Sunday, March 1. 2009FRHACK organizers are now threatening to sue meA few days ago I complained about the incredibly awkward IT Security Girl of the Year award that will be dished out later this year at the French IT security conference FRHACK. Apparently the FRHACK organizers did not like what I wrote because they are now threatening to sue me if I do not remove the screenshot of the incredibly inappropriate photos they used to advertise the IT Sec Girl award. The following sentence is from an email I received from one of the FRHACK organizers.
After I received this email I was incredibly annoyed. It's less about them requesting me to take down the screenshot though. I was more annoyed with their reply in general. In no way did they even bother to address the issue I complained about. This would have been the perfect time to show some character. They could have discussed their point of view. They could have apologized for their mistakes. They could have told me to stuff it (in case they think their point of view is correct; which apparently they don't because they changed their website). All of these (and more) would have been perfect ways to show some personal responsibility and the whole issue would be finished from my point of view. But that's not what happened. Instead they sent me this incredibly limp-dicked legal threat which I believe to be more about removing evidence that documents their failures than about any legit copyright issues. The passive-aggressive vibes I am getting from this (and the fact that I am allergic to legal threats) piss me off so much that I need to complain about this publicly. I hope I will never have the displeasure to meet any of the FRHACK organizers in real life. Now the thing is, I do not have the time or the resources to fight their legal threat. I will take down the screenshot in the next few days (probably at one point between now and next Wednesday; whenever I feel like it). Update: Looks like the screenshot stays on my website. See the end of the original post for a detailed update. Update 2: Please check out the comments made by the FRHACK team in response to this post. This should clear some things up. Trackbacks
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But isn't it a legitimate use of their picture? It's the same, as if you would take a picture of the building and put it on your page. Or I am wrong?
Yes, those pictures are copyrighted. But NOT by them, if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah, that's what I found out after some digging. Makes the whole legal threat very confusing.
How odd that a group that right now has a Star Wars video on it's front page would send you a legal notice. I would be willing to guess that permission from the right people do not exist for the star wars video clip.
The idea that a security conference would not want the sharing of ideas and thoughts is a bit odd. I mean some vendors don't want anyone to talk about security issues. So I guess somewhere someone wishes all of us so called security experts would just go away. That would allow them to continue to write and sell poorly written software. Maybe the people who write software should just send around legal notices telling conferences not to take place. Then everyone would be happy right? Just a thought, Joe
Hey SP you were lucky! they could have asked you to take a photo with a gun in your pants because the model was suing them for the photo (hey FRHACK, you didn't pay a model for her boot in that picture, did you?)
The general hilarity of this situation is only heightened by their feeble threats. Good job on ridiculing them even more and standing against their feeble pressure.
I perfectly understand your decision not to get involved in a legal battle. After doing some more investigation, I came up with the following:
- they most probably do not (!) own the copyright to the image, which has been lifted from here: http://www.funpic.hu/en.picview.php?id=33670&c=6&s=dd&p=1 (did a bit by bit comparison with the one present on their site) - they are silently editing their site (proven by google cache) to tone down their message - I submitted a story to Slashdot about this to take the fight to the masses  and also I'll contat Joana shortly to let her know about the circumstances- Depending on the legislation (I know this to be true under USA laws, but IANAL and this is an international case) they themselves are guilty of copyright violation for using that image, since it uses imagery from a Micrsoft ad, which is fine as long as it is used for parody, however they are using in a commercial setting (even though they claim not being commercial) You can read more detail on my blogpost: http://hype-free.blogspot.com/2009/03/frhack-creates-sexist-award.html
Hi and thank you for your support,
I actually asked the FRHACK organizers what photo they are talking about. It turned out that they are talking about the woman+gun photo, not the Firefox Girl/Bill Gates photo. I also found out that the FRHACK guys are not even the copyright holders of the woman+gun photo so at this point it is unclear exactly why and on what grounds they threatened me.
This is a SHAME! Moreover, look at guest speakers list .. they invited Richard M. Stallman to talk about the open-source/free philosophy... Really, this is a shame...
What you can do is to notify the given speaker about the issue. I've already notified Joana Rutkowska. Of course the notification should be polite and not ask the person to take a particular action (ie. not attend), because that is her/his decision at the end.
Now, now ... yes, the FRHACK guys made a mistake, and it seems like they still don't even understand why it was a mistake ... but nonetheless, that's no reason to start fucking with their speakers and essentially trying to ruin their con. The industry is too small for nastiness like this, take my word for it...
The key words are: "they still don't even understand why it was a mistake"
While it is impossible for us all to agree on everything, at least the common ground of open discussion is absolutely necessary. People who fail to come out and state publicly their viewpoint, who resort to silently editing their website, who threaten rather than ask, are not worthy of calling themselves hackers. The hacker ethos is as much about questioning everything as about communicating openly. my 2 euro cents
it would be good to include a copy of the email they sent to you where you were threatened, including the names and email addresses of those involved. so that those interested and anonymous keepers of lists could include those sexist turds into their blacklist, and you sir, in the white list, whatever that means. i think they were ashamed of the extend of their dumb and sexist actions. if an intelligent being realizes its own incompetence it usually agrees upon the fact and states the wrong doing as an error. it is the cowards and lowlifes that try to cover up their act, thus even making it worse, rendering their entire operation into one big dumb pile of worthless drama. i cannot laugh about those idiots threatening you with a suit, because they are dead serious. good for you that you are already wearing a good thick skin.
cheers and keep up the standard.
We would like to clarify the situation because this story doesn't reflect goals of FRHACK.
1) It's true that we planned the "IT Security Girl of the Year" award. First problem here was the bad translation from french. We absolutely never wanted to create a sexist award, at the opposite, we would like to promote the IT security field for women (using the french word "fille", word-by-word translation of "girl" is not a sexist sentence for french people). So here, we had a problem of cultural shock. That's a bad point for us. We apologize for that! We definitively didn't want to create a "babe award", but just give a chance to women to demonstrate that they can be as (or more) skilled than men. Do you know any IT sec conf trying to do so? Furthermore, we accept all criticisms when they are founded. So, we said that publicly in the 1st reply of sp blog's post. "Thanks to pointing us on some misunderstood stuff and bad translations." 2) It's true that we used badly chosen pictures to illustrate the award. We didn't have sexism in mind. Again, sense of humour can cause cultural shocking problems (tongue-in-cheek humor). We apologize for that! 3) It's true that we used a picture, discovered later as copyrighted. We removed this picture from our website when the photograph sent us an email on Feb. 22: "I ask that you please remove it immediately from your site or I will take legal action." On Feb. 23, sp posted his message on his blog, including a screenshot with the copyrighted picture. Afraid to have to deal with the photograph's lawyer, we asked sp to remove this screenshot, firstly in our reply to his post: "Please remove your screenshot, since pictures are copyrighted. Thanks " Since we didn't have feedback from sp, and still afraid to see us, or sp, to be sued and fired by the photograph, we sent an email to sp on Feb. 27: "Hi, we accept your comments on "IT Security Girl of the Year" at the FRHACK Conference. it helped us to find a better name to avoid misunderstood things We just ask you to remove this picture itsec_girl.jpg because these pictures are copyrighted. Thanks to delete your screenshot or we will take legal action." That was the worst thing we do, with an horrible copy/paste from the photograph's email. We understand that it was not cool. We apologize for this, sincerely. We are sorry. But please, consider that we never really thinking to sue sp! After that, we completely removed this award from our website. SORRY for the inconvenience. We really respect sp, hackers and bloggers. You have to know that it's hard to organize a conference. The Frhack organizers - Happy hacking
Apologies accepted. This explanation cleared up some of the confusion I had about the whole issue and I am now understanding how all of this happened.
Good luck for your conference. |
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