Earlier this week, I discovered that my site design had been appropriated without acknowledgment or credit by a third party. Upset about this, I posted about it. Some of my readers were able to provide me with an e-mail for the likely party, and I e-mailed them. I also cc:’d an administrator at the school.
While this action resulted in the site being first removed and then redesigned, it has been pointed out to me in the comment thread to that post that I managed to do this person essentially just what had just been done to me — a mistake that could have easily been taken care of quickly and quietly became more public than had ever been expected or desired.
What can I say — they’re right. I shouldn’t have been so quick to take the actions that I did. Already overstressed and overwhelmed from the attention my site has been getting of late, I reacted too quickly and without enough thought.
The following is the latest in a series of e-mail messages I have been trading with the person in question, expressing my apologies to him.
Thank you very much for accepting my mistake, please notify me of the appropriate amount of money I should paypal to you in order to repay you for bandwidth my site took by using an image served from your server.
Don’t worry about that — chances are it wasn’t terribly much, and as I’ve been getting an insane amount of traffic lately due to my recent experiences with Microsoft, my bandwidth limits are so ridiculously shot at this point that any traffic you might have added would be just a drop in the bucket.
It has been pointed out in the comment thread for my post that I may have jumped the gun in cc:’ing your academy superiors in my initial e-mail without first seeing if you would remove the site on your own. In retrospect, I should have given you the chance to remove it on your own — the only defense that I can give is that as there was no current e-mail address listed when I found your site, I was not certain I was contacting the right person, and at the time I found your site, I was somewhat overwhelmed from the attention my site had been getting and was somewhat touchier than I usually strive to be.
In my experiences with Microsoft (detailed earlier on my website, though it’s entirely possible that that is how you found my site in the first place), I made a mistake, and was immediately given the most extreme punishment possible. I then turned around and essentially did the same to you. For that, I most certainly owe you an apology as well.
I do hope that this hasn’t caused any major problems for you at the Academy (and as such, will also be cc:’ing this apology to the same contact person at the Academy that I did my initial e-mail). We’ve each recently made mistakes that have become more public than we expected or would have wanted them to. Hopefully each of us can learn from this in the future.
Again, good luck to you, and best wishes.
Everybody makes mistakes. Of late, I’ve been making my mistakes loudly and publicly — not something I’d really recommend to anyone. ;) Hopefully I can stop this trend before it gets any worse!
i’ll be brutish and say:
you gave him fair warning when you changed the banner. that was your first method of communication. the letter was your second.
your ‘similarities’ are not so similar. Sure, you got smacked by the man for doing something not entirely appropriate. Yours borders much more closely on the line of ‘inappropriate’ than his does, though. As you pointed out, his hack job didn’t even remove all pointers to your site, he snagged your image from your own server, etc. etc. whereas you were very careful not to appropriate any real information about microsoft in your picture.
now I’ll be fair and say:
you were a bit hasty in writing your letter. after you got his email, the first communication via that method included the man. so yeah, not cool. a little time to allow him to change the site would have been good too.
he seems like a nice guy – or perhaps he just has to appear to be so to you now. either way, looks like it was a misstep on his part, just as it was on yours (maybe that’s the similarity?)
somewhere between those two stances is my opinion. see what happens when you learn to debate? you never have a solid opinion on anything.
First of all, please accept my sympathies for your very hard week. I don’t know if my words will offer comfort, but if they add on to the pain, please forgive me, my intention is only to offer insight in hope that it will comfort. Apart from being naive about the picture you posted of Microsoft, (which I painfully emphatize with because I have been constantly naive myself), I think you responded to the situation as any normal human being would have, we’re not perfect. Somehow, putting ourselves in public seems to make something of a myth of ourselves, and a lot of projections are received, and we are expected to be perfect. I think part of the confusion has to do with the instantness of responses in blogging. The train of events happen so much more quickly than we can rationalize. The overwhelming responses received, as well, can be destabilizing. But then the advantage is that because it has all been recorded and you are consistently being transparent, you are able to consciously or publicly deal with the problems, the chain of events are connectable and reflected back to you. I think that a lesser person would not have reflected upon it as you did. Cheers!
Michael,
Deep breath… relax … no harm – no foul.
I agree with Kirsten above…
Your mistake @ M$ was a cockup for sure, but an honest mistake as you were not forwarned of any of the policies you may or may not have broken (based on what I know of the situation…)
The Cadet’s actions were not a cockup. They were a deliberate theft of services (bandwidth) and creative work product (copyright infringement) … not to mention actions unbecomming a Cadet in the USNA and an Officer in any branch of the service.
Now, you may think it a minor thing he did in retrospect, but from an ethics point, he broke the letter and spirit of the Honor Code, so anything that happens to him from the military he deserves and you should not lose sleep over that fact.
It is more important for the Cadet and the military as a whole to discipline the Cadet now – even if it means expulsion!
SO to make a long story short… you screwed up, yep… but it did not break any laws or agreements you signed… the Cadet did on both counts.
Bravo! That was a very cool thing to do.
These computers, they make it easy to be hasty. But they also let us talk things over and have second thoughts. It’s all about building bridges, man.
People that stole my design also stole my posts and my friends’ blogs posts. Strange newbie frankenblog experiments gone horribly wrong. Really no impact on me though. Inconsequential bandwidth, especially since those unvisited newbie blogs didn’t last long. Basically all it does is confuse technorati a bit. But when you’re a designer and you make some original artwork to set yourself apart, it’s natural to be protective.
I’m going to have to agree with John..
Michael, I see your actions as a mistake.
I see the cadets action as theft.
Not really the same.
If he knows enough to start his own blog then he must have read some. I don’t think you can get that far (building a blog) without a basic understanding of Copyright laws and Bandwidth usage. And this is without touching on the cadet part.
The fact that he’s a cadet makes it worse. I’m ex-military and I do understand the honor system.(so does he)
And copying your site is the came as copying a test paper and turning in someone elses work.
You were punished too much for your misstep.
And for the cadet I think that you should provide the school with the facts and allow them to punish him as they see fit.
It was nice of you to decline payment and I agree it wouldn’t have been much. But for the rest of his punishment they have a code they live by, a code they swear an oath on.
I say walk away and let him and the school work it out.
I don’t think you can get that far (building a blog) without a basic understanding of Copyright laws and Bandwidth usage.
Err… I think you’re giving some bloggers a little too much credit there. :-) Seriously. It’s really easy to start a blog. You don’t have to know squat about copyright law or bandwidth usage. My mom has (well, had) a blog that she started by herself, and if she found out how to include someone else’s image in her blog post she’d probably think it was neat and not hurting anyone.
That’s not to say stealing and manipulating someone else’s blog logo is justified in any way, but you really can’t assume people understand those issues.
So big bad Bill can’t take a photo of some G5’s in a truck and let it go? Sad…now all they’ve
done is alienate more potential MS customers – current and future. Way to Go, Mr. G.!
Of, course, it probably wasn’t Bill himself who did the dirty deed – I suspect some low-life MS a**-kisser
who sees this as a way to the inner sanctum of the MS Campus….
OK – let’s speculate – the next OS from MS will run on G5’s and X86…
Hey Steve Jobs – you might want to file a Freedom of Information Act and see if the monopoly plans
to suck up any $$$ you’re making on X10.