Marketing Director

Freelance Camp: Intellectual Property

I recently spoke with one of my favourite people Minna Van. Minna also known as @thenetworkhub is behind  The Network Hub a co-working space in downtown Vancouver. The hub is always full of interesting people: creatives, programmers, coders and educators to name a few. When Minna asked if I would like to speak at Vancouver's first Freelance Camp I was honoured and excited. Co-organizer @CathyBrowne describes it like this: "Freelance Camp appeals to anyone who has an entrepreneurial spirit and is working on their own, but wants to get input from other people and learn from other people at the same time." As someone who works largely on their own as a freelancer and within a large institution as an employee I know that I will benefit from the event and look forward to meeting you there.

I have been speaking for more than a year now and truly enjoy sharing what I have learned. My first big talk was at BarCamp Vancouver speaking about social media and education. One thing I recently realized is that speaking for free is not always a great thing. I will continue to speak for free to local or educational groups and at events like Freelance Camp, but researching, developing and building a 1 or 2 hour presentation takes time, lots of it. I recently completed two talks: "Understanding Social Media for your Small Business" for MPIBC and "Brave New Worlds: Social Media in the Classroom and in the Field" for the BEAC via a webinar to Toronto. I now talk about many different elements of digital culture and new media. I like it and it's fun. I asked Minna what I should talk about to provide insights and direct benefit to the audience.

Minna asked me to speak about intellectual property theft online and what to do about it when it happens. I recently had and blogged about an experience having my intellectual property stolen. To me stealing doesn't happen until someone uses my creation to try and profit without credit to me. I am happy to share for the purposes of education, but I am not happy when someone takes that spirit for granted and tries to profit from it. Please read the original story or proceed without context ;)

After I blogged about the theft and filed a copyright complaint with Slideshare; the offender, who I had warned twice previously by leaving a comment on the presentation, began contacting me via email. He was contacting me because Slideshare had suspended his account and ultimately deleted his entire document collection. He also tried to add me to LinkedIn and Facebook. I politely declined, but I wanted to share the email thread with you dear readers as the friends who I sent the emails to thought it was too good to keep locked up. So for your reading pleasure here is the email thread in the order it was received:
On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 5:42 AM, Ali Hadi wrote:

Dear Kemped Monds

You've some misunderstanding, let me clear you that presentation readjusted with new visual effects just for training purpose not for selling purpose. It's my humble request to understand the value of information "sharing", I just offered people to learn about "big three" attend workshop $100 that doesn't mean selling the presentation. Hope you'll understand and remove all your negative comments which is very bad word of mouth for me.

It's my request to understand the benefits of information, although I did mistake without your permission revise the presentation and change all visual effects. "SORRY for that"

Regards,
Ali

On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 6:08 AM, Ali Hadi wrote:

I just talked again to my web-developer who did it, I mean who design this presentation for me and he accepted he did it just for training purpose not for selling purpose. So try to understand we didn't sell your presentation just change visual effects and content to create hype n traffic for our FREE workshop.

Hope you understand our situation, we believe in sharing not in theft or misuse of material.

Thanks,
Ali

On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 6:27 AM, Kemp Edmonds wrote:

Resolution will come when every slide I created has my name on it. Until then I will continue with my complaint. I now understand what your team did on your end. You must know that as a "Social Media Company" using other's work without crediting or refering to them is a major mistake

If the presentation is altered to credit me for the content and my name appears at the bottom of each slide and in the first slide as the author I will be satisfied. I also believe in sharing but there is a right way (with permission and attribution and not for financial gain unless u pay the creator) and a wrong way to sharing this kind of information.

Thank you for finally contacting me personally and I hope you take the time to resolve this as I have requested. Deleting my comments and hiding the presentation was cowardly.

Kemp Edmonds

On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 6:32 AM, Ali Hadi wrote:

OK, I promise with you! I'll embed original link of your presentation and courtsey by your name on each slide "Kemp Edmond".

I'm again very very SORRY on behalf of my team, hope we'll both take positive benefits from networking and learn from  each other, I know your positive man and understand my situation.

My slideshare account blocked and my all real professional work blocked, plz do me a favor send email to Rashmi and Jonathan [Jonathan and Rashimi are the principals at Slideshare] to restore my account, I will be thankful to you.

Best Regards,
Ali

On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 6:42 AM, Kemp Edmonds wrote:

It's Kemp Edmonds.

I am positive and this is a learning experience mostly for you and your company. Pakistan may be on the other side of the world but the global village is tiny and I will NOT be contacting Jonathan or Rashimi. You may send them a copy of our correspondence and have them contact me to verify my wishes but this must go through the proper process. Had you acted more quickly to contact me I would not have taken the time to file the complaint.

I hope this has been a learning experience for yourself and your employees.

I am sorry for the inconvenience and negative press or word of mouth you may receive from this experience and the subsequent consequences from Slideshare but that is the price you have to pay for allowing your employees to publish the work of others as your own and allowing them to publish online under your name.

The world will become increasingly small in the years to come and learning what not to do now is a valuable lesson.

Sincerely,
Kemp Edmonds

On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 6:50 PM, Ali Hadi wrote:

Dear Brother!

I'm completely agree with you but I lost my 85 slides, most of my best work which I have done in last one year. Don't know slideshare team restore my data because last time my system reinstalled and I lost of presentations and projects, please do me favor to email or fax again to Rashmi to recover my data although I have sent your text through facebook inbox to Rashmi and finding again Jonathan ID online.

We'll work together in future on many projects and ideas, I'm sure we'll do much better..I myself believe in sharing and good human relationship.

I really appreciate your kind support and your positive action!

Have a great day ahead

On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 6:53 PM, Kemp Edmonds wrote:

Your data is safe and currently under review by SlideShare they did not delete your content but they may review other presentations for plagiarism. This has already been enough of a hassle for me so I will not be initiating any action to aid you. You must be the one to deal with the consequences of your actions and if that means losing all of your presentations then I am truly sad for you, but it is not my job to fix your mistake.

I would apologize here but this is your bed and you must sleep in it and learn from it.

On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 7:00 PM, Ali Hadi wrote:

Thanks again! Hope you'll remove from your blog and website the word you use about my name and company.. plzzzzzzzzzzzz remove it. I will be grateful to you, Always at your service with mind set...my friend.

Good Luck in your every endeavor.
Ali
I hope you enjoyed reading the back and forth. In the interest of sharing knowledge and staying true to my request the presentation was re-uploaded by Ali Hadi complete with my name on each slide. That presentation has since been removed. If you would like a challenge check out Ali's 16 current presentations and find more stolen intellectual property. I will be awarding a FREE ticket to Freelance Camp to the person who sends me the most glaring example of IP theft. Please contact me with your find.

Please join me and many other Freelancing professionals May 29th at the Network Hub for an amazing day of discussion, sharing and learning in downtown Vancouver.

This is what I love about events like Freelance Camp and BarCamp:
Speakers are chosen democratically

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for sharing this story Kemp. I've been wondering if there were more details. I will probably check out FreelanceCamp too!

    ReplyDelete