Greetings, loyal reader!

Hmm, it has been a while since I last posted, hasn’t it? My apologies. There was a…and then it…and with one thing or another, suddenly six months passed.

I’ve come out of temporary hibernation to discuss the current hoopla over “dongles” and the recent spate of firings. The link will take you to a well-drafted timeline with some embedded commentary to give context.

Go ahead, click the link. I’ll wait.
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Back? Excellent.

Let’s take a moment to discuss the situation, and see where else it could have been resolved without escalating as badly as it did.

Did Adria have a right to feel offended by the comment?
Yes, of course. It’s hard to measure “offense” by a reasonable person standard, although the law generally pretends to do so. Suggesting that she was oversensitive and should have “let it slide” both belittles her experience and fails to address the root issue she was attempting to redress, namely, that technical fields are often hostile environments for women.

Should the unnamed employee have had a “reasonable expectation of privacy” at the conference?
That’s a legal term, yes, and likely not. Most conventions and conferences post disclaimers on their tickets and in their literature reminding attendees that they will be in a photo-friendly environment, and, by attending, they may have waived their right to object to having their photograph taken. Where it gets a bit tricky is where the photographer profits from the photograph more because of the person portrayed as opposed to the subject matter, but for a “news” story such as this one, that creative discussion is likely moot.

Even if he didn’t have a right to privacy, should Adria have published his photo to her followers?
Here we come to the crux of the issue. Should she have identified him as the person who made the comment that offended her? I agree with the timeline author in that such an action is usually the last resort in a civil discussion, where personal appeals, rational discourse, and alerting the proper moderators/authorities have failed. It would have been a great teaching moment, and even tweeting without the photograph (or tweeting an altered photograph) would have made her point without lighting up the blogosphere.

Should either company have fired their employee?
Again, that’s a loaded question. The companies likely made the decision based on factors that weren’t made public, but in doing so, PlayHaven escalated the situation until the only recourse was to respond in a similar fashion or brave the storm of criticism. And as tempting as it might sound, it’s not actually possible to fire the internet.

At various points, this outcome could have been avoided or downgraded, but once the Tweet went live, public pressure and criticism (and DoS attacks) pretty much guaranteed the outcome.

Modern society makes it very easy to share content contemporaneously with the first creative impulse…and that is not always a good thing. A variety of photo and digital “paper trails” exist that might be regretted at a later time by those with cooler heads, but technology and youth culture are slowly pushing expected behaviors further along the “share now, share everything” continuum.

What it boils down to is that likely, he shouldn’t have made the joke, and she shouldn’t have taken the picture, and it might be very interesting to see whether either will change their behavior going forward.

Been a while, hasn’t it?

See, that’s the thing with having a life outside the computer. You forget that you haven’t updated your virtual world in a while, and then one day you come back and it’s full of weeds and rocks and plants you don’t recall seeding.

But having only recently been exposed to Animal Crossing (and not really seeing the point), I digress.

I’m going to be giving a short talk with Q&A afterwards at the LadyCoders conference next weekend! I’ll be talking on Sunday, October 7 about what to look for in your employment contracts and what that IP clause really means for you. It’s going to be short but sweet, but it’s covering a lot of what I’ve done for clients already, so I’m only partially intimidated by speaking in front of people.

And I helped draft some of their contracts before they did their Kickstarter project.

The first project I became aware of being overfunded was the Order of the Stick reprinting, which as of this posting had raised over $750,000. The original goal was $57,750 to allow the webcomic artist to reprint all of his books and have them in stores. There is still a week to go on this drive, and the score is currently at about 1300% of being funded. As he writes in one of his updates, however, at least $200,000 of the funds will be going to postage in sending out all of the items purchased, still making this one of the top five Kickstarter projects.

And it looked to be well on the way to being the largest amount of money raised by the website…until a video game company led by Tim Schafer sought to raise money to create a new adventure game. This is the mind behind such awesome (and under-rated) games such as Brutal Legend, Psychonauts, Grim Fandango, and Full Throttle. Oh, and he co-created Day of the Tentacle and The Secret of Monkey Island. Not a bad creative resume, if one likes adventure games. And I do. Oh, how I do.

Double Fine’s goal was higher than the Order of the Stick, but they still raised $400,000 in eight hours. And again, with 27 days to go, their project will be incredibly overfunded. They’ve only raised 400% of the goal, but that is still nearly $1.8 million dollars. In less than a week. They hit one million dollars in around 24 hours.

This gives me hope. And encourages me to scrounge up $15 to pledge for the game when it comes out, even if they are releasing it through the Steam engine.

Were the majority of the files on MegaVideo illegally shared content? Possibly. Was it a fairly safe source for streaming content without requiring users to download additional plugins or fill out spam-creating surveys? Yes. Does the shuttering of this website mean the end of the sharing of unlicensed uploaded content? Of course not.

MegaUpload, by contrast, had far more legitimate users and uses, and the loss of the file sharing site is unfortunate, especially as this bust seems to signal that the US government is once again cracking down on alternative uses of technology that disadvantage outdated business models.

The Supreme Court recently upheld a decision stating that works may exit the public domain, being covered under Copyright laws once more. The outcry over the poorly written and overbroad legislation known as SOPA reflects just how far behind the times the US Legislature is at the moment.

This year may well be a banner year for arresting individuals and closing down hosting sites. After all, it’s not like that tactic has ever failed to make a difference before…

Sadly, my laptop does not have the power to run the game that came out last week, but I’d no doubt be able to get this tribute to play…if it actually existed.

The Phoenix Wright series is an odd take on an “Attorney Video Game” but it is quite enjoyable once you get into it. The above video shows a clip from Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and in that fighting game, some of Phoenix’s moves include throwing the book at his opponent, an assistant coming out to do damage on his behalf, and the “Objection!” word balloon doing actual damage. Not sure I’d buy the game, but the video looks interesting enough to hang out somewhere else and watch it for a bit.