I originally saw the story of Niall Kennedy teaching Microsoft a hard lesson in hot-linking on SeattlePI. Well, I guess it was supposed to be a lesson in IP licensing. A Microsoft blog direct linked one of Niall’s Creative Commons (CC) licensed images on Flickr without giving credit (violating the license). They also didn’t link back to Flickr, a requirement that is spelled out every time you copy Flickr HTML for embedding.
The PI blog said he replaced the image with a pornographic image censored with the CC logo. I immediately wondered “wait… Niall has properly licensed pornographic images?” and then “Niall has CC licensed porn? Where did he find this magical stuff?” He used the Goatse image. An image which I doubt anyone could turn up the license holder to clear. Using an uncleared image to make a point about licenses: stupid.
In his post, Niall even relates how popular his original picture was when he published it June 2005. How he sent out many DMCA notices to people that were misusing his image back then. Invoking the DMCA is a tactic used by many corporate copyright holders and has all the grace and subtlety of a shotgun. Fighting fire with fire isn’t going to help out any copyleft activists.
Niall says that he didn’t know how to contact Microsoft or the post author to have the photo removed. After swapping the photo, he contacted the author directly and got a response. What? So, contacting the author did work, but he decided to be an ass instead. Ah, preemptive strikes in our daily lives.
His final summary reads something like “For all the IP they’ve defended, Microsoft should know better”. It reminded me of an exchange I had with Will earlier this summer at the Maker Faire.
Me: What do you want to do?
Will: Want to go by the Microsoft booth and tell them Windows Mobile sucks?
Me: I work for a huge corporation now; I can’t be walking up and saying ‘some small part of your company sucks!’”
I think Niall’s approach to defending his IP was completely misguided.
Update: BoingBoing is dealing with someone misusing the DMCA right now.