Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Yeah, we live in bizarre world of copyrighted conflicts…  It seems like someone is always trying to exercise control over “their content” and using copyright as their bludgeon.

First, let me clue you in to a secret.  I’m a car nut.  More precisely, I love the engineering of cars - and once delighted in documenting esoteric details of engines, transmissions, and chassis on Wikipedia.  I still delight in seeing unusual engines, and have been known to take the odd photograph of them, too.

Others also suffer from this engine fixation.  Witness the regular “Engine of the Day” feature over at Gawker Media’s popular auto blog, Jalopnik.

I love reading these stories, but today’s entry (on Ford’s bad Windsor V8 engine) seemed awfully familiar to me.  Or rather, the photo did.  See, that photo was taken by me, but you wouldn’t know it from reading Jalopnik.  It’s ripped off from Wikimedia Commons, where it’s licensed GFDL and CC-by-SA.  This means that professional publishers like Jalopnik can’t use my image without attribution.

Now, some people might be flattered by this kind of use.  In fact, I was flattered by this the first time it happened.  But this isn’t the first time Jalopnik has used my photo without attribution.  It’s not even the second time.  No, this is the third time Jalopnik has used a photo I took without attribution.  I bet Gawker wouldn’t be happy to have someone use their copyrighted content without permission or attribution, but it seems just fine for them to do it!  I even offered these photos for free use as long as they attributed me, but even that wasn’t satisfactory…

I previously wrote about my experience with photos used by a German newspaper who used one of my car photos, as well as a well-known Linux hacker who ripped off an article I wrote for his book.  This stuff happens all the time, in fact.

What can we do?  I’m not sure how to fix it, but one thing I will say is that I’m certainly not happy with Jalopnik or Gawker Media.  If anyone has a suggestion on how to deal with this situation, I’d love to hear it.

Update: Murilee Martin, writer of these three entries, has added attribution to me for two of them after I emailed him, Ray Wert, and Nick Denton.  Will they do a better job in the future?  We shall see…

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) has been a hot topic of discussion in the enterprise storage world lately, but many end users are just now hearing about it.  Although some folks seem to think it’s here with a vengance, others doubt that it will ever make the splash it promises, with 8 Gb FC, iSCSI, and even AoE (ATA over Ethernet) showing more promise.  There has been some back and forth, and even a little backpedaling.

What do you think?  If you’re a Plaxo user, I created a poll over there to see if folks think it will rise, and when.

Ever been to the TechTarget Storage Decisions conference?  It’s my favorite trade show, since it’s totally focused on end users - instead of being a product showcase, Storage Decisions is all about what real people need to do with their enterprise storage infrastructure.  Sure, there’s lots of technical product talk, but none of the speakers work for the hardware or software companies.  And did I mention that attendance is free?

If this sounds good to you, then now is the time to register for the Chicago show, coming up from May 13 through 15.  If you can attend, I strongly recommend coming in the day before the show so you don’t miss the kickoff on Tuesday morning.

As for me, I’ve got two sessions at the show this year, both on Wednesday the 14th.  Come in the morning for my Deep Dive Into Email Archiving Products, incorporating lots of the ideas I got from my Storage Magazine article and Webcast on the subject.  That afternoon, I’ll be presenting a shortened version of my Storage Virtualization Seminar, covering everything you wanted to know about virtualization technology in an hour instead of a day!  I’ll also be at the Ask the Experts Booth on the show floor on Tuesday evening if you’d like to come up and introduce yourself.

If you can’t make Chicago in May, how about Toronto in June, New York in September, or San Francisco in November?

Wow!  EMC has apparently purchased WysDM Software, maker of a most excellent range of data protection and storage management software.  This is a great move for EMC, and if everyone at WysDM is as happy as my old StorageNetworks co-worker, Alan Atkinson, seems to be in this InternetNews article, their offices must be something to see!  It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of guys…

Thanks to Storagezilla for breaking the news.  Someone should probably update the WysDM web site, too…