Marketing Director

Showing posts with label slideshare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label slideshare. Show all posts

Intellectual Property and Social Media: What is stealing?

Stealing is exactly what Ali Hadi of "Pakistan's First Social Media Company" Proactive Brand Solutions or Proactive Interactive did. Read on for the full story (UPDATE: Ali has requested the removal of the word 'stealing'. What other word could I use?). Last night I had a nice dinner with my family and was describing the video I made last week to my mother who calls me regularly to help her find emails or turn on the TV without turning off the cable box. She asked me if people have to pay for the short video lesson.

I spent the next five minutes unsuccessfully trying to explain the importance of offering information for free on the web. It came down to my personal belief that we can educate the world through the web by providing access to information. She really got me thinking about how I am valuing my intellectual property.

Should I work to create a pay wall? Should the New York Times? Should Wikipedia charge for the information they provide? Doesn't making someone pay ensure they value what they receive in the transaction? What happens to my video once I publish it online for all to see, share, download, show and use?

This story all came to a head today when I took a look at one of my presentations which has been stolen and re purposed without any credit to me. I have embedded the two presentations below, first mine then the other with a crappier layout but the same content. I first noticed it a few months ago through a Google Alert I have setup for my name. At the time I didn't mind and thought that it was flattering. I didn't notice that he was trying to sell the presentation for $100.




Social Media for Beginner's: Personal Branding and Marketing
View more from Kemp Edmonds.



When I first noticed a few months ago I didn't really mind. I posted a comment mentioning my dismay on the presentation. That comment was deleted. Today I added another comment referring to the stolen presentation but I don't expect it to remain on the slide deck too much longer. 
The worst thing that he has done is offer the presentation for $100 on the last slide in the presentation (UPDATE: in an email he explained that $100 was for a workshop about the "Three Musketeers"). I put it out to my Twitter community to assess the situation. This was a great use of Twitter and the community gave me an idea of what others thought of the situation. They were honest and forthcoming with their opinions:
Intellectual property in the Internet age has become something very different from what it was. The problem comes when there is no attribution and a desire to profit from the work of others. I subscribe to Creative Commons Licensing allowing anyone to use my work for free, with attribution as long as it is not for profit. Creative Commons allows creators to declare how others can use their creations. Alistair makes a good point in the second last comment above: "You should use this as an opportunity to teach people that things on the 'net means anyone can get/use it." Alistair is right that is the point. I often call it "Public Permanence" once it's out there it becomes publicly permanent.

I wouldn't care except this person has used my creation in a manner that is against all of the unwritten rules: for-profit, no attribution and without permission. That's the rub though isn't it. There are no rules to the Internet, just yet. They are being established by stories like this and prosecution that is creating precedents around intellectual property, ownership and privacy. What do you think I should do now? What would you do? Is there any point in doing anything?

UPDATE: Thank you for your comments and creating enough noise around this that the presentation has been pulled. I wouldn't be surprised if most of his 'presentations' were lifted from someone else.

I know bits and pieces of my presentation came from reading the internet. That's where most great information comes from these days. I took the time to rewrite, reorganize and add information for my purposes. This is a line that continues to grey and will surely be the topic of a future post. When does creation stop and plagarism start? When it's exactly the same.

These days we are all learning and increasing our collective intelligence together. The problem comes when some of us try and take advantage of that sharing spirit for financial or professional gain.

Embed Twitter and Facebook on your website or blog

Here Comes Everybody is a great book by Clay Shirky. It's all about how everyone can be a publisher and producer now. If this guy can anyone can. A lot of people want to know about embedding elements of Facebook and Twitter into a web page or blog in non-technical speak, so here goes...

The Short Answer:
These options can create dynamic content on your site whether embedding a relevant Twitter search window (as below) or placing Facebook widgets into your page to link to many different elements of Facebook it's easy to be a cut and paste coder and it can help you cross promote and show visitors what your 'community' looks like. Be sure to watch design and keep things clean and manageable for visitors. My site for example has far too many links and text unrelated to the main body and too many widgets, but I like information ;)


The Longer Answer:
I have created a document  about how to embed Facebook badges or elements and embedded it at the end of this post or download or view it online here on Slideshare (one of my favourite web tools for storage and display). The easiest way to embed Facebook elements is through their Facebook Widget site it's great and easy  to use. You can also check out my earlier post previewing Facebook Widgets it's from September 2009 when they were first released, so check the Facebook widget site for what's new.

If you want to put something like the "Follow Me On Twitter" badge, or the Retweet button or Share/AddThis bar at the top of the post you will need to know how to either cut and paste code or put an image on your page and link it. You can use a service like Twitter Buttons or click the above links for the respective tool.

Twitter Widgets: It wasn't easy to find them but here is the link. I strongly recommend you check out Twitter's Widget offerings first before trying the ways listed below:


Twitter's widgets are awesome and totally customizable. I am showing the Profile widget in the right column on the blog and the Search Widget is displayed below with a few tweaks and a custom search:



Tweetizen: The directions are straight forward and allow multiple types of embeds. Tweetizen offers a number of options to customize what appears on your page and can include searches or tweets from specific people. It's a good tool but doesn't have the all-out customization of Twitter's Gadgets.

How to embed Facebook onto your webpage or blog: