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

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Understanding Social Networks: Frequency


Last month I discussed understanding social networks with a focus on delivery. I continue to see lots of people cross posting from Twitter to LinkedIn, something that I consider to be a bad move due to the nature of the different audiences on each social network. Today let's discuss something with even less hard and fast rules than delivery: Frequency. We've all had someone in our online social network who updates their status too much or with items we don't find interesting. I am sure I have been that person before (please let me know with a comment below, thanks). On LinkedIn most of your network is professional and oriented towards different goals and habits than on Twitter or Facebook. Here's an example from LinkedIn today:

To be kind to friends and connections I have blacked the cross posters' information. As you can see these folks are cross posting from Twitter. I already get these messages on Twitter from these people. I used the colored dots in the top right of the updates to identify the same user's updates. The frequency of these people's tweets is preventing me from viewing as many different LinkedIn updates as I would like. I see the same people constantly in my LinkedIn updates section. 

The frequency of tweets (1-20/day) is very different than the usual frequency of LinkedIn updates (1-3/week). I know I am going to get into a bit of hot water here as everyone has different ideas about how often updates should be made on different social networks. There are NO hard and fast rules here, but when people ask me how frequently they should post I give them this list:
My Twitter Stats from tweetstats.com



  • Twitter: 1 ~ 100 times/day (few can be productive, see: @unmarketing's Best tip: 75% @replies.)


  • LinkedIn: 1 - 3 times/week


  • Blog: Set a standard and stick to it. (Daily, weekly, monthly)


  • Facebook Personal: As you please.


  • Facebook Page: Set a standard. Observe page insights & likes, comments, etc. Don't Spam.


    • These are frequencies I recommend using for posts. What do you recommend or use?

    We are all busy and seeing things we aren't interested in can turn people off, consider how easy it is to "unfollow" on Twitter or "hide" on Facebook. This is why it is so important to understand and respect each audience for their differences in the frequency and delivery they expect.

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      Virtual Economies: Gaming and Gambling

      Recent news that Second Life, the most popular virtual world, reached $160 million in user transactions for the first quarter of 2010 shows the staying power of virtual worlds; annually that's a $640 million virtual economy. If you are unfamiliar with Second Life people paid one another $160 million to buy virtual goods (1s and 0s put together to make something) between January and March of this year.

      The Second Life Economy
      How much money is changing hands in these digital economies? Worldwide estimates are between $4 and $16 billion. Second Life may be the leader but World of Warcraft, Ultima Online, Lord of the Rings Online and other virtual good and worlds contribute to the multi-billion dollar virtual economy. The potential to make money is huge but there is another upside to these technologies. Second Life is the second largest provider of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services in the world. These technologies offer many opportunities for learning, communications, collaboration, exploration and business, but today the talk is about the downside of these brave new worlds.

      Buying Farmville cash or coins
      Facebook began selling virtual goods in 2007. These transactions are taking on a new form; Facebook credits through games like Farmville and Mafia Wars. More than 11 million Facebook users are accessing Farmville daily. A new study claims that 21% of gamers aware of Farmville play it daily. In March Farmville added Facebook credits to its game. These credits, like Linden dollars in Second Life and Gold in World of Warcraft, are equal to real currency. These virtual economies have a dark side especially for children and young people.

      Gambling is against the law for young people but with access to games like Farmville at their finger tips the possibility of addiction becomes quite real. One 12-year-old in the UK was able to rack up $1400 in debt through Farmville in less than two weeks. It's no wonder that Farmville's parent company Zynga Games is valued at an estimated $5 billion.

      The boy's mother's credit card was billed $1000 while the child's savings account was emptied of $400. A spokesperson for the mother's credit card company indicated "that had the expenditures been on a gambling site the escalating transactions would have raised warning flags, but since the purchases were technically Facebook Credits, they didn't warrant suspicion". When do online purchases raise warning flags? How are regulators and businesses like Facebook protecting children from this? They're not.


      Gambling isn't only bad for kids who do it; it's also bad for kids whose parents do. This demonstrated by the record numbers of children being left in vehicles outside of Casinos around North America (see this exhaustive list of examples from a Massachusetts site against slot machines).

      Today thousands of dollars can be gone in a matter of hours through virtual transactions. A debate rages in the UK around whether or not these virtual worlds should be regulated by gambling laws that govern the winning of funds in real life. Some online worlds have entire task forces dedicated to the removal of real currency trading in their worlds. Virtual economies often result in interaction with the 'real' economy as characters, spells and items are sold on sites like eBay for real money thus getting around 'task forces' trying to remove real currency from in-game transactions.

      The line between virtual economies and the 'real' economy is blurred. Governments around the world have begun working to account for and ultimately tax this kind of income. In September 2007, the Federal Court of Canada ordered eBay Canada Inc. to provide the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) with the names of its high-volume sellers, their contact information and their sales records. Last year eBay began releasing that information to the CRA.  In Australia tax authorities have already stated it views all such income, whether from the real economy, or virtual, as taxable income. The IRS in the United States has declared that the question is a matter of when taxation will occur not if. As in any unregulated system these virtual economies are being used more and more to launder money worldwide. This is an even greater fear as illegal funds can easily pass through these virtual economies in small amounts. So how is all this wealth being created?

      A gold farm in China
      Gold Farming is an exploding industry particularly in Asia. Gold farmers work to acquire 'gold' in virtual worlds which they then sell to other players who want to acquire goods. Gold farming launched in 1997 when Ultima Online and eBay facilitated the exchange of virtual gold for real money. Learn more about gold farming and gold farms on Wikipedia. So is this wealth virtual or real? Who owns the actual wealth and property?

      On Second Life a group of users recently filed a land claim suit against Linden labs, the game's creator, for deceiving users about their ownership of the game's virtual property. This April 2010 case uses the precedent set in the 2007 case of Bragg V. Linden which has been cited in a number of articles and research papers from "Virtual World End-User License Agreements" to "User-Generated Content and the Future of Copyright". The rights of users to the virtual property they purchase or create are being established through these precedent setting lawsuits. Are these users gambling or are they gaming?

      The lines between gaming and gambling are increasingly blurring and the speed of regulatory change will not help the young people who are currently addicted to Farmville, Second Life or World of Warcraft. Playing video games casually, less than 3 hours a week, can be good for social skills, problem solving and relaxation. Problems arise when we see people, particularly young people, playing excessively in an addictive manner. If you are addicted to a virtual economy where you continually exchange money for virtual goods are you a gambler or a gamer?

      The virtual goods economy (buying virtual flowers for a friend on Facebook, etc.) is emerging as a powerful force especially among dedicated users.A study published in June of 2009 estimates that 42 million Americans (12%) spent an average of $30 in the last year on virtual goods. In 2010 Americans alone are expected to spend $1.6 billion on virtual goods according to ABC News.

      This convergence of virtual and real economies in our world speaks to larger questions about jurisdiction and the Internet. Who controls the online economy and the ability to tax it when physical borders are no longer part of the equation? If there is a black market for virtual goods is that virtual property taxable? Is the government right to spend millions to recover millions from these emerging economies? How can they regulate and monitor these worlds? Regulators from the UK, US and Canada are pushing to have the onus put on those who manage the virtual worlds and games to submit income statements for users. The potential tax revenue is huge estimated to be $30 billion by 2012 (up from $21 billion in 2008).

      The stories lead from one to another and the amount of regulatory change we will see in the next 5 years will be enormous and bureaucratically prohibitive (it will take a long time). I have listed some related stories I found in my search for information on this story:


      Original By: Hector Guerra. Remixed under Creative Commons License

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