http://napsterization.org/stories/ en-us mary@hodder.org 2008-07-14T12:16:12-08:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000711.html Based upon the Kevin Drum/ Washington Monthly suggestion, I remixed this week's New Yorker Cover based upon Barry Blitt's Illustration. It is much funnier with the thought bubble and McCain. I think it will be easy for people in the current climate to misunderstand the original. But the remix makes it easier to get that it's supposed to be funny. 711@http://napsterization.org/stories/ The Napster Nation 2008-07-14T12:16:12-08:00 http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000710.html (Part 1 of a 2 part post.) It's been 10 days since we held an alternative event for women who wanted to attend something for girl geeks, but didn't want to be at an event sponsored by, with speaker from or with photographers by a porn company, Zivity because it felt like Zivity was trying to use credibility of girl geeks just after their founder took off her shirt in a video at the top of Techcrunch. Many women I spoke with were amazed at the lack of understanding of this by the Girl Geek Dinner organizers. In discussing this event with people the last few days, it's become clear that what we: me, a couple of women who blogged this, as well as numerous women and men who expressed support for our criticism of the GGD event, understood a few important things that weren't public. When people found out how hard we'd tried to meet with the GGD event organizer, to discuss this before it became a controversy, and what our perspective was verses just the blanket view that we opposed the event in conjunction with a particular sponsor, they really supported the view that we held, which was that we'd tried to talk about it first, were forced to go increasingly public, and that we had a supportable point that women at work, and networking events are included in this, should not be involved with porn, porn companies or photographers paid for by porn companies. And they really supported that we held an event, however last minute, as an alternative, to the GGD event. I've also learned a bit more about the situation, that I wasn't aware of at the time, which I wanted to share. And I wanted to tell what happened at the Girl Geek Revolution event (that name is, as I mentioned earlier, tongue in cheek, because we really felt we had to have a revolution in order not to have porn related things at work). So.. here's what I know about the events the past couple of weeks surrounding the Girl Geek Dinner event: * I was sent an invite to the Girl Geek Dinner event, by @bayareagirlgeek on Twitter on June 16th. Looking at the website then (Located here, but it's been updated from that time three weeks ago; I saw then that Zivity was a sponsor, but later their sponsorship was removed, the link name was changed to remove "zivity" at the end of it and the title the link was created from, and the language around Zivity sponsored photographers was lightened up.) The event, slated for June 26th in SF, showed Cyan Banister, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Zivity, as a speaker, as well as talked about the Zivity sponsored photographers in the post describing the event. * Several of us responded on June 16th to the tweet from @bayareagirlgeek, not knowing who it was who was behind the event and the tweet, saying we were uncomfortable with Zivity as a sponsor because it's a porn company and that didn't feel very supportive of women. We didn't hear anything back: * Again, not realizing who had organized the first Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner that I'd attended on January 31, 2008, I left a comment on the BAGGD blog post announcing dinner #2 on June 26. My comments appeared to be posted, but then later the blog said they were "under moderation." Two other women posted comments, but none of our comments were posted, and appeared based upon the interface to have been deleted. We weren't sure what happened, but discussed this with the "@bayareagirlgeek" in our tweets on twitter, to get the person using that Twitter handle to discuss this with us, as we tried to resolve the issue (see the Summize list of tweets going back to the original invite, and open the "show conversation" links to view the complete conversation.) * On June 17, I decided to post the comments I'd tried to leave at the Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner post to my blog, because I felt really strongly about what was happening, and that porn, in a work environment was not good and would make many women feel uncomfortable and unsupported. And I felt that Zivity in particular, because of the Techcrunch stripper video, was using GGD to get girl geek cred. Those comments are here, and while they didn't comprehensively cover the issues and tell everything that was going on at the time, because they replied specifically to the BAGGD blog post, they were meant to catch the attention via the link (many bloggers follow their inbound links) of whoever had written the post so we could discuss the issues. * On June 18, I checked back at BAGGD blog and the comments had all been removed and the interface said nothing was "awaiting moderation." But I did see in very small type Angie Chang's email as the organizer. I was really surprised, because Angie and I had been through a similar set of things before. In 2007, Women 2.0, an organization I believe Angie co-founded and which runs an annual pitching contest for women entrepreneurs, called Women 2.0 Napkin Business Challenge. That contest required that *only women under 35* be allowed to participate. I had tried to leave a comment on the corresponding blog post at Women 2.0 in 2007, but it was not approved. Note also that while this post now says there are 46 comments, they are currently invisible on that post now for some odd reason that probably is a technical glitch though because many of them are critical, and Angie seems to have a history of not publishing criticism by others on her blogs, it could also be that she simply told the interface not to post them anymore. I have no idea. I wrote a blog post to publich my comments not published at Anglie's blog about the Women 2.0 pitch contest excluding women 35 and over.Angie responded in comments at Napsterization saying she disagreed with me that this was a problem. My thought was first-time women founders need help, no matter their age, and age discrimination in any event was a real problem. Ten or so months later, Angie pinged me, asking to meet because someone (can't remember who but Eve Phillips formerly of Greylock and currently of Chirp comes to mind) had suggested that I wasn't unreasonable, and that she really ought to hear what I had to say about Women 2.0 (btw, I also spoke at an event Women 2.0 held 2 years ago). We had coffee in early 2008, and I explained why I really felt that first time women entrepreneurs needed the confidence boost, and the support of an organizations like Women 2.0, as they go out to pitch VCs for money for their startups. This year, for the 2008 contest, Women 2.0 removed the "under 35" requirement, and made the contest open to any team with 6 or less founders, where 50% were women. Though I couldn't attend I thought that was terrific and congratulate Women 2.0 and Angie for opening up to all women the opportunities the pitch contest gives. So, knowing in June 2008 that Angie was organizing the Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner, and had likely produced the blog post and tweets, I pinged her in email, to say that I'd really like to get together to talk about this issue. After that, I also talked with two other women, who told me they had already pinged Angie, asked to talk on the phone or meet for coffee to talk about the same issue with GGD. That I know of three of us reached out to Angie sometime between the 16th and the 18th trying to talk with her. * June 20, Angie replied to two of us, requesting to meet on the 21st. Since I was leaving the night of the 21st for NYC, and we were having a 100 degF heatwave, I suggested that instead of meeting at 1pm as Angie suggested, maybe we could do 10am? I both phone texted Angie, and replied in email, as did Kaliya Hamlin, about meeting Saturday for a total of 6 messages between us to Angie offering the option of meeting at 10, 11 or as a last resort, the 1pm time Angie had proposed. I was an hour away from the proposed meeting site in Berkeley, but despite having a busy day and workout planned, not to mention packing and a red eye, I wanted to see this discussion happen. Kaliya also spent the day waiting around for the meeting, skipping working out, and other errands, as she too was just about to leave for a conference in Southern California. I also found out about the Valleywag and San Jose Mercury News blog posts. (Neither posting showed up in my RSS feed tracking links to my blog). * June 21. We heard at 4pm Saturday from Angie, who disregarded all the messages to her, but proposed Sunday the 22nd at 11am. By then I was on my way to a family 30th wedding anniversary, and then headed to the airport. Others were off to meetings and dinners, but I replied and suggested we do a phone call (with me in NYC) for 2pm EST/ 11am PST and Mary Trigiani meeting in person with Angie. No reply was received to our suggestions to Angie's proposed meeting time and no phone call took place. * June 22, as I was in NYC, I met a woman who was part of Girl Geek Dinners in London, and friends with Sarah Blow, founder of the entire organization (loosely affiliated as it is, though it it branded the same around the world). This woman, as did approximately 20 other women who were attending Personal Democracy Forum in NYC, told me during the PDF party they were appalled that GGD was having a porn company sponsor and sending photographers, and most had read my blog post, seen my tweets or heard about the issue. They all wanted to do something constructive to voice opposition, and expressed support for my efforts. I asked all to write blog posts about their understanding of the events. * June 23. I received an email from Jackie Danicki who spoke with Sarah Blow, founder of Girl Geek Dinners. Apparently Sarah Blow was "annoyed" with the Zivity GGD situation, and "made GGD remove Zivity as a sponsor." Because of this, I decided to do a blog post to share this new information as well as more completely explain the entire situation to that time. This post, More on Girl Geeks - Yes, Zivity - No was much more direct in analyzing the situation compared to my previous post that had been just the comment I'd intended to leave on the BAGGD blog, and just responded to their announcement of sponsors and the dinner/speaker event. * June 24, I pinged Angie again about doing a call with us. She replied that she was "taken aback" by our reactions to the dinner and Zivity's involvement, and would rather chat on Friday, *after* the Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner, on June 27. I'm not sure what she expected, but as we were trying to talk with her, the dinner was approaching and I felt that the only way to get my views across and mobilize support against the combination of Zivity and Girl Geek Dinners was to blog it publicly. We didn't seem to be getting much direct talking done. In my post, I had directly addressed the issues of what Zivity is, and why I believed it was a bad choice to have them sponsor the event, speak and send photographers because that was the only option I had at that point. * June 25, at the Structure 08 conference I bumped into Calley Nye, and later in the press room, she asked me very directly if I'd like to do an alternative event. I did but definitely didn't have time to do it myself. I told her if we did it together, I'd do it. We went to work on holding our own event, in order to have an alternative event that didn't have Porn photographers shooting the attendees. And more importantly, to make the point that porn and it's associated issues don't belong at work. Part 2 of this will be posted in the next few days and I'll link to it here when it's up. 710@http://napsterization.org/stories/ Culture 2008-07-09T19:53:01-08:00 http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000709.html SEE UPDATE AT BOTTOM. Cyan Banister has written Calley Nye to tell her to tell me that Zivity was never a sponsor of Girl Geek Dinners. Okay.. all I can go on is this: Zivity was listed as a sponsor, or implied as a sponsor on the GGD SF site. I believe they removed it later, and I got email from the London GGD folks (who founded GGD) that they asked the SF folks to remove Zivity as a sponsor. Wha? Cyan didn't realize this blog has comments? You can reach me here, and leave a comment. Or you can blog about it on your own site. Or you can read this blog, find the email, and tell me directly if you don't want to use social media tools to tell me. Since Zivity, a social media porn company, is unwilling to use social media tools to set the record straight, well, I'm mystified but updating you to say, I *think* Zivity is denying they were a sponsor of the Girl Geek Dinners, but they won't say it publicly or to me directly. In any event, we are still holding our Girl Geek Revolution (without the porn site speaker/photographers in attendance) at a networking event tonight at Sugar Cafe. Why revolution? Cause you gotta have one to get the porn outta your work, apparently. Come have fun, network with girl geeks, eat a cupcake and have a cocktail. More info here at Calley Nye's blog. UPDATE 7/3/08: Note: I went back and found this tweet, written by BAGGD (@bayareagirlgeek on Twitter), to announce the event. And in their own words, they describe Zivity as a sponsor: A few days after the event, I learned from a documentary filmmaker, Cianna Stewart, working on a piece on Zivity, that Cyan had told her that Zivity had in fact paid for the photographers directly. So to my mind, they *were* a sponsor of the Girl Geek Dinners. This is akin to when an event is held, and a sponsor pays a vendor, say the lunch provider or a cocktail party provider, at an event directly. But they are listed as a sponsor in the event web page, and they are posted as a sponsor at the event through some signage. But that sponsor does not write the event makers a check. So the idea that Zivity would send me a message through a third party, to tell me they had never sponsored Girl Geek Dinners, "never written a check directly to BAGGD" as evidence of this, and therefore I had the story wrong was, to my way of thinking about events, meant to mislead me and Calley Nye into thinking they had never been a sponsor. In fact, Cianna Stewart did confirm for me that she had seen the Girl Geek Dinners web page, and noted that Ziviity was originally listed as a sponsor below Facebook, but also later saw that Zivity was quietly removed from the sponsor list after our blog posts criticizing the combining of a porn company's sponsorship with GGD. Cianna also told me that Cyan/Zivity told her the sponsored photos would "belong to" Girl Geek Dinners. Which means Zivity paid for something at the GGD event that was akin to sponsorship. Additionally, I went back to look at an early email from almost three weeks ago, when we were trying to meet with the Girl Geek Dinners organizer, Angie Chang, who describes "the Zivity and Girl Geek Dinner partnership" in an email to us. To my mind, a partnership, when you just invite someone to speak, is not necessary and people don't usually describe speaking arrangements that way. Lots of us speak at events and have no partnership with the event organizers. A partnership for an event is pretty much always around some kind of sponsorship, regardless of whether the money is paid directly to the event organizer or involves payment to a vendor who performs a service at the event, or a media sponsorship where a sponsor and event organizer essentially exchange advertisements about each other. In all instances, these are sponsorships. So to me, Zivity *was* a sponsor of Girl Geek Dinners, and it was disingenuous at best, and lying at worst, for Cyan and Angie to claim that Zivity "never sponsored" GGD. 709@http://napsterization.org/stories/ Culture 2008-06-26T09:33:48-08:00 http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000708.html Tonight in SF at Sugar Cafe, 6-9pm. More info here at Calley Nye's Blog. Food sponsored by She's Geeky! We're calling it Girl Geek Revolution (okay that's a bit tongue in cheek, but apparently here you have to have a revolution to get a Girl Geek networking event without a porn company as sponsor, speaker or sending their photographers to use their photos for who knows what -- but I'm sure when they stick them on flickr or their own site.. they'll be playing up your girl geek reputation and name to help legitimize their porn company). Re: Zivity, the porn site. I checked out their site with a friend's login. He told me "...yeah.. it's a porn site by my standards." He went on to say that it's more analogous to Playboy, as in, you can see naked girls, posed in retro pinup style, with just a little twat showing, and while he thinks most men who watch hardcore porn (he characterizes that as video of one or more people actually having sex) will think it's cute porn.. and hopefully catch women they know there so they can tease them into going out with them, especially if they work with them, but they won't really use it because it doesn't have the porn they really want day-to-day, if they use porn, which is more hardcore. That said, when I looked, I did note that it was basically full of Playboy style porn. Or like my friend's company in Berkeley, who for the past 10 years has done retro porn. That company gets real homemade "porn" from the 50s, 60s and 70s, mostly like Zivity's stuff. And he does well.. it's a beautifully done site, making him around $200k a month for the past several years. Anyone can submit and he approves and styles the pages. He's a designer by trade, so everything looks like the Zivity site.. which is.. very well styled. However, there is a big difference between my friend's porn site and Zivity's porn site: Zivity lies to me in their tagline, by saying "It's not porn." Red flags. Sorry.. I just don't like to be lied to. And, they want it both ways: they want to say, "We're women founded (1 of the 3 founders is a woman), and support women by sharing the money, via our social network for porn but we're not porn!" That's nice.. better than many porn sites do with their "models." But it's still porn, which is defined as, "Sexually explicit material meant to arouse people" according to the dictionary both online and at my house. It doesn't matter if you style it nicely.. it's still porn. The other way Zivity wants it is to be not thought of porn, but rather to trade on Girl Geek cred, by sponsoring, speaking at and providing a photographer to the Girl Geek Dinners. They want to be "in the community" of geeks and use our reputations to gain legitimacy at a work event, for their VC funded company. They want to seem like a woman founded company (33% wouldn't even cut the Women 2.0 pitch contest requirements) but Zivity's management is publicly stated as being all male, which is very similar to most porn companies where the men sell the women's images (straight men in porn don't get paid a lot and aren't what sells.. it's the pretty women that get you the cash.. hence Zivity's decision to just post women "models"... men may come later but I'll bet you it's gay men.. whose porn also brings in lots of cash). But oopps, their founder (and former CEO CMO) Cyan Banister (someone asked me if that was a real name, or a made up porn star name... don't know if it's made up or not.. sorry) took her shirt off at the top of a Techcrunch post. Exposing the lie that it's really a porn site. And using her body to get to the top. And we are supposed to respect that on a business level, and lend our geek cred to this company that lies to us in their tagline? Don't think so. Once Zivity decides to be honest, and just state that they are a porn company, and not use the porn to get legitimately geek press or work events to stand next to people and insinuate credibility as a VC funded startup just like everyone else (the porn just makes them different, and not at all appropriate for work), I might like them again. But until that changes.. I don't trust Zivity at all. 708@http://napsterization.org/stories/ Culture 2008-06-26T07:53:22-08:00 http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000707.html Just a quick update to my last post. Apparently the founder of Girl Geek Dinners, Sarah Blow, made GGD SF remove Zivity as a sponsor. I was told this from someone I met at PDF2008 who emailed her, which she forwarded. I didn't hear this directly. But it does explain why I had seen Zivity sponsorship there as a sponsor at the GGD SF website when I wrote about this originally.. and then it was gone without explanation. Couldn't figure out what happened.. but just got word of why it's gone. Blow didn't like Zivity sponsoring.. apparently she picked up on Zivity using the GGD sponsorship to buy cred with GGD. A thought about the many women who work in jobs where they would prefer to not be sexualized at work because they are working with their brains don't have the power or control over their situations some of us do. For example, I worked with a woman who was a single-mom legal secretary, w/ 7yr old son, severely mentally and physically retarded, who desperately needed the office provided insurance. The person I watched harass her, chose sex as the tool, knowing she was in a week position. It's the same as a child molester choosing the weakest kid around to go after because that kid doesn't have a good support network. Catholic priests come to mind, where there are many cases where they would pick a weaker kid over another stronger one to abuse. The problem is, the weakest are vulnerable, without protections and standards for behavior. I wish it weren't the case, but I also recognize that when people can abuse someone, sometimes they will. Which brings us back to my point around GGD, which is that people feel bad about speaking out (I'm witnessing all the people telling me in person how upset they are about this GGD dinner/Zivity and yet, I'm one of a few writing or talking about it publicly. I'm trying to get them to blog about, but they are scared of being pinpointed as the woman who whines about this. I don't want to be that either, but someone has to say something). And people who feel bad about it are often also the ones coerced into doing something they don't want to do... like allowing themselves to be sexualized at work, to be forced to be "hot" first and maybe then be good at their jobs, worth funding, worth hiring for a leadership role. It's unfortunate that we live with that in our culture. But why put women even more in that position, with a Girl Geek Dinner originally to be sponsored by Zivity (sponsorship has now been removed by the founder, as I mentioned above) with Zivity speaking and taking photos. By going to the dinner, it feels as if you are asked to support and agree with Zivity in this implicit way... to put up with the photos thing (where do the photos go, and you have to ask: who owns them and when do they show up on Zivity's blog to show how cool they are associating with Girl Geeks?). It's just bad for professional women to be put in this position. What's interesting about Zivity is that they want it both ways: tech company with woman founder, girl geek cred, sort of a "we're just like everyone else so don't segregate us for being in porn" thing, and at the same time, they really work the porn to get as much publicity as possible. Cyan wants geek cred, and wants to take her shirt off for Techcrunch and did their thing at Techcrunh40 where they walked around with company promotion on their breasts and ass. In the end, they are a porn company, and if it's okay for them to sponsor/speak/photograph Girl Geeks, then why isn't it okay for Girls Gone Wild to do the same? And how bout Penthouse and Playboy? In the 70's Playboy tried to sponsor a lot of women's groups and events, but most wouldn't take the money because those women felt it was "blood money" derived from the objectification of women sexually, and here were those groups trying to make a place for women where they didn't have to be "hot first," where they wouldn't have to be sexualized at work, where they could be successful the way men can be, and it didn't have to be about their bodies first. So one founder of Zivity is a woman. Have you looked at their team page? Of the three founders, one is a Cyan, but she's not CEO, and there is only one other woman at the company (user experience analyst). It's not like they went out and aggressively hired women engineers. They are like any other porn company.. mostly all men, exploiting women, to make money. They share 80% of their income with the women? How generous.. just a bit more than Suicide Girls. But isn't it really just the same thing? 707@http://napsterization.org/stories/ Culture 2008-06-23T11:50:47-08:00 http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000706.html AP seems to have given a statement to Paid Content about the bruhaha the past few days: In response to questions about the use of Associated Press content on the Drudge Retort web site, the AP was able to provide additional information to the operator of the site, Rogers Cadenhead, on Thursday. That information was aimed at enabling Mr. Cadenhead to bring the contributed content on his site into conformance with the policy he earlier set for his contributors. Both parties consider the matter closed. In addition, the AP has had a constructive exchange of views this week with a number of interested parties in the blogging community about the relationship between news providers and bloggers and that dialogue will continue. The resolution of this matter illustrates that the interests of bloggers can be served while still respecting the intellectual property rights of news providers. I find it a total non-statement and completely bizarre. Also, Robret Cox of Media Bloggers Association is supposed to be on Blog Talk Radio at 3 pm EST today. I probably won't be able to listen until halfway through.. at 12:30 PST/3:30 EST this afternoon as I have a meeting. Hope they have a podcast later. And hope that some real information about yesterday's meeting between Cadenhead / Cox and Jim Kennedy at the AP comes out. My questions include: 1. what is the status of the 7 C&D notices from AP to Cadenhead? 2. what is AP going to do in future? 3. what was the tone of the meeting and who was there? 4. what agreements came out of the meeting and can we see them? 5. what precedent does this set for future blogger quotes and interactions with AP? Hoping these and other questions will be addressed in the radio interview later today. 706@http://napsterization.org/stories/ Journalism | Publishing 2008-06-20T07:32:42-08:00 http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000705.html More on the AP/Rogers Cadenhead story (covered already here and http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000700.html). So.. Saul Hansell sez in his condescending and rude blogpost: The A.P., Hot News and Hotheaded Blogs, There was a lot of anger in the blogosphere last week over The Associated Press’s assertion that some blogs were infringing its copyright by publishing excerpts of its articles. When I finally reached Jim Kennedy, an Associated Press vice president, he told me that the news agency now feels its demand was heavy-handed and was rethinking its policies. What it really sez: bloggers are out of control little children having temper tantrums. Since when is passion for your craft and the right to free speech, and belief in Fair Use as a constitutional right, something bloggers should be casual about? A number of bloggers I respect a great deal didn’t find the A.P.’s openness to their ideas to be enough and have declared war on it. As someone who is both a blogger and an employee of a mainstream news organization, I worry that this hotheaded response is part of what gives blogs a bad name. And it doesn’t reflect the complexity of the underlying questions, which can be traced back to when the telegraph was the revolutionary technology of the day. What it really sez: I respect you, even if you are out of control at times. But since I'm the parent and your the children, let me school you on how to think about this. Because otherwise you'll hurt yourselves even more. The current dust-up involves seven blog posts on the Drudge Retort (not the bigger Drudge Report) that contained short excerpts of A.P. articles. Last week, the A.P. demanded that the Drudge Retort remove the posts because they violated its copyright. Mr. Kennedy now says the news agency plans to create new guidelines for how blogs can use its material, after discussions with representatives of blogging groups and others. What it really sez: you bloggers get into these tiffs all the time, and now one of yours has been spanked with C&Ds to remove the quotes he overused. But the nice man at AP will create guidelines for you, after meeting with your institutional representative (hopefully a grown up). In reaction to what Mr. Kennedy said in that article, Michael Arrington declared on TechCrunch: “So here’s our new policy on A.P. stories: they don’t exist.” Jeff Jarvis, on BuzzMachine, wrote: “Back off, A.P. Because we won’t.” What it really sez: evidence that you bloggers are out of control. This is followed by examples of the hot news doctrine, what AP could do to handle the situation and a little history. Consider yourselves schooled. At the end of the article, it's particularly rude and condescending: I don’t know what the A.P. will do. But neither do the bloggers calling for a boycott of the A.P. (By the way, that’s a silly concept as none of these blogs actually pays the A.P. any money. If CBS News or The Huffington Post — an A.P. client — began a boycott, that might hurt.) What it really sez: You bloggers are so silly, how can you boycott something you don't pay for but you can't hurt the AP. (Um, what about all those links and traffic driven to AP articles.. I believe attention is the most valuable thing on the internet, and if that's true, and bloggers stop linking and sending readers, well, that's a huge loss!) Mr. Jarvis, in particular, often talks about blogging as a conversation. It seems like the A.P. wants to talk, and many bloggers would prefer a temper tantrum to a discussion. What it really sez: You bloggers want to converse but like little children, throwing temper tantrums, you are being spiteful about conversing here. So, if I were to follow what Saul sez, I would believe that I was a little child, out of control, refusing to talk, and he was the calm, cool, collected dad, who will set things straight, make me see reason, and stop quoting those darned AP stories or thinking I have any power with my linking habits, before I go have a talk with the nice folks at AP. Saul, please. The narrative and tone in your post isn't a good one to get anyone to "see reason." It's parental and I'm an adult. Let's start over, and try this again. How about a headline like: Bloggers, Passionate about Their Fair Use Rights, Defend Them Vigorously 705@http://napsterization.org/stories/ Journalism | Publishing 2008-06-19T08:13:36-08:00 http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000704.html This is a follow up to my post a couple of days ago, detailing the AP situation and protesting their request that bloggers just use AP summaries of stories, not quote from (per fair use) their stories, and their C&D notices to Rogers Cadenhead of Drudge Retort. Since then, AP and the NYTimes have written stories that are partially (NYTimes) or totally (in the case of AP) untrue. While I can understand how people from large institutions might only be able to understand that another "institution" (such as it is, Media Bloggers Association) might have the same buy in, power or whatever to exist (they don't represent all bloggers) and negotiate some kind of blogger policy, AP and NYT need to "correct" and restate their stories. AP: AP to meet with blogging group to form guidelines NYT: The Associated Press to Set Guidelines for Using Its Articles in Blogs Note that the NYTimes article says this which is the misleading paragraph: Mr. Kennedy said the company was going to meet with representatives of the Media Bloggers Association, a trade group, and others. He said he hopes that these discussions can all occur this week so that guidelines can be released soon. Media Bloggers Association, per the reporting by Culture Kitchen, did not say they were "representing all bloggers" to get some sort of policy worked out with AP, but rather, at Rogers' request, are representing *his case only,* in order to deal with the 7 C&D notices AP sent him. The NYT (is implying) and AP in its headline and throughout the article outright, completely misunderstand this, and lead readers to misunderstand that there is even an institution that can "negotiate for the blogosphere." The blogophere is made up of millions of little spheres of conversation and influence, and those are made up of tens of millions of bloggers. It's utterly ridiculous and shows a complete lack of understanding of the blogosphere to believe there is some sort of institution on the other side of traditional media. The whole point of blogging is that people do what they want, that online publishing is completely atomized, and that if some sort of policy were to be negotiated with one small group, no one else would likely follow it *because Fair Use exists* and I would personally rather follow the constitution on this one. I think it's time for a correction/restatement/clarification at NYT and a complete retraction at AP. 704@http://napsterization.org/stories/ Journalism | Publishing 2008-06-19T07:27:39-08:00 http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000703.html I just left this comment on the Girl Geek Dinner Site, but my comment is "awaiting moderation," so I'm posting my reply to their post here: Glad to see you are doing another girl geek dinner. I wanted to pass along my thought when i saw that Zivity was sponsoring the dinner and speaking. I'm guessing that they got a lot of flack for the CEO taking of her shirt at the top of Techcrunch from women in SV. Seeing that hardly any women get a Techcrunch feature, many women, myself included, concluded that the message was the way to get on TC was to take your shirt off. I thought the video itself was funny, but it just didn't belong on TC and sexualizes the business of creating a startup by women. It just feels uncomfortable. Then seeing that Zivity was hosting and speaking here.. I'm guessing that they were trying to get back into the good graces of tech women by doing this. About 10 women have commented to me today (at Supernova) that they are appalled by Zivity and Girl Geek Dinner collaborating. It's not that we object to porn, just to the using (or appearance of using) girl geeks to get back their cred. Even if that’s not what's happening from their perspective, the rest of us who would like to *not* be sexualized and objectified in our work lives really find the Zivity association disconcerting. I hope you aren't being used, but I also won't attend on Thursday night because I don't want to support Zivity. One other thing not in my comment: I would not want to have a Zivity photography taking photos of women at this event for Girl Geeks. It's a professional event.. and further promotes in this context the sexualization of women at work. It would be fine at a fun event.. but not this dinner. 703@http://napsterization.org/stories/ Culture 2008-06-17T14:04:38-08:00 http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000700.html What's going on is this: Rogers Cadenhead received 7 C&Ds from the Associated Press, because he quoted from their articles in Drudge Retorted. My view in looking his quotes is that they fall absolutely under fair use (they are all within the range of a paragraph quotes from 39 to 75 words) per Saul Hansell of NYTimes. Jeff Jarvis, Culture Kitchen and others have been reporting and opining.. AP has said: "when we feel the use is more reproduction than reference, or when others are encouraged to cut and paste" they will go after people, but Saturday, Jim Kennedy of AP backed off some and said the C&Ds had been heavy handed and they would review their blogger policy. And now, their executives have decided to suspend the earlier decision to go after people like Rogers Cadenhead due to links to their articles (um.. those bloggers were doing AP a favor linking..) and quotes. But at least according to other's reports, AP hasn't withdrawn the C&Ds from Rogers. Jim Kennedy also said they want bloggers to use "summaries" of their articles, not direct quotes (huh? Fisking is impossible and quotes are key to getting at issues!) and therefore will keep the C&Ds in place because they "... feel the use is more reproduction than reference..." I've been watching this with a lot of consternation the past few days.. I think AP is wrong here, and until they remove the C&Ds and agree that quotes are fair use, I think the blogosphere, and the IP crowd are right to push back and call for things like boycott. Richard Kastelein of Atlantic Free Press created Unassociated press and has even come up with a badge for the boycott: Culture Kitchen is reporting on the boycott here with a great summary of events. Updated: Jeff Jarvis reports on the giant hole. 700@http://napsterization.org/stories/ Journalism | Publishing 2008-06-16T07:14:32-08:00 http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000699.html Ok, let me just get this out there first. I hate Citibank. It wasn't always like this. I got my credit card through them 15 years ago, because I wanted American Airlines miles. But lately, the past couple of years, Citibank has just gotten worse and worse. It's like they actively subscribe to that newish thing corporations have been doing where they treat us all a little worse and a little worse, to make incrementally more money. And we all take it, because it's just a little and we don't have time to fix them by going away. It started maybe five years ago, when they told me I couldn't walk in a check from my bank (not a Citibank check) to deposit a payment on the credit card any longer. Since I would sometimes forget to do the online billpay or mail a check in time for the deadline, I could walk in to the branch two blocks from my house and pay. Well, no longer. They simply wouldn't accept them in person unless I opened a Citibank account. Well, that seemed like the worst marketing ever to me (coercion), to get me to open a new account there. After that I mostly used online billpay, and generally did it at least 5 days ahead of the deadline, because my bank takes 2 days to send them a notice that the money is waiting at my bank. Sort of an internal bank-to-bank email, that prompts Citibank to collect the money. They ask for it right away, and it's essentially a cash wire. Then Citibank credits my account right away. No problem. Until recently. I started getting calls from Citibank about 10 days or so after doing the online billpay, to, get this: "verify my payment." I literally said the first month they called, "You're joking, right?" I mean, they had a cash wire from my bank. Some online billpays are done via bank check and take five days, but not to major corporations and other banks like Citibank. Those take two days, and are very efficient. The minute I hit the "enter" button on my screen to send payment from my checking, money is withdrawn and held by my bank to make the payment to Citibank. After the call, where I reiterated that Citibank had cash in hand from my bank, and we hung up. I assumed all was fine. No way. They "held" the funds, just to "make sure," for another 5 days, twice declining my card (i had just gone on vacation and was maxed out, thus, a large payment). These declines were for $10 and $24.95. I called and was told about the holds. They said something about how they usually allow small amounts through, but when I pointed out that $10 and $25 were pretty small and how small were they talking, anyway.. they dropped that one. Then, a month later it all happens again. I get this call to "verify payment." Now I'm mad. Apparently they are only looking at the last six months of payments (the person I spoke with could not see back any further in the history) and since the payments had each been a little more than the last (by at least $200, so in other words, one was for $2500, the next for $2800, and the most recent for $3000), I'm now suspicious to Citibank. WTF. Why is that suspicious? Especially when I've had the same checking account at my other bank also for 15 years. So I'm told that paying more makes me risky. Nothing else matters. Wo. So, basically, they hold the $3k again for 5 days just in case. And in my calls to them, they tell me that the department that does security sets the heuristics (my word, not theirs) for holds and Security told the woman I'm speaking with that there is nothing they can do. So while she understands Citibank is getting cash from my bank, directly, and that it's generally bad for them to decline purchases because they are losing money (they didn't the second month decline anything due to the hold but did it the prior month post vacay), they have to follow the security department's algorithms (again, my word, not hers). Great. So then yesterday, I go to buy gas. And my card, which now has tons of room and almost no new charges, and is wide fucking open for a skyhigh-priced tank of gas, gets declined. The pump tells me to go inside, to the attendant. Great. Do so, even in bit of rush. And he swipes it, and it says on the screen: Declined. So I pay with ATM (I only carry one CC card, though I have more at home). Get gas. Call Citibank. They explain that the charge hit a limit for the amount of gas I can buy (WTF!) in a month, and that I bought too much, or it could be that that station hasn't raised their limits what with all the new high gas prices per gallon to allow people to buy more in a month. Ok. So I buy gas twice a month. Costs around $90 to fill the tank. Your kidding me right? I can't spend $180 a month on gas if I want to? And I do. So I reply, well, what is the answer? She tells me, you should tell that station to up their limits for CC charges per month. Again, WTF. Like I'm supposed to know about the backend heuristics and algorithms that Citibank and Union76 use to combat fraud? And do something about it? I haven't even bought gas at that exact station in over 2 months. And she verifies this in my records. But I bought at another Union76 station within the last month (my engine/mechanic asked me to get either Union76 or Chevron or Shell gas.. what can I say, I'm following order because I don't freaking understand car engines). So basically, with gas prices rising, Citibank and the gas companies have some weird heuristics, that we don't even know about. And I got caught in one. So I respond, "You and Union76 are big companies and you must talk to each other because I'm sure a lot of people buy gas there with Citibank cards. So why don't YOU work out the raised limit for purchases instead of me?" To which she had no response and wanted to know if there was anything else she could help me with. OMG.. the possibilities are so great. Anyway, I called Citibank back again to discuss more things about my card, as I got the next bill in the mail, and just decided I hate them too much to stay there, even if the only reason I have the card is to get AA miles. Which leads to the second clusterfuck going on here. I have several hundred thousand miles generated through the use of this stupid card, over 15 years. And I've only once actually used the damn miles. Because every time I call to use them, they laugh at me because I only called say, in February for a June trip to Europe, or 2 months ahead for an upgrade. Once, once, an upgrade actually came through but not first without spending three months on the wait list to get the upgrade. In other words, AA may be the gambit to get you to use the card, but you can't really use the stupid miles if you have a life and can't plan, oh, years in advance to get a plane ticket (i usually buy tix to europe a few days to a month ahead, and everywhere else, like days ahead, because I have a life, thanks). Anyway, that's the story. So today I worked out getting rid of Citibank. I liked it because I have the number memorized for online purchases (probably the biggest reason I've put up with Citibank's crap). But I will memorize a new CC number. And I'm going to plan a trip like a year ahead so I can use up all the miles (I'll probably have to take about 8 people with me to someplace like Antartica) because if I don't have the card AA will probably cancel all the miles I've earned. And then this whole stupid corporate hazing I've been experiencing, with increasingly stupid rules, for good paying customers that make them a lot of fracking money! will have been for naught. So, where do all my readers want to go? 699@http://napsterization.org/stories/ New Technologies 2008-05-22T17:35:11-08:00 http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000698.html Luv this remix (noted on Cartoon Brew) by Nick Bertke. He says 90% of the music is remixed from audio from the Disney (1951) film. You can download the mp3 here. 698@http://napsterization.org/stories/ The Napster Nation 2008-05-22T11:18:01-08:00 http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000697.html IF I HAD TWITTER (The Twitter Song)* ** If I had Twitter I'd tweet in the morning I'd tweet in the evening All over this LAN I'd tweet out danger I'd tweet out a warning I'd tweet out love between my brothers and my sisters All over this WAN If I had a cell phone I'd txt in the morning I'd txt in the evening All over gsm I'd txt out danger I'd txt out a warning I'd txt out love between my brothers and my sisters All over this closed-source nightmare of overcharging dinosaurs la la la If I had a photo I'd flickr in the morning I'd flickr in the evening All over this land I'd flickr out danger I'd flickr out a warning I'd flickr out love between my brothers and my sisters All over this land Well I've got Twitter And I've got a cell phone And I've got flickr'd photos All over this open web It's the tweet of justice It's the txt of freedom It's the datasharing love between my brothers and my sisters All over this LAND * words and music adapted from Lee Hays and Pete Seeger ** corny parody of online culture by me. 697@http://napsterization.org/stories/ Culture 2008-05-12T22:52:05-08:00 http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000696.html I'm speaking at the Girls in Tech Power Femme Roundup put on by Adriana Gascoigne. Here the info if you'd like to come (from Adriana): the Girls in Tech femme-Power RoundUP on April 29th at 6:30pm at Orrick, San Francisco. We have an AMAZING group of panelists joining us. Some of these lovely ladies include: Kaamna Dhawan, Skewz.com Eve Phillips, Chirp Interactive Jeanine LeFlore, LiveHit Mary Hodder, Dabble Jory Des Jardins, Blogher Layne Gray, Vivanista Sarah Lacy, BusinessWeek/Yahoo! Tech Ticker Rebecca Parsons, ThoughtWorks Sasha Cagen, StyleMob/GLAM.com Moderator: Sue Kwon, Anchorwoman, CBS 5 To RSVP, please click on the following link: http://gitfemmepower.eventbrite.com 696@http://napsterization.org/stories/ 2008-04-29T08:15:09-08:00 http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000695.html Webguild sent out a very disturbing email this morning, saying that because they held evening events named "The Future of Web Apps" (also a Carson company conference series event name) and "Web 20 Conference and Expo" (also an OReilly conference series event name) that Google had ceased to sponsor or host the WebGuild events. WebGuild's post is here: called "Shame on You Tim OReilly." I read it, and found it disconcerting, because if true, it implies that OReilly (not Carson) went to Google, instead of approaching Webguild directly, and used its "old boy's network" to get Google to pull support, because of the naming conflicts. Then, I left a comment tried to leave a comment on the WebGuild post, which said (which was up temporarily but has now been deleted): Hi, From the outside, this does sound disturbing, but I'm reserving judgment until I see answers to a few questions. First, I agree with Michael Slater above that it's strange to name your evening event after The Future of Web Apps conference (not an OReilly event, but rather a Carson event) and your conference after the Web 20 Conference and Expo which is an OReilly event. Why not change the names a bit, to avoid confusion in the marketplace (the point of trademarks)? Second, I don't think OReilly sued IT@Cork but rather sent them a Cease and Desist letter. I think you should correct your post as such. They subsequently worked things out, without a lawsuit. Did OReilly and Carson contact you directly about the naming conflict? You don't say in your post but that's a very important point. Lastly, I don't think you help your argument by conflating the "old boy network" as you call it, with your issue, which is that Trademark holders went around you to your sponsors to put pressure on you. Pls let us know the answers to help us understand more about what's happened. Thanks, mary Note that the Michael Slater comment is now missing(note: Slater did a post on the missing comment and issues here) (as is mine now.. a few minutes after it was briefly posted) from the WebGuild post, which was legitimate but negative, suggesting that it was really strange to name *two* events after two other conferences. Other later comments are there. For a while, they didn't post mine, but now it's up, listed before others that appeared before it in the list. Anyway, I have to say, based upon seeing the Slater comment disappear, and now mine, they just lost a lot of points. I've attended their events in the past, but now I'm not so sure I would go, or sympathize with their issues. I'd really like answers to the questions I wrote, so that I can make up my own mind about what they are doing. But getting lots of people to blog negatively about Tim isn't the answer here. We need better community solutions than that for solving IP issues and community confusion for naming issues with events. Updated: Techcrunch wrote about this same topic Jan 1, 2008 which gives more background on Webguild. 695@http://napsterization.org/stories/ Culture 2008-04-28T10:29:31-08:00