Niall sends Microsoft team a porn message

Ok folks, here’s a little something that you learn in kindergarten – if it’s not yours and you take it, it’s called STEALING, Geesh, what’s so hard to understand about that. It doesn’t matter if he had something on his website about whether or not you needed permission to use something off his site. The basic fact is that it wasn’t Microsoft’s site, ergo it’s stealing. That means that no dessert for Microsoft, a time out in the corner and a spanking. And a written apology to Niall.

Secondly, I’ve read that he replaced it with a pornographic image – no he didn’t. The naked back is not pornographic.

“I don’t think so. Unprofessional, especially for someone who used to work at Microsoft.”

As a former Microsoft-y myself, I have to say that — having experienced the kind of self-absorption that runs rather rampant within the company — the Niall stunt probably was more effective than you may think.

If asked nicely, the individual responsible may have pulled down the “offending” image. If shown, publicly, how inappropriate the action is, now many within management and throughout a variety of teams are going to be more careful in future.

It wasn’t exactly tactful, but it’s dead certain to more effective than a gently-worded (and quickly ignored) e-mail.

“And a written apology to Niall.”

Just like Niall owes a written apology to readers of that blog. I don’t think he’s going to do it anyway. A naked back may not be pornographic but it’s definitely not tasteful.

“It wasn’t exactly tactful, but it’s dead certain to more effective than a gently-worded (and quickly ignored) e-mail.”

The e-mail needn’t have been gently-worded. He should have probably e-mailed them first and done this if that didn’t work, you know?

Yea, yea, Niall, this is going on your permanent file.

Scoble, you’re a douche.

Microsoft: PLEASE Mr. BUSH, POOR PEOPLE IN CHINA ARE STEALING OUR SOFTWAREZ!!!!!!!!

A picture of someone’s barely covered butthole is not in good taste. Ugh. He’s in the right for swapping out, but this is one of those cases where it’s better to be prudent than right. Don’t bite the finger that fed you, Mr. I’m-teaching-the-big-guy-a-lesson-in-IP.

Personally I think the proper way of handling this would’ve been:

1. Send an email.
2. Remove the image or replace with something not in poor taste.
3. Jump up and down screaming. Or you know, try contacting Microsoft by phone. I’m sure if you rang their reception and said “one of your websites is violating my copyright, put me through to a lawyer” you’d get things sorted pretty quickly.

For those bringing up the bandwidth issue, if this was a flickr image, he’s not paying bandwidth.

Personally I think this makes Niall look like really immature – I would think twice before working professionally with him, and I’m sure others will too. It’s not about being a yes man, it’s about thinking about the fact that he’s not just alienated himself against Microsoft, but potentially many readers of that blog

Violating the rights of the “goatse” picture owner(s) to illustrate how bad you feel about “them” violating your rights… sounds kind of mo^H^H ironic.

I think people are missing the point. If Niall put a picture of a little kitten would anyone have noticed? A porn image may have been in poor taste(don’t know didn’t see it) but it got their attention.

I think that was the point. Professional or not, sometimes you need to do something radical to get the attention of a large corporation. Even if he did work there. Lets see I could make 30 phones calls to get it resolved or put up one porn image. Hmmm how much is your time worth?

Yeah, that must of really did a good job in catching Microsoft’s attention. :p

Out of all the millions of images he could have chosen to post, he chooses a porn image?
That’s just weak. And unprofessional.

Greg: if you worked at Microsoft and it takes 30 calls to get anyone’s attention, you must not have been a very good employee.

He already admitted that he didn’t give the team a chance. You say that’s fine in your book. Geesh, if I screw up, I hope someone gives me a chance to fix my mistakes before making a capital case out of it.

Hell, if it were me I would have asked for a nice licensing fee first. Then I would have thrown up a Firefox advertisement if they didn’t do anything. That would have been FAR funnier AND gotten their attention JUST as effectively (even moreso, me thinks).

Awesome!

That this can’t be seen as funny but some bad PR stunt, seems to defy logic. If a company takes itself so seriously that it can’t laugh at what a former employee did in jest, then the company needs to really inspect itself.

What Niall did is a reflection of his character, it’s how he operates, whether he thought it was funny or did it out of angst and languor, or even anger is irrelevant. If it did not appear during the time that he worked at Microsoft then he repressed part of his character while working there.

I don’t mean to morally justify what he did, so much as point out that Microsoft should have a good sense of humor about itself in remembering stunts like this.

Dave: I don’t work for Microsoft. Thanks for noticing.

Scoble:

I didn’t mean to insinuate that you did, I just meant to notice your consideration here:

“Remember Niall, maybe someday this Web 2.0 bubble will end and you might need to go back to a company and look for a job. I know that doesn’t seem probable right now, but I’ve been there.

Burn bridges if you want, but I’ve learned over and over that people remember this kind of treatment and it certainly never disappears from Google. All three of my last job interviews had people looking over Google for unprofessional stuff like this to bring up in the interviews. And, all big companies have people who used to work at Microsoft so that bridge you’re blowing up? Might turn out to be the one you need to cross in the future.”

That perhaps Microsoft would not consider having him back after something like this, in which case I am trusting your perception, you having worked at Microsoft and I having not worked there.

Of course I have no real perspective on what you mean when you say “I don’t work for Microsoft” seeing as how I don’t have any personal perspective on you, so perhaps this whole game is a bit tenuous and strained when thinking about trusting people or some level of truth.

I just meant to say: lighten up eh?

So– yay for philosophical debate and pranks!

PS:

And by perspective I mean hermeneutic of interpretation. I have no idea how to understand the implications of that sentence: as sarcastic, as ironic, as factual, etc…

Hope that seems more lucid now.

Carry on!

A few months ago I noticed someone hosting one of my CC videos on YouTube without attribution. My first thought was to be a dick and e-mail YouTube to have it taken down. I had a change of mind and decided to sign up for a YouTube account and send the user a message asking him to give me attribution.

People get pissed off when big companies send rude take-down messages and don’t understand New Media. If I had gotten the video removed, it would have created hostility and bad PR for me. The guy quickly responded and offered to remove the video, even though I said it was okay for him to leave it there.

Kindness and words can go a long way; you don’t have to be rude or piss people off to make a point. I’ve learned this lesson myself, but it seems Niall hasn’t.

>That perhaps Microsoft would not consider having him back after something like this, in which case I am trusting your perception, you having worked at Microsoft and I having not worked there.

Actually, I wasn’t thinking he’d go back to Microsoft. But enough other people would see this kind of behavior and be troubled by it.

Former Microsoft employees now work at lots of other companies too, so if you burn a guy who works today at Microsoft, chances are that tomorrow he’ll work at Google or Apple or some other place you might like to work and you’ll never figure out why you didn’t get hired.

Sounds like a bummer.

My worse side merrily applauds Niall’s “obey impulse, live the moment, damn the consequences” attitude that I find so seductive. As for career consequences, all that is above my head. As a useless git, I have excelled at crashing in flames all my life. Everybody has to have a hobby. Good luck Niall. Get drunk? Cy Quick of mydigest.wordpress.com

I think sometimes you gotta do, what you gotta do. But sometimes you pay for what you had to do! Maybe a little, maybe a lot. Best of luck to you Niall.

I’m with Diego (way the hell up there). Caterina Fake might’ve pulled this on Om, but Niall pranking Microsoft is much more memorable. To “Niall” someone seems like the perfect shorthand to describe swapping an image to sabotage an inline linker. Better than to “Caterina,” anyway.

BTW. From where did Niall steal the porn picture.