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The Evolution of Labor Day

Nancy Nally — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:00:06 +0000

The origins of Labor Day, which takes place the first Monday of September in North America, are somewhat uncertain. The holiday originated in Canada, born out of the worker’s rights movement there in the 1870s. By the 1880s, it had spread across the border, and the first organized Labor Day celebration in the U.S. was held in New York City in 1882.

Throughout the 1880s the honoring of Labor Day gradually made its way throughout the U.S., until it became a federal holiday during the administration of President Grover Cleveland in 1894. Rather than being a day of rest for the worker, however, Labor Day was initially a day of activism. Early celebrations relied on parades and festivals centered around union organizations and their workers. Homage was paid to the rights of these workers and their incredible importance in the growing industrial economy of the country.

What is certain is that since then, the world of work has changed dramatically. The American worker is migrating from the factory to service and knowledge work. Union membership is falling. More and more of us work for small businesses, or even ourselves, instead of large corporations.

As the worker evolved, so did Labor Day. It became a day of rest for office workers. Or at least it was until technology took over. Increasingly, as we’ve discussed often here at WWD, technology makes it difficult for workers to get away from their jobs — even on the supposed holiday meant to honor workers. Our BlackBerrys, laptops and other devices mean our work follows us everywhere we go, 24/7. This is doubly true for web workers. And for self-employed web workers, there is another challenge: taking time off means we aren’t making money.

So how do we web workers celebrate such a holiday when it’s increasingly difficult for us to take a holiday from our work? Maybe we need to get back to Labor Day’s original advocacy-focused roots.

Few web workers are members of unions, or of trade groups that advocate for our interests on a larger stage. That’s because, especially for solo workers, it can be easy to feel like there’s no point in speaking up on issues that relate to us, to just be one voice amidst a chorus of organized groups.

But if we don’t speak up for ourselves, who will?

So this Labor Day, even if we web workers aren’t pausing in our work to honor ourselves, maybe we should all add self-advocacy to our task lists. We need to be reminded of how important it is to stand up for our own interests, just like our ancestors did in the 19th century.

What are you doing for Labor Day? Are you working or honoring the holiday?

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Supplier Wintek Lands Apple in Labor Dispute

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:00:04 +0000

Photo Credit: Jonathan Adams/GlobalPost

This morning, Apple had a little more to worry about than the usual leaks, rumors and lawsuits. Protesters in Taipei, Taiwan, gathered outside of the company’s corporate office in the region to express their displeasure in Apple’s choice of suppliers. Wintek, which makes flat-panel displays for Apple’s line of computers, is being targeted by the group for its alleged exploitation (PDF) of workers at its factories in Taiwan and China.

After allegedly failing to get Wintek to comply through direct action, labor groups, including Taipei-based National Federation of Independent Trade Unions, decided to put pressure on Apple instead, in the hopes that it would attract more media attention to their cause and convince Apple to push its supplier to act. According to GlobalPost, protest organizer Chu Wei-li said, “We want to go through Apple to put pressure on Wintek.”

Labor groups behind the protest claim that Wintek summarily dismissed 600 employees in December of last year, then cut salaries across the board and forced remaining workers to work unpaid overtime to cope with the change in available manpower. A Wintek subsidiary is also under fire from workers’ rights activists for allegedly maintaining unacceptable working conditions, lowering salaries without negotiation, and illegal firings following strike action.

Wintek, for its part, says it has done nothing wrong and that all layoffs and pay policies were completely aboveboard and in line with local regulations. Apple’s Asia representative responded to GlobalPost via email, saying:

Apple is committed to ensuring the highest standards of social responsibility wherever our products are [made], and we require corrective actions when we find violations.

Apple’s own high standards are exactly what protesters and labor groups are asking the company to enforce in the case of Wintek. Pressure from Apple could have significant influence over Wintek’s actions going forward, especially if recent rumors about a 2010 tablet from Cupertino prove true, because Wintek would likely supply displays for the device. If its track record is any indicator, Apple will likely move swiftly to resolve this matter to avoid legal or government intervention, which could theoretically result in its future hardware plans coming under unwanted scrutiny.

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What To Do When Your Work is Stolen Online

Celine Roque — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:00:53 +0000

Stealing on the internet is easy. It takes very little effort for someone to copy your work and slap their name on it. Almost every month I hear of a photographer, blogger, or designer I know whose work gets used without their permission. With all this copyright infringement going around, I’d be surprised if a majority of WWD readers claim that this has never happened to them.

When it does happen, what should you do?

Document first

The first thing you should do is to document the act of infringement itself. Since there are so many things for you to document – from screenshots to various site stats and rankings – I’ll just point the way to other articles that have covered the documentation process exhaustively:

Dealing With Online Copyright Infringement from MarketingDock.com
FAQ: What Can I Do About Internet Copyright Infringement? at SEO Logic

Try to communicate

Unless the theft seems malicious or has serious consequences, it often helps to take a calm, but firm approach. While you may be hurt initially, don’t get emotional when writing that first email or making that call. After all, they might not have had proper knowledge of copyright law when they did it, or it might be an honest mistake (such as what happened to fellow WWD blogger Aliza Sherman a few months back). Show them the facts and tell them what they need to do to set things straight.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you should have warm, fuzzy feelings for copyright violators. There is a huge difference between a scraper site and 10 year old girl who is a first-time blogger. It’s perfectly fair to get web hosts and search engines to ban the former, but it would be an unnecessarily scathing experience for the latter.

The point I am trying to make is that when you communicate with the person at fault, do it formally. Don’t send a flaming rant or make a defamatory post in your blog. (Yet.) Remember that you’re a professional, and everything you send out must show this. If it is an obvious, honest mistake that can be fixed with a little communication, then it’s best to take that route.

Get help

If you’re unsure how to approach this situation, look at the legal facts and turn to a professional. There are some websites where you can get free legal advice, which you can use as a starting point to clear up the legal aspects of the violation. Also, familiarize yourself with the actual provisions and exceptions of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). If reading the actual text seems too tedious for you, at least read the Wikipedia page on the DMCA.

It’s important to remember that nothing beats the advice of a licensed lawyer that you can discuss all these things with. That’s why I noted in a previous post that a lawyer is one of the most important contacts you could ever have.

This is especially important if the case is vague, such as two blog posts discussing the same subject with the same angle, or two website templates that look similar.

Copyright infringement may be rampant, but many internet users are starting to take it seriously. There might come a day when it no longer happens, but until then, we should be standing up for our rights to our work.

Has your work been stolen online? What did you do about it?

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Understanding Online Photo Rights

Aliza Sherman — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:00:59 +0000

I recently had an email exchange with a photographer. He was unhappy that I used an image from his web site on one of my blogs without a proper credit or link back to his site. I took a look at the blog page in question – from 2005 – and noted that indeed, I did not credit him or link back to his site. So I removed the image immediately and replaced it with a Wikipedia Creative Commons image.

The photographer was not satisfied. He asked that I pay him retroactively for using his image. I argued with him that the blog was not a commercial one, it didn’t get very much traffic at all, and even though I did not link back to his image, it was embedded using the actual image HTML code from his site so all anyone had to do was view the image to see the source. He persisted. After further research, I learned that I was in the wrong.

To find out more about photo rights on the Web, I turned to a lawyer, Deena B. Burgess, Esq., Managing Partner with the Law Offices of Deena Burgess, and gave her a few scenarios to comment on. Here is what she had to say.

Scenario 1: I copy someone else’s image onto your computer and upload it onto my FTP site but I include a copyright notice and link back to the photographer’s site (I do not notify them that I have done this).

From Burgess:

The first thing that needs to be understood is that every photograph is the intellectual property of the person who took the photograph. Copyright protection attaches even where the person has not put a copyright notice and even if the copyright is not registered with the Copyright Office. (You do, however, need to register with the Copyright Office in order to sue on your rights.)

Every copyright holder has certain exclusive rights that attach to their work. These include the right to reproduce, distribute, display and create derivative works from the work (there are others that don’t apply to photography). Without permission, even if you were to give credit to the copyright holder, you would still be infringing their work.

As far as my liability for you loading the copyrighted of the work onto my computer and uploading it from there, I could be subjected to vicarious liability for my part (or, more accurately, my computer’s part) in the copyright infringement.

If you were to contact the photographer and ask for permission to use the photo, you then would not be violating the rights of the photographer provided you abide by whatever terms the two of you agree to.

Scenario 2: I don’t copy their image at all but instead embed it onto my site using the URL of the image that resides on their site – so it appears on my site. I include a copyright notice and link back to the photographer’s site (I do not notify them that I have done this).

From Burgess:

Again, since the copyright holder has the exclusive right to distribute, display and create derivative works from their work, even embedding the photo on your site would violate the copyright on that work.

If you were just to include the link on your site where the image is not displayed, rather than the photo, you would not be violating the photographer’s copyright to the work.

Scenario 3: I don’t copy their image at all but instead embed it onto my site using the URL of the image that resides on their site – so it appears on my site. In this case, I DO NOT include any credit or link back (I do not notify them that I have done this). But if someone were really interested in the source, all they would have to do would be view the image to see where it came from.

From Burgess:

Similarly to the answer to question 2, the display of the image on your site without permission is a violation of the exclusive rights of the photographer.

You need to either ask permission to use the work (which is often freely given when you explain that you’re crediting the source in any way that they’d like) or you need to include the link rather than the picture itself.

Back to my bad move on using a photographer’s image without permission, without credit and without a link. Learning that I could negotiate something other than pay for my infringement, I offered to feature him in an interview on my blog and include a small ad on the blog linking to his site. He was thrilled with the offer and accepted both as payment for the past use of his image.

Have you infringed on someone else’s copyright or had someone infringe on yours? How did you resolve the issue?

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Security Update 2008-05 : DNS Flaw Finally Fixed

Bob Rudis — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:04:45 +0000

Apple released Security Update 2008-05 which contains fixes for:

an Open Scripting Architecture (CVE-2008-2830) privilege elevation issue [10.4/10.5 Workstation & Server]
a filename handling issue in CarbonCore (CVE-2008-2320) which may lead to an application Denial of Service (DoS) or arbitrary code execution [10.4/10.5 Workstation & Server]
a web-exploitable CoreGraphics issue (CVE-2008-2321) that could lead to application DoS or arbitrary code execution [10.4/10.5 Workstation & Server]
another CoreGraphics issue (CVE-2008-2322) with PDF rendering, leading to application DoS or arbitrary code execution [10.4/10/5 Workstation & Server]
an issue with DataDetectors (CVE-2008-2323) where maliciously crafted content could lead to an application DoS [10.5 Workstation & Server]
a really cool permissions issue with Disk Utility (CVE-2008-2324) that would have allowed local users to act with system privileges [10.4 Workstation & Server]
an issue with OpenLDAP (CVE-2008-2952) where an attacker could have created an application DoS [10.4/10.5 Workstation & Server]
another DoS potential in OpenSSL (CVE-2007-5135) if maliciously crafted bad packets are processed [10.4/10.5 Workstation & Server]
five PHP 5 fixes [10.5 Workstation & Server]
a QuickLook issue with Microsoft Office documents (CVE-2008-2325) causing either an application DoS or arbitrary code execution [10.5 Workstation & Server]
two rsync vulnerabilities that may result in data access outside the module root [10.4/105 Workstation & Server]

The “big daddy” of this update is a fix for the DNS cache poisoning problem that has been in the Apple and general tech & security news recently. This is a pretty severe issue as DNS is the backbone of how systems & application get IP addresses from host names (so they know where to send you on the Intenet), and the ability to corrupt those databases means you really cannot trust where your network packets are going. Apple is the last major vendor to release a fix for this flaw and rightfully deserves some flack for it since they could have deployed the patch on July 8th with the majority of the other vendors, but chose to wait until this update bundle was ready to release.

OS X Server is the most likely candidate for actually running BIND (the process that manages DNS on a system) and you need to patch IMMEDIATELY if you are using it. It takes a bit of work to do this on plain-old Mac OS X, but you should run the update as soon as possible as well (especially for some of the other fixes).

A gaping hole still exists in OS X 10.3 and below you will need to do a bit of work (download, compile & install the package from the ISC by hand) if you are still running those systems and hosting DNS . While supporting older operating system releases presents a real challenge to companies like Apple & Microsoft, it is not unreasonable to expect there to be a decent number of 10.3 systems in the wild that need tending to and Apple should have done more to ensure coverage for those installations (or at least have provided a series of steps one could take to fix the issue).

Apple clearly dropped the ball here and has called into question their true commitment to security on their OS X platform or at least their ability to react quickly given all of the efforts they have in play. One also needs to remember that a version of OS X runs on the iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPod Touch and it is unclear whether the issues with CoreGraphics and DataDetectors exist on those platforms as well. It is much more difficult to both issue firmware updates and ensure decent update coverage with those mobile devices and Apple may need to come up with a way to deploy critical security fixes over-the-air directly to them rather than force consumers to do a full sync/update to remain secure.

The security update should show up in Software Update and is also available via direct download from Apple.

Let TAB readers know your take on how Apple handled this situation by dropping a note in the comments!

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The Onion, You Suck Win Webbys

Chris Albrecht — Tue, 06 May 2008 17:54:49 +0000

The winners of the 2008 Webby Awards were announced today (read Liz Miller’s previous take on the nominees), with the Onion News Network, Hometown Baghdad, My Damn Channel, The New York Times, PBS and Revision3 taking home multiple awards.

The Onion took home both the judges’ and the people’s voice Webbys for Best Writing, Comedy: Individual Short or Episode, and won the people’s voice award for the News & Politics: Series category.

In The Know: Is The Government Spying On Paranoid Schizophrenics Enough?

NewTeeVee favorite You Suck at PhotoShop was a people’s voice winner for Comedy: Long Form or Series, and even more awesome, the faux tutorial picked up both the judge’s and the people’s voice award for in the category of How-to and DIY.

Hometown Baghdad won the judge’s awards for News and Politics: Series, Public Service and Activism, and Reality.

Other winners include The West Side (our coverage) for Best Drama Series, Wainy Days (our coverage) for Best Comedy Series, 30-Second Bunnies Theater for Best Animation and Here Comes Another Bubble (our coverage) for Best Viral.

Check out the full list of winners at the Webby Awards site.

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jkOTR Mobile Media Edition 34: First look at Sprint HTC Mogul

James Kendrick — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 05:02:00 +0000

Click here to get the MP4 or WMV version (21 minutes)

Timefor another jkOTR Mobile Media Edition! In this show #34 we are happyto bring you a first look at the just released Sprint HTC Mogul WindowsMobile 6 smartphone. The Mogul is the successor to the popularPPC-6700 and we give you a comparison of the two devices along with agood look at the new, svelte Mogul.

Here are the specs of this sweet HTC Mogul:

Slide-out QWERTY keyboard
4.33" x 2.32" X 0.73"
5.8 ounces
Intel PXA-263
64 MB RAM; 256 MB ROM
CDMA (1900 & 800 MHz)
EVDO Rev. 0 (Upgradable to Rev. A)
WiFi 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth
1500 mAH standard battery (4 hour talk time); 2100 mAH optional battery
Sprint Power Vision network

Subscribe to jkOnTheRun Mobile Media Edition here (RSS)

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Intel, says WiMAX is coming..shortly

Om Malik — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 11:09:26 +0000

Its like the boy who cried wolf. For the nth time Intel has outlined its WiMAX roadmap. Sean Maloney, head of Intel’s mobility group, told VNU Net that 802.16d WiMax chipsets are now shipping, and that enhanced 802.16e equipment will arrive shortly. (Its a really long shortly!) Maloney added that WiMAX capable laptops are going to be available next year, and by 2008/2009 the company would combine Wi-Fi and WiMax into a single chip, and volume productions would bring the prices down to $25. Maloney dissed 3G technologies saying it has a future, but its a fragmented technology. You gotta be kidding me – maybe this lack of even the basics is the reason Intel struggles in mobility chips.

“3G has a future but it’s a fragmented technology with no global standard,” he claimed. “It’s not designed for high bandwidth applications but there’ll always be a market for voice and medium speed data services.”

Just to set the record straight, 3G networks are operational, and WiMAX is still a roadmap. (Fixed Wireless is a different story!) The WiMAX Ready networks of Intel investments like Clearwire are no faster than some flavors of 3G.

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