions like this that sites are continually getting locked down, harder to access and in some extreme cases even bulldozed to prevent further access.
To realise the interview is now taking a completely different angle, and yet still continue to give information that will compromise the site is just idiotic, and then to compound this by going to do an on site interview tells me in no uncertain terms that this guy is more interested in his 15 minutes of fame than he ever was about the patients who’s records are laying at site.
I have previously been to Law myself on two occasions, took plenty of photographs there and thoroughly enjoyed the explore, but you don’t see me blabbing info to the BBC that could lead to the Urbex community losing the site. I have done interviews in the past with journalists about Urbex, and will no doubt do them in the future, but I’m quite certain that at no time would I be stupid and self involved enough to give any information that could compromise a site simply so that i can get my name in lights.
His Flickr page can be found here if you wan’t to go and leave him some comments.
~Shepy
UPDATE: Aww, it seems that poor Gary isn’t too keen on the attention he is getting from the urbex community on this, as he is actively censoring comments left on his flickr page about it.
~Shepy