{"id":2043,"date":"2012-07-05T09:28:33","date_gmt":"2012-07-05T00:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2012-07-05\/2043"},"modified":"2012-07-05T09:28:33","modified_gmt":"2012-07-05T00:28:33","slug":"a-bit-of-blog-drama-with-petapixel-and-the-jerks-at-gizmodo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2012-07-05\/2043","title":{"rendered":"A Bit Of Blog Drama with PetaPixel and The Jerks at Gizmodo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\nNOTE<\/b>: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Last week my blog had a slight bit of drama that illuminated a bit<\/span> how some\nof the big tech news sites work internally.<\/p>\n\n

It started when I was reading my normal news sites and came across a\nsurreal<\/span> article on PetaPixel<\/a>, a\nlarge<\/span> photography-related news site that I follow<\/span> daily. The article<\/span> was\nsurreal because it was claimed to be written by me (though it most\ncertainly wasn't), using one of my photos to illustrate a point<\/span> about\nbrowser color management. The subject<\/span> of the short article was related to a\nsub<\/span>-topic covered in my 2006 writeup “Introduction to\nDigital-Image Color Spaces<\/a>”, but used this photo, from last year's “Another Day of\nAmazing Fall Colors in Kyoto<\/a>”:<\/p>\n\n

<\/a>\nNikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f\/1.4 — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>500 sec, f<\/span>\/1.4, ISO 1000 —\nmap & image data<\/a> — nearby photos<\/a><\/span>\nBehind The Temple<\/span>\nImakumano Kannonji Temple (\u4eca\u718a\u91ce\u89b3\u97f3\u5bfa)<\/span>\nKyoto Japan\n<\/div>\n\n

Again, the photo and the subject were strongly related to me, but I hadn't<\/span> written the article. Surreal!<\/p>\n\n

So, I sent a<\/span> note to the editor at PetaPixel, Michael Zhang, asking what was up.<\/p>\n\n

He got back to me quickly... it turns out to have been a series<\/span> of\nmistakes. Some guy had found a copy<\/span> of my image somewhere and used it to\nillustrate a short<\/span> article on Reddit about browser color management. Of course<\/span> he should have asked my permission to use my photo (and had he asked I\nwould<\/span> have said yes), but this kind of thing happens very often, so it's\nnot something I tend<\/span> to get bothered about.<\/p>\n\n

Anyway, on Reddit it garnered a lot<\/span> of attention, so Michael from\nPetaPixel had asked the guy whether PetaPixel could host the article as\nwell, and the guy agreed. Unfortunately, Michael apparently hadn't been\nminding his p's and q's because he confused the photo credit for both the\nphoto credit and the author credit, so when Michael put it up on his site,\nit got my byline.<\/p>\n\n

This had been fixed by the time he responded to me with profuse\napologies.<\/p>\n\n

Moments later he responded with a followup<\/span>: Gee, did the guy have\npermission to use my photo?<\/p>\n\n

I replied “no, but isn't that something you should be checking before\npublication?” and went to bed, and woke up the next morning Kyoto time to\nfind his reply (“sorry, I thought<\/span> it was<\/i> you”) and to see that the\noriginal PetaPixel article<\/a> was now devoid of my image and my name, that\nany comments referencing me as the author had been deleted, and that the\narticle now sported a different<\/span> photo using my same wild color profile that\nhighlights where there's a lack<\/span> of color management. (I had<\/span> explicitly\nreleased that color profile to the public domain, so its use here was quite\nappropriate.)<\/p>\n\n

It was now as it should have been in the first place, but I found<\/span> it odd\nthat a supposed<\/span> news site would quietly fix a material<\/span> error without a\ncorrection<\/span> notice.<\/p>\n\n

As it turns out, I had also<\/span> put a copy<\/span> of that original image on my post\nabout iOS color management: “So Much For That\nGlorious iPad Screen: iOS and its Apps are Not Even Color Managed<\/a>”, and\nI brought<\/span> the irony to Michael's attention: when I first<\/span> published that\narticle three months ago, I'd sent him<\/span> a link<\/span> suggesting that perhaps his\nreaders would be interested in it. It was disappointing<\/span> now to have been\npassed over for a short,<\/span> fluff article.<\/p>\n\n

He agreed, and confessed that he hadn't looked at the article closely\nenough when my initial message had come in, so the next day he published\n“Yup,\nColor Management is Absent in iOS<\/a>” on PetaPixel, referencing my blog\npost.<\/p>\n\n

Thus started a spike on my server, and as a bonus,<\/span> garnering among the\ncomments left at PetaPixel a number<\/span> of truly stupid ones from people who\ndidn't read it but felt themselves an expert nevertheless. I would<\/span> expect\nnothing less from the Internet.<\/p>\n\n

So that was that.<\/p>\n\n

A day or two later, the folks at Gizmodo apparently noticed the sudden\npopularity of my blog post and decided that they'd like to get in on the\naction as well, so asked me whether they could “syndicate” it on their\nsite. (That is, copy it so it looked like I wrote<\/span> it for them.) The request\nis fine and not unexpected — they want content, without paying for it\nof course — but the way they presented the request was really smarmy,\ndropping some famous names of folks who have been so equally blessed to\nhave been asked by Gizmodo to provide free content.<\/p>\n\n

I responded with a simple link to one of my blog posts from 2008:\n“Jerks At\nGizmodo: Way Uncool<\/a>”. The short<\/span> story there is that Gizmodo\noutright stole some content from my site, severely dumbed it down, and\npresented it as their own. And when I<\/span> complained, they didn't even hint at\nan acknowledgment that they had done anything wrong, much less actually\napologize. Their whole business model seemed to be based on stealing\nothers' stuff, knowing that, practically speaking, the worst penalty will\nbe having to delete the article. What assholes.<\/p>\n\n

At least this time they actually\nasked<\/i> instead of just taking the article (which to my knowledge they\nhaven't done, though it's not like they would send a “hey, stole\nyour stuff, thanks!” heads-up note). Still, little else seems to have changed.<\/p>\n\n

The guy at Gizmodo last week had a fresh<\/span> opportunity to apologize for how\nhis company had acted before, but instead sent a rambling<\/span> note\nabout just how great a guy<\/span> the original asshole had been, and how much that\nguy loved photography, and how he was friends with such-and-such Famous\nPeople, how many BAZILLION hits any article Gizmodo puts up gets, etc. etc.\netc.. It was a<\/span> self-love-fest beyond smarmy back to surreal, as if this was\nat all relevant... to anything?<\/p>\n\n

Notable, but not unexpected from this group, was the lack of an apology,\nso in disgust I replied<\/span> lamenting that fact. Well, it turns out that he\nthinks he had apologized, and he might actually be right, sort of. Toward\nthe end of his note he had written “Anyway, sorry about\nthat.<\/i>”. That came after the full-on self-serving egomaniacal\nblather of a reply<\/span> that was devoid of any sense of apology or\ncontriteness, so it naturally followed to read the “sorry” as a lament<\/span> that\nthey wouldn't get the free content they wanted. But, apparently, that was\nhis idea of an apology. Gee, okay, wow.<\/p>\n\n

Anyway, I pointed<\/span> out that they didn't need anyone's permission to link\nto the blog post, and that they should do so if they thought their readers\nwould benefit. Since they wanted to actually host the article, they\nclearly<\/i> thought it was a benefit<\/span> to their readers, but you know\nwhat's coming: they never bothered to do so. It seems<\/span> that Gizmodo concern\nfor their readers extends only as far as Gizmodo's ability to profit from\nan article.<\/p>\n\n

My first characterization of them, “Jerks at Gizmodo”, seems as\nappropriate than ever, which is why I continue<\/span> to avoid them.<\/p>\n\n

Anyway, it was an interesting little bit of.... well... something.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week my blog had a slight bit of drama that illuminated a bit how some of the big tech news sites work internally.<\/p>

It started when I was reading my normal news sites and came across a surreal article on PetaPixel, a large photography-related news site that I follow daily. The article was surreal because it was claimed to be written by me (though it most certainly wasn't), using one of my photos to illustrate a point about browser color management. The subject of the short article was related to a sub-topic covered in my 2006 writeup \"Introduction to [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}