The tale of Judith Griggs

I find loads of interesting things on Twitter, which is mostly why I use it these days. This morning I read about a magazine editor lifting a blogger's post and printing it in the magazine without first notifying or asking for permission. The magazine attributed the article to the writer in question, so imagine her surprise when her friend congratulated her on getting published!

She contacted the magazine, and when asked what she wanted them to do about it, she asked for "an apology on Facebook, a printed apology in the magazine and $130 donation (which turns out to be about $0.10 per word of the original article) to be given to the Columbia School of Journalism". Why Facebook? Because the magazine's pages are uploaded to its Facebook page, each issue being granted its own photo album.

Well, not only did they refuse to apologise, the editor of the magazine wrote an email that said:

1. I've been an editor for 3 decades and I know about copyright laws


2. I haven't done anything wrong because everything on the Internet is public domain


3. You should be thankful that we actually credited you as the writer


4. Your article was badly written and our editing made it better, so you should be paying us.

It's the sort of thing that proves truth is stranger than fiction.

Unfortunately for the magazine editor, Judith Griggs, the writer blogged about all of this. Even more unfortunately for her, that post was picked up by Twitter and Facebook users, even retweeted by Neil Gaiman (who has 1,500,998 followers). Eventually big names like Boing Boing, Salon.com, The New York Times, and The Guardian, to mention a few, picked up on it too. Thus what must have seemed like the whole Internet community descended on her magazine's Facebook page, "liked" it and proceeded to, uh, vilify her business practices via wall postings.

Not only that, people began to investigate further, discovering that her magazine had also lifted content from other places, among them more prominent names like Martha Stewart and the Australian chapter of Weight Watchers; these people/organisations were informed of the discovery, as were the magazine's advertisers. Five writers/organisations have confirmed their work was reproduced without permission, with some contemplating legal action. A number of advertisers have also withdrawn their ads from the magazine.

It turns out that the magazine is mainly distributed locally and most of the advertisers are local businesses. While everyone is busy wondering how Griggs could be so misguided as to believe that anything published on the Internet is public domain (it is not, in case you were wondering), I'm just wondering what ramifications all this will have for Griggs.

I mean, how is she going to continue living where she's living? Local business owners and their employees will probably be giving her the cold shoulder after this; a (now former) advertiser commented, "...being associated with publications like this that don't respect its readers (who are all our potential customers) is unacceptable to us in light of their practices. What angers me even more is the fact that it is being made light if [sic] by the Editor herself." Apart from that, I expect the local townspeople will be pointing and whispering behind her back, and I'm also wondering what her employers will think about her notoriety, since editing the magazine wasn't her day job. I really can't imagine how she's going to hold her head up or dare to go out in public.

Yet she posted on her magazine's Facebook page:

Hi Folks!

Well, here I am with egg on my face! I did apologise to Monica via email, but aparently it wasnt enough for her. To all of you, thank you for your interest in Cooks Source and Again, to Monica, I am sorry -- my bad!
You did find a way to get your "pound of flesh..." we used to have 110 "friends," we now have 1,870... wow!

...Best to all, Judith

It really does seem like she doesn't get it at all. In my part of the world, we call this Being unclear of the concept.

Le crowning glory

Despite my secret suspicions that all shampoo bottles contain the same thing, no matter what they claim, I put a great deal of effort into choosing my shampoo. I want one that is just right for me. The problem is, when I find a shampoo I like, by the time it runs out the brand has reworked its formulae, repackaged, re-whatevered, and generally my shampoo doesn't exist any longer.

Also, judging by the range of shampoos available, I am the only Malaysian with hair that has a tendency to be oily. I mean seriously there is a shampoo for every other hair condition out there -- dry/damaged hair, dandruff problems, brittle hair, frizzy hair, long hair, coloured hair -- but none for oily scalp. I feel like the shampoo companies are discriminating against me!!!

Single-handedly redeeming all women

I'm a bit obsessive about my parking. I absolutely refuse to park senget (crooked) because I will NOT give anybody the opportunity to say, "No wonderlah -- it's a lady driver." I'm determined not to fit the stereotype.

Seriously, there is no reason why a woman shouldn't be able to drive (and park) just as competently as a man. It irritates me a lot that so many of them don't, to the extent that my entire gender is now tainted by this... this... notion of ineptness!

I have a bad feeling about this...

I have two bookmarks folders called "To blog" -- one on my current installation of Firefox, and another in a saved FF profile (saved before I did my last OS reinstall). It's not that I have nothing to say, merely that I don't feel like I always have to say everything I want to say. In short, I have opinions but I no longer feel the need to put them "out there".

This does not bode well for my blog!

Reasons. I need reasons.

Spent three hours today getting my car windows tinted. Before I bought this car, I always thought tinting was a sign of vanity; another way to "dress up" your car, so to speak. But now I've discovered that the tinted film can block infrared rays, keeping your car cooler... it can even prevent your window from breaking -- the glass will shatter, but the film continues to hold the whole panel in place.

So it seems worthwhile to do.

Aesthetics are only important to me up to a point. I've never liked the shape of the MyVi (bulky, with lots of bulging curves) but I might have bought it if I'd been happy with the way it handles. Having said that, I'm quite relieved I had a good reason not to buy it. I love my little Satria Neo ♥

Very telling

When I first caught sight of my WUL car plate it immediately brought to mind "unordered lists", because ‹ul› is the HTML command used to create a bulleted list on a blog or webpage. Apparently I'm a lot geekier than I thought I was

Not in THAT much danger of dying

Even though Nicholas Negroponte is correct when he says that books cannot be distributed to enough people -- real books, that is, as opposed to ebooks -- he forgets that, currently, ebooks are not very convenient to use. Especially in the developing world, which he thinks will adopt ebooks quicker than First World countries, "because they don't have anything else".

He talks about sending a laptop to an African village with a hundred books loaded in it. "When we ship, with our laptop, books to a village, we put a hundred books on a laptop, but we also send a hundred laptops in, each with a hundred different books. That village now has 10,000 books. This is an African village without electricity." ("Then what do the laptops run on?" I wondered. The answer is: batteries and alternate power sources like car batteries.)

But it's hard to carry a laptop around the way you carry a book around, so even if you have a hundred books, that doesn't mean you'll read them. You're not going to stare at the screen for hours reading, the way that I can snuggle down in my favourite armchair with a book and instantly lose myself in a story.

The devices that do make ebooks portable, convenient and easy to read are still largely inaccessible. People talk about more books being sold for the Kindle (Amazon.com's ebook reader) than ever before, but the Kindle doesn't even ship to Malaysia. Without it, you can't purchase ebooks from Amazon, either. The most basic iRiver model, an ebook reader which you can get via MPH Bookstore or in Digital Mall and Low Yat Plaza, costs RM999. The iPad costs even more than that; and, like the Kindle, it's also not on sale in Malaysia, as far as I'm aware.

Plus, hard plastic devices aren't ergonomic and even though portable & convenient, they don't feel good when you hold them. Your fingers are pushed straight and flat against the back of the device when you grip it, which is tiring and awkward for the hand muscles. Books can bend and are easier to grasp (for this reason, I don't like hardcover editions either!).

So I don't agree with Mr Negroponte when he says that physical books are likely to vanish in five years. I think that's an extremely optimistic prediction. Just because the technology is there to squash more books than you could read in a lifetime into a tiny chip, it doesn't mean people will automatically or even naturally take advantage of the technology. There are more things to consider than that alone.