Is it safe now to assume that Niall Kennedy didn’t leave Microsoft thinking happy thoughts?

Once a Microsofty that I gave three to one odds being a possible blogger replacement for Scoble, he apparently was (is?) so at odds with official Microsoft RSS blog that when they hotlinked one of his Flickr images without permission, instead of dropping them a note asking them (politely/sternly/whatever) to remove it, he changed the hotlinked image to a semi-pornographic (note: never saw it, just going off Todd Bishop from the Seattle PI’s report below) image.

:

[Kennedy] wasn’t pleased that Microsoft used his photo on a commercial site, without attribution. In addition, he said, the use of the photo violated the Flickr terms of service by not linking back to the site.

“Basically they stole one of my photos and put it on their blog,” Kennedy said. “I decided to make them very aware of that fact.”

I don’t like unauthorized hotlinking either, but definitely wouldn’t have gone that far with people at a company I used to work at.

Couldn’t Niall just pick up the phone and call somebody over there he worked with and knew? Doesn’t he have some insider connection to the RSS team being he helped develope an RSS platform there? I’m not a Microsoft employee, never was, and even I know a few people at the big M internally I could contact to get help with a problem like this. It’s not like this was happening on some splog from somebody in Russia or China.

If all else failed he could have blogged about the negative experience and enjoyed 15 minutes of blogger attention for sticking it to Microsoft. Probably would/will get slashdotted and dugg anyway.

The Microsoft RSS blog probably burned through a small bit of bandwidth, but oddly, they weren’t even burning Niall’s bandwidth. A look at Niall’s Flickr account quickly reveals that he is a pro member which means for $24.95 USD a year he has unlimited bandwidth. The Microsoft RSS blog team was burning Yahoo’s bandwidth.

Come on, Niall, it’s not like this was your own webhosting account! If Microsoft had done the same thing to one of the images on Niall’s own web hosting that would have cost him money. Since we know that’s not the case, now we get that they violated the image copyright. Yes, that sucks and is wrong but if Kennedy hasn’t been ripped off hundreds, maybe thousands of times before in the same manner, I’d be shocked. Has he taken this action with anybody else or was it only Microsoft that was punished?

If that’s indeed the case that he singled out Microsoft, then let me provide the definition for this sordid affair in one word: grandstanding.

I get more pissed at hotlinkers who cost our company money and rip us off than those who do only the latter. I’d like hotlinkers to do neither but it’s a fact of running any website that people are going to link your content without paying any regard to the copyright. The solution if you can’t get their attention? DMCA takedown notice.

An unregistered commenter on the Seattle PI piece writes:

Mr. Kennedy may have had a point, but the way he did it was completely childish and unprofessional. Just a CC logo would have been much better and to the point. Good luck to him in getting any company to hire him, or work with his business… I know I wouldn’t.

This seems extreme too and unsurprisingly comes from some anonymous coward. My name is signed on this piece and Niall can contact me if he feels the desire or need to refute anything written here. Have some stones anon cowards and sign your name if you want to take a shot at somebody. These are the bottom feeders of the web.

BTW, the odds now of Niall Kennedy being the Scoble replacement blogger are “safely” a million to one

To end on a more positive note, I think Major Nelson’s blog has ascended to being the Microsoft blogger at the moment (certainly open to discussion/debate in the comments below on this if you feel differently as I haven’t read/followed all the Microsofty bloggers). Nelson’s blog is updated regularly, full of good insider content, interesting podcast and fresh material from the source. Scoble rarely covered games when he worked there and actually pointed to Major’s blog as being better than his at one time. Nice work, Major!

Update 6:56pm PST Looks like Niall is saying he did contact the author of the offending hotlinking post at Scoble’s blog:

Robert, want to review your facts at all? I contacted Sean Lyndersay, the author of the post, this morning telling him he might want to swap out the image and let him know each of both the CC violation and the Flickr ToS violation. After the image was removed from the Microsoft blog I swapped the original photo back in. Sean replied to my e-mail with his own interpretation of non-commercial.

Strangely, I just read Scoble’s post and it is very similar to what I said above. No, I didn’t read what Robert sais before writing my post. I wouldn’t change anything except that I’m still a little confused if Niall contacted the author of the offending post before swapping out with the porn image or after. I think if he did it afterwards that still was unprofessional and unnecessary. I’ll jump over to Scoble’s blog and leave that question right now in case Niall doesn’t get over here.

7:17pm PST: Sent Niall both a message through Skype and an email directly to get his side of what happened. Will update when/if I hear back from him or of course if he leaves a comment below.

12/5/2006 8:17am PST: I just got done speaking with Niall Kennedy on Skype before he left for work. He insists the image he swapped out was not pornographic, disputing Todd Bishop’s original blog post quoted above.

The official Seattle PI story published in the Business section does not say he used a pornagraphic image, saying specifically:

partially censored image of a naked person,

Hmm, I wish he would have showed me the actual image so I could see because that makes a big difference here but he refused to share them with me during our conversation.

I’ll have more details in a follow-up post and perhaps make more references and changes (with strikethru) to the above text shortly.

12/5/2006 1:26pm PST: Niall dropped me an email to let me know he posted his account of what happened.

After reading Niall’s post and reviewing the entire sequence of events, I feel like in particular with my direct Skype conversation he was being unnecessarily evasive and stoic with me — and totally disagree that the picture he used wasn’t pornographic (you can see the guy’s intentionally exposing genitals Niall, come on!) — about the photo.

Niall could have simply said “goatse” and I would have known the image he altered immediately and we wouldn’t have had to do the not going to show you neener, neener dance. It’s a well known internet story and I’ve been around the block awhile, but instead he felt this was only something he could share on his blog? Weak. As someone who came late to the story, long afer the picture had been swapped and removed, I missed the details of the picture itself but fortuantely others like Rogers Cadenhead helped fill in the details.

Niall also offered a link to a screenshot showing what was swapped on the Microsoft site for those who want to decide if it’s “porn” or not. I’m not going to strike the title again but I definitely would have left it “porn” if I had known it was the goatse image. I’m not going to further strike/change the title again.

I don’t know what kind of guy Niall is to work with, but if I worked with him and he pulled this Goatse swap nonsense, I’m guessing we’d have been exchanging terse words privately on the subject.

Niall seems to blame Microsoft the organization (???) for the acts of senior Program Manager Sean Lyndersay who when he realized his mistake promptly removed the image and apologized in an update on the same post. According to Niall, Sean did engage in some sort of a unnecessary discussion about whether the image being stolen used was for commercial use or not, which seems strange considering Sean didn’t attribute the usage either way (and very clearly should have — there is absolutely no disputing that). Sean’s actions were clearly wrong and ill-advised, but IMO, Niall’s response was too extreme in this circumstance.

As I said over at Scoble’s blog, if this was some splogger from China or Russia I’d be all for the Goatse technique. I’d applaud loudly in appreciaton of Niall’s actions if that had been the case. You are welcome to disagree and debate below, but that’s my opinion as of this moment in time.

Somewhat ironically Niall starts his piece out by mentioning other sources (”There have been a few accounts on the web about a copyright enforcement action I took yesterday morning …”) giving their account of the events but he doesn’t link out to any of those sources, including Hmm. This is one area I’m not crazy about either. If you are going to write a post at least in part complaining about proper attribution then link out for reader’s (and your own) sake. It supports your willingness to evaluate the point of view of others. Whether or not Niall thinks he did anything wrong, once he did this in public the public gets to scrutinize. Even if he doesn’t link to me, why not link to Todd Bishop or Scoble?

Sorry, Niall, this whole situation was handled poorly all the way around. That’s simply one third party opinion and you can do with it what you will. Agree, disagee, avoid, discard, whatever.

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