Someone stole some photos off my website, and now is filing DCMA take down notices against my website claiming copyright.
That's the world we live in now.
I literally cannot just share my photos with the world without becoming a target for some complete arsehole. It's not enough that people try to hack into my social media accounts every day, or flood my mobile with scam calls, or try to rip me off when cancelling a tour... I now have to waste my life responding to this shit too.
I feel like there's been a massive rise in "gonna act like an arsehole because I can" over recent years.
It's worn me to the bone. It's relentless. We've built a world where people have decided it's no big deal to literally destroy other people because their personal gain is more important.
Everything is under siege. All the time. You can't just opt out and go listen to waves on the beach. Some arsehole is gonna find you there too and find a way to make life shit for you.
I was chatting to a nice lady yesterday about her computer. She couldn't work out how to attach a different keyboard to it.
All the while I'm thinking "how long before someone hacks your Windows OS and cleans out your bank account?" She has no idea how exposed she is. One click on a dodgy email and her world could be flipped upside down.
How did we end up creating a world where people are thrown to the wolves like this? How badly have we screwed this up.
And this is just that section of the world where nobody is dropping bombs on my home, or shooting children in classrooms, or banning access to abortion and other healthcare.
We are living in the worst timeline. If there actually was a multiverse with different planet earths then ours would be the one that nobody else wants to visit.
The responses and support here on Mastodon has been just marvellous today and if ever I needed a reminder of the good side of humans, you all were exactly that today.
Thanks peeps.
Man, it's so good that Mouse's health is good enough she's regained singing in lower registers in sustained bursts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osy7kRuzImo Here she is performing an impromptu `No Me Queda Mรกs` (Mouse's 'normal' extremely high voice - the one at the very start and end where she's talking - isn't voice acting; it's the result of damage from health issues)
@ewen i dunno, given the hypothetical, i'd assume that our world was so bad BECAUSE it was being manipulated and exploited out of sight to, but for the exclusive benefit of, the worlds technically advanced enough to get here. multiversal colonialism
so thereโd probably *lots* of people that would want to visit, buy cheap exploitation-produced stuff and cool urban โshitworldโ art, mess up a couple locals because we're all subhuman scum to them and then pop off back to their utopias. laughing about how it's our own fault for being so savage and primitive that we banned slap bracelets instead of realising that with a few modifications you can travel to parallel worlds with them because our brains are too shitworld and now with them in control we'll never figure it out
@Urban_Hermit @ewen gosh what a name
to be a piper of h-beams
@leon @ewen I think he didn't like his first name, Horace.
His SciFi stuff, as in space ships & alien worlds, he wrote every book within one continuous 5,000 years of future human history. He is considered to be the guy who originated the concept of a federation of planets. But there were entirely different eras: a Federation era with colony worlds & a unified space navy (most of his novels), a Space Viking era of reunification after a dark age, an endless Empire era - fascinating speculation.
@ewen really, I think we've about maximally screwed up infosec.
The incentives are all wrong. Tech is largely incentivized to make the most addictive, most quick-to-market, least durable stuff you can slap together, and who cares if it's fucking broken and terrible. We heap layers of abstraction on broken systems instead of actually making them easier and simpler, and then wonder why it's so impossible for anybody to know anything.
*sigh* This rant brought to you by: all of the occupational hazards.
Anyway, I suppose that's not helping. Sorry. I feel every word of this, though. Hope you're able to work this out without having to resort to lawyers.
@mav @ewen this seems...worse, somehow. A personal violation, like a pickpocket who then tries to extort you for your stuff.
In any case, this appears to be canonical #enshittification. Perhaps there's something axiomatic about it.
Field of Dreams style: "If you build it, and it becomes successful, eventually the assholes will come and try to make it both a target of, and an avenue for, abuse"
Clarke style: "All sufficiently successful technologies inevitably attract assholes who will try to ruin it for everyone"
@ewen Be thankful you lived to your years without dying of plague and polio. His photos were stolen, a big deal!
PS
To all the motherfuckers who come to let me know they've โblocked meโ: I don't give a fuck about you, your opinions and your bans. Hereโs why: I worked with my hands, I grew bread, I know its value, unlike you. I also sell photos and I've had them stolen too. I can compare. So shut up and fuck off
I feel like all of us who want better have to become more "militantly kind." That is favor helping people rather than enriching billionaires. Take whatever meager resources we have and channel it away from anyone who is not helping to those who are. This is me typing off the top of my head this morning, with no idea of the logistics involved, but it's something I personally aspire to do more of, any way I can.
I don't know if we can change the world with little acts of kindness, but we can definitely change our little corner of it. Every bit of kindness matters.
Yes. We need to be actively kind to others.
I'm listening to the audiobook "Hope For Cynics" by Jamil Zaki, it's an evidence-based book about the science of human goodness. Take a look/listen, it's certainly helped me quite a bit.
We need to create community and learn to trust again.
@lisagetspolitik @ewen @crcollins
contrary to common opinion, humans are basically good & helpful, which many โrandom acts of #kindnessโ prove every day - but the vicious, mean, brutal bullies are much louder and the crooks efficiently using all digital methods, means and meadows to their egoistical advantage โฆ
Here is an excellent book / #mustread to bring back some hopeโฆ ๐๐ฝ
@ewen Ugh, this sucks. Seems like the public sphere (or rather, the open web) has become weaponized to such a degree that it's becoming hard to exist on there.
I wonder whether the DMCA takedown requests are some crappy LLM-to-court-filing scripts that some shady outfit is running in the hope to shake you down. Indiscriminate patent trolling, now coming for the rest of the web.
I don't have any good solution for you unfortunately, but I share your outrage.
Someone has an Only Fans account that at some point stole a bunch of photos (of Norway in this instance) and the list of websites they're claiming against read like a shopping list of stolen loot. My website doesn't even appear on the first page.
@ewen @moritz_negwer And then they apparently assume that you will file a DMCA claim against them to get to your images removed? Seems like they chose the most antagonistic way to do this.
If you can even see them. Most of the content is subscriber only right?
This is the next level up from Marco Verch, who would merely sue people who incorrectly credited his CC2.0 images.
Calling them leeches is an insult to leeches, they have uses.
Hey hope things get resolved quickly for you.
A slightly amusing thing for me though was when an external agency tried to argue against what I recommended and provided a (poorly written) contractors report to support their end.
Half the uncredited references I had written (for work, so no name). Requested they provide the references to confirm. Probably got three times what I earn too I bet.
Photo Ewen ๐ท
Mx Verda
Leon
Urban Hermit
Bruce Heerssen 
lazarus7
Sally Strange
mav 
Andrew ๐ป Brandt ๐
๊ฎ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ซ๐ฏ๐ฑ๐จ๐ฑ๐ง
C. R. Collins ๐ณ ๐ธ
Lisa Gets Politik
Wigbert B ๐ป๐๐ญ๐ค๐๐ฅ๐
Moritz Negwer
Morten
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Aho
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