I just unsubscribed from Naill Kennedy’s blog. Why? Because it turns out he’s a petty, thoughtless punk. He admits he never made any attempt to contact the blogger or anyone at Microsoft about the post - despite having countless avenues to do so (a comment, an e-mail, the feedback form on the site, etc). Instead he perpetrated a childish and disgusting prank.
As a commenter on Niall’s blog pointed out, Niall is also most likely on the wrong side of the copyright issue he’s using to justify his actions. He hasn’t responded to the question of whether he received permission from the person in the photo (Dean Hachamovitch of the IE team) or the owner of several trademarks that appear in the background of the image (Microsoft), especially considering Niall’s claim that he wants to charge a royalty for use of the photo under a Creative Commons license.
Furthermore, I wonder if Niall received permission from the originator of the photo he replaced his photo on Flickr with (the infamous “goatse” picture) that then appeared on the RSS Team’s blog for a short time. I’m betting he didn’t, and that this is nothing more than an immature prank he’s trying to justify and not an earnest ”defense of copyrighted material” as Niall claims. If it were, he would have contacted the blogger, his employer, or his host. And not stooped to such perverted means of retribution.
What do you think?
