Rubin Starset

Finally got done with processing film photos from Berlin and Vienna during the 2010/11 New Years.

This morning I had a number of friends point out an SFGate blog post that included a photo I took of a pair of MUNI transfers from a few years ago. Little did I know this would be the Nth time I would get annoyed by an entity on the internet. At first I was generically flattered by the whole thing, photo of mine, on a largish site, wow! Maybe I should check to see if my servers can handle the load from the link back. The post itself is about what makes you a San Franciscican, and also talking about how the last time they did a post like this they had of negative responses to the word usage of "Frisco".

After actually finding the post and where my photo was in it, all of my dreams of how I've just hit the big time and am totally making a name for myself as a street photography among the millions of other street photographers also trying to make a name for themselves here in San Francisco, came to a crashing, sobbing, forum trolled end. Why? Because groups of people backed behind the blurred name of a larger company typically don't respect licensing and copyrights of individuals on the internet.

My photos are available online through the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons License. I do this because it allows me to share my works for others to come by and use in whatever they want to noncommercially. And sharing is caring right? If you're unfamiliar with the various kinds of Creative Commons, the license is broken down like this...

• Free to remix and edit the work
• Free to share, copy, repost the work elsewhere
• If the work is shared elsewhere, edited or not, the editing/reposting author must give attribution back to me
• The work may not be used in any sort of commercial capacity
• The same Creative Commons license must be used when reposting the work

SFGate is a commercial company, with ads all over their site, that page in particular is features ads for AT&T and some car insurance (I despise AT&T and would like to see less cars in my city). Within the terms of the Creative Commons license SFGate isn't allowed to use my photo, they can however contact me and ask for some kind of permission, to which I would respond back with, "Sure, buy me dinner," and they would tell me to piss off by simply not responding, and I live a happier life knowing my work isn't on a commercial site where they don't want to share any of their revenue with me. In sort my photos aren't published from commercial use without prior permission and a worded out waver.

Additionally as part of the Creative Commons if attribution is required and instructions on how that should be displayed aren't attached along with the item, the party wanting to use it must ask how so and get a response back from the owner of the work before actually posting it anywhere, SFGate completely failed at that. They did provide my Flickr name, no linkage back and the title of the original work is missing, so if someone wanted to find the original copy they would have an crappy hard time doing so.

On top of all of it they didn't republish my work with the same license, which is also required. At the bottom of the SFGate page you'll however find a link and some text: © 2011 Hearst Communications Inc.

Material published on The SF Gate online service is copyrighted by Hearst Communications Inc. or its licensors, including the originating wire services. Such material is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws and treaties. All rights reserved.

Users of the SF Gate online service may not reproduce, republish or redistribute material found on the web site in any form without the express written consent of the copyright holder.

So my photograph is either now under the copyrighted work of Hearst Communications Inc, or it's still mine but you really can't tell because they're not providing any specific information on how to find the original copy or even how to contact me. Additionally Hearst Communications Inc has altered the terms of my license to the point where others can no longer use it within the capacity of my original Creative Commons license, which is exactly what I don't want.

What's going to happen next? Possibly SFGate isn't going to care after they read the annoying email I've sent them asking why they feel ripping off other people's (not other company's) work is OK in their book. I could do the same to them by scraping their site and republishing their content somewhere else on the internet, possibly with a little twist, hurm...

Lastly, what the shit, MUNI doesn't punch transfers. Are these people even from San Francisco?

Update 20120405 113346 - Looks like my little troll rage is slowly making its rounds. As of this morning the SFGate blog post no longer has my photo in their slideshow rotation, also missing are 2 other photos (suppose I'm not the only one to get their panties in a twist). Sadly no email back from them with an answer as to why they thought it was ok to count Creative Commons as free domain. I imagine they're attempting to word out the most politest cease and desist email right now, scented stationary and all.

Audio: OGG / MP3

About two weeks ago (October 27th) while up in Seattle I was invited to participate in a podcastable discussion about the current overlap of technology and the Occupy Movement.

The inaugural episode of the BrainMeats podcast is devoted to the Occupy movement and what hackers and makers can do to support the protesters on the ground. Willow spoke over Skype to Ari, Ella, Matt, Rubin, and Smári about the history of OWS, the meaning of illegibility within the movement, software tools for protesters, and more.

I was a little groggy through most of it and wish I had more fruitful things to say other than being the devil's advocate that I normally am. Anyhow it was a good discussion and if you're interested I recommend listening in on it. If you're curious about any of the sites/services/things talked about, please check out Willow's post for more details.

The podcast is provided under the Creative Commons: Attribution, Share Alike, Non Commercial license.

So tonight at some point in time I went to the front door of my flat, to find this...

2lb and 9oz of political spam, 53 piece in total, ranging from supporting runners for offices and propositions to bad mouthing individuals and groups. For the most part I consider much of this fiction and not worth my damn time. It's weight is approximately 10 times what my household normally gets a week in paper snail mail spam. All of it went into the recycling bin at the top of my stairs under our little mail slots for each housemate. I could sit here and do the carbon footprint math, but just by looking at the pile of junk it's pretty apparent that there's a bunch of money and resources wasted that go into these paper campaigns.

It boggles my mind on how we don't have a system to opt out of this trash.

Next to the recycling bin we have a bench, where this was sitting on top of...

9oz of fact. I would like to see political parties throw their money into making this booklet easier to read and not as daunting, more recyclable, more apparent that it's available online.

I don't care how much politicians want to toot the truth or name bash the other runners, but please stop doing it in print, stop filling up my mail box with this garbage, it makes me not want to vote for any of you, or maybe that's just the point?

The universe at its core is extremely binary. Without the attention to detail and the ability to look closely we perceive it as analog and rather confusing or possibly chaotic and random. Computers are an attempt to recreate a binary systems on top of the analog layer we have such a hard time seeing beyond, pushing for some sort of sane black and white order. Video games, social networking, online communication, the attempt at providing an over all seamless web experience, transparent inside that little device sitting in your pocket, purse or bag, are us pushing for an artificial analog experience within this digital binary world we created, on top of the analog universe that's just an overly complicated binary system.

We are nothing more than meme/meta machines....

Yes I'm on my 4th drink for the night.

I've kept a bit of distance away from Twitter for the past couple of weeks, it's been good, though I'm sure this post will auto update my feed. Disconnection has lead to a bit of wondering where and when things happen for a given night, but the return value of hearing about stories, events, interesting things from people directly through passing has been worth it. I've gone from compulsively refreshing Twitter to my lone RSS feeds, Slashdot and Latitude.

My trip to Europe happening in a day or so already feels like escape, really don't want it to feel like that. I'll inevitable come back and it's no longer escape. Keep track of me on the Locate page. I'll have access to phone, email, IM, etc for most of it. Looking forward to Camp.

New job has been great, rather enjoy working out of a castle. It's also been challenging to the level that works well for me.

Distance and pain lasts forever, a closed feeling. I busy myself with new projects trying to keep my mind off of the past, present and what could have been the future. Multiple futures. I wake up each morning early wondering, making my bed, having a tiny bit of breakfast, picking out what to wear. Mannerism I didn't have before, they're not mine. Now I'm not really sure who's they are.

Last things last. At the point now where I need to for myself to understand that this really isn't the last thing.

Look at what I just made over the past two days.

The game happens June 18th, 6:30 PM, Justin Herman Plaza. Come and play!

So last night I received a series of text messages, all at the same time right on the minute change over to 1:25 (UTC -06).

• +17864926438 - I bet the Jews did this. n2
• +13057055326 - Trade cats for weed? I7
• +13057055432 - BILL MAYS HERE!! oJ
• +17865826469 - Nice obesity. 9r
• +17865926441 - I demand justice. 6W
• +17274879593 - Sup I just drifted a 85' crown victoria. k1
• +17864718655 - I demand justice. 8F
• +14155704163 - If a tree falls in a forest and hits a woman, what is a forest doing in a kitchen? Bq
• +17319070379 - Your hands are really hairy. wq
• +17864718638 - Omg, tits. a7

Spam? Weird encrypted message? What the fuck?

One of the things I've been aiming for recent is to live completely without expectations. As a result it seems like I haven't gotten as exited about something as I did months ago. I think this is starting to become a negative aspect of my life, to not actually be extremely exited (pony peeing rainbows) about much of anything. Maybe this is turning me into a boring person? To my friends and within myself.

Today I had a series of communications to varied wildly on the emotional scale, I surprised myself by eventually feeling overwhelmed by it all. My time to myself tonight went to waste from a lack of focus. Wishing that all this were easier.

There are things missing from my life right now, some I know about, others are a mystery in themselves. The need to focus on figuring out what these missing things are is rather hard, the feeling replaced with a want to dig a hole and live in it.