Urban Neighbourhood

Surviving A Troll Attack – Or Why I Stopped Blogging For A While

Any semi regular followers of Urban Neighbourhood, or anyone who pays attention to the date range of posts will have no doubt noticed the drastic slow down / reduction in posts here at Urban Neighbourhood over the past year.  I would like to take the opportunity to explain why this outage occurred as Dan starts to gets his Blog back, (Anyone over the age of 25 should get the film reference). I started this post a couple months back but was concerned about the implications of ‘poking the dragon’ after my case was closed, but now that the court is considering sending US Marshals to drag Mr & Ms Righthaven’s asses into court so that they can start liquidating their assets I’m not so worried, seeing as they would be arrested if they showed up to file another suit. That said it should be noted that all my references to the personalities or person hood of the referenced parties are alleged and should not be taken as fact. So if I suggest that the people associated with Righthaven are soulless  trolls who deserve to trip and fall into a tire fire, I am only alleging that they are soulless trolls. The tire fire part however, is totally true.

Anyone paying attention to the blogosphere and the legal wrangling that has been going on for the past 4 years regarding fair use and digital rights will be familiar with the copyright Troll better known as Righthaven(1). Starting last fall, Righthaven began suing bloggers who quoted articles from a paper with the initials LVRJ(2)  for copyright infringement. Even in cases where the quotes were properly sourced and hyper-linked the firm struck. www.urbanneighbourhood.com was the victim (3) of one of these Troll attacks last year, right before Christmas. Just as a footnote I don’t make any money of this blog. In fact it costs me about 30$ bucks a year so any claims that I am making money off the efforts of others are ridonculous.

Now I don’t know if you have ever been sued before but it is not a nice feeling, and getting sued right before Christmas feels even worse. But it shouldn’t really surprise anyone that trolls + christmas doesn’t work. I spent the next couple of weeks freeking out and badgering a good deal of lawyers and other people that knew stuff about lawyering for legal advice. This advice ranged from; ‘your screwed even if your innocent, try to settle for around a grand’, ‘ummm copyright law isn’t really my thing’, to ‘lay low and don’t sign for any packages and use the back door so they can’t serve you’ (4). I spent those could weeks searching all over the internet where I found a few different websites that were great, Righthaven Victims, and the Electronic Freedom Foundation, along with a bunch of others but I lost the list when my hard drive died this fall. For those of you that would like to read a full overview of the rise and ultimate crash and burn of Righthaven, please do check out Righthaven Victims.

Unfortunately none of the Pro Bono firms wanted to take me on as a client, I have a feeling they already had their hands full and my out of country status wouldn’t have helped either. Feeling overwhelmed I was ready to settle and I called the Trolls to offer a pile of my gold, (5) but the Troll’s assistant was busy on another call and asked if he could call back in an hour for my gold. I meekly said ‘OK fine’ and continued to surf the internet for the next hour or so. It was at this point I came upon a goldmine.(6) The Internet was coming to my rescue as since the Trolls had sued about 300 people by this point, all of whom were Internet savvy people, a good portion of them had posted their legal arguments, counter suits, motions, and judgments online, and I realized that by using the appropriate legal citations from those documents I could write my own damn counter suit without having access to a legal library. The only problem was that I was on the last day of my window to respond, so the troll people could motion for summary judgment.

I emailed the assistant troll and apologized for not picking up as I had had a family emergency,(7) and asked for an extension of the window to respond till the following Monday, which assistant troll then gave to me in writing via a return email. (8)  I then proceeded to lock myself into my office at home and at work and spend more time writing that paper then I have any other 22 page paper in my life. On Friday I dropped the completed paper off with FedEx and then spend the next couple of days obsessively checking the tracking website to watch the progress of the first copy, priority overnight to the Court Clerk’s Office, and the second, 3 day shipping to Righthaven’s cave under the bridge (9). On Monday afternoon I got an irate email from the head troll claiming that I had violated fair practice or some shit by offering to settle and then not doing so, to which I responded with a copy of the email granting me the extension and a we’ll see what happens in court. (10)

The Trolls then responded with a counter argument that once again argued that I was starving their poor troll babies and that I was going to bring about the end of civilization if I were permitted to quote and reference articles (11). In many ways this counter argument was a bonus for me because it meant that I could submit my own reply to this counter argument and actually spend three weeks writing it, thus making it even better and full of even more relevant case law as to why the trolls had their heads up their own rear ends.

Meanwhile the news in the courts was not so good… for the Trolls. The Judges that were hearing the cases that had already gone to court were finding Righthaven’s arguments that they were losing money (12) since the only way that they made money was by suing people and that they were failing to see how quoting and hyper-linking to a website was damaging. (13)

A couple months later I got an email from the assistant troll telling me that I had to respond within two weeks to their request for a discovery meeting or else! So I responded with an email stating that I would be more then happy to do a discovery teleconference with them on one of four dates (14). I then got an email from senior troll telling me that this was not good enough, and I must come to the troll cave in person. In a bit of a bluff I calmly replied that since their toll enforcer (15)had served me in Canada they could hire a Canadian Lawyer or fly up here themselves  if they wanted a face to face discovery meeting. Either because I was right, or they didn’t know the law well enough, they didn’t send any more threats for discovery. This could have also been do to the fact that things were going worse and worse for them in the courts.

Then came June 22nd. See it turns out that in one of the other cases that was in front of the court, the judge had ordered that the agreement between Stevens Media and Righthaven be unsealed where upon it turned out that Righthaven didn’t actually own the copy right to anything, they had only been licensed the right to sue. While this may have seemed smart in terms of keeping Steven’s Media shielded from counter suits and liability, it was also completely wrong. See any good lawyer will tell you that you can’t sue over the patent for something unless you actually own it. Wham Bam  good by lawsuit! Since the Judge found that the Trolls had no right to sue, and apparently needed to go back to law school, that and all the other pending lawsuits were dismissed! Good bye legal nightmare!

So now I like to check Righthaven Victims, to follow the saga every couple of weeks because the Judges do not like it when you lie to them and waste the Court’s valuable time with over 400 groundless lawsuits and have in the last couple of months reduced them from a set of scary trolls to a set of fugitives on the run to try to keep from being liquidated, and that my friends is how I survived a Troll Attack.

Playing dirty in sustainable energy.

In a confluence of two news articles that have come across my desk in the past month; the first from Time discussing how the Chinese have shown that they can do capitalism better then the west, made evident by their decisive decision making and fast response times when dealing with the recent recession. While western governments argue if tax cuts for the wealthy or infrastructure spending is best, the Chinese central government acted swiftly, invested in the right places and the Chinese economy has carried along at a steady pace. The second a news report from the CBC discussing how the the US in up in arms about the Chinese green revolution and the unfair trade practices they used to developing their own solar panel manufacturing industry. An industry that China developed, incidentally enough, almost entirely in the last two years.

The United Steel Workers go on a long rant about how the United States needs to put  a stop to the illegal and unfair trade practices that China is adopting to build its green energy industry;  sanctions, lawsuits and the like, which we all know will be very effective, but while the US focuses on suing China, China will just carry on building the industry, they know that in the long run energy independence is much more important then keeping the US, (who’s debt it practically owns anyway) happy.  As the quote indicates, they already know how to win the battle for clean energy. (not to mention have a strangle hold on most of the raw materials.

“Who wins this clean energy race really depends on how much support the government gives.” Zhao Feng, general manger of Hunan Sunzone Optoelectronics.

I have always been a little dubious about Free Trade, its not that I don’t think that there are certain good things about it, I mean I like my goods to be inexpensive,  it’s just that I think the pay off has mostly been for big business and not for the rest of us.

Do you think that it is unfair for a country to subsidize an industry to the detriment of its other trade partners?  Do you think these sudden changes in trade practice have wronged the US? (if you think government subsidies are a new phenomenon… you are so cute!)

That isn’t the ultimate question for me though, My question is, does the planet care? Ever since I read a particularly apt line in a Terry Pratchett novel about how the planet was also alive, but it just moved a lot slower then the rest of us eons rather then years, and humans had better watch out for the point in time  when the planet realizes that it has developed a disfiguring skin condition, I have been more concerned with the effect, rather then the politics.

Ultimately the environment doesn’t give a geological event who comes up with green technology, it just cares that someone does, and in this case China showed the rest of the world that you can create a sustainable industry in no time at all, if you just do it. So maybe next time a western government decides that it wants to become an industry leader in some green technology then they will just do it… since time has proven that if they don’t someone else will beat them too it, that’s just business after all. There isn’t any crying in capitalism.

Welcome to the Banana Republic of America

I don’t often write about income equality and politics in this blog, even though my inital degree was in Political Science I prefer to stick to Urban issues that are a little more lite and friendly then things like economic inequality and the division of wealth, these topics tend to be divisive and are often better left to the many political blogs out there. Today however, a news article came across my desk today that made me rethink my decision to ignore these topics given that the economic vitality of our cities is directly tied in with income distribution and the ability of  a cities citizens to spend money. If the stratification between income classes is too far apart then, and the majority of a city’s residents don’t have access to capital, then the social order tends to break down.

Anyway the information I am talking about comes by way of an opinion piece in the New York Times Titled A Hedge Fund Republic,

It turns out that in the United States in United States the income equality between different classes of citizens is worse then in most so called banana republics. It turns out that the US is on par with, if not worse than Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana. While this is a pretty strong statement  its the statistics behind the statement hat make a more compelling argument.

Let’s compare the United States in Argentina and consult the statistics, in the 1940s the top 1% of Argentina controlled 20% of the country’s net income versus the United States where the top 1% controlled only about 10% of the national income.  Most of the wealth was concentrated in a small percentage of the population and this would later assist Juan Peron in his populist rise to power in 1946.

Now fast forward those statistics to today or rather 2007 ( the most recent years to which the data is available).  In Argentina the top 1% has reduced its share of the pie down to 15% of net income whereas in the United States the top 1% has now gained control of approximately 34% of America’s private net worth. To further illustrate the disparity of wealth one only needs to expand the statistics from the top 1 percent to the top 10% and you end up with a situation where 10% of America owns 71% of Americans’ total net worth. Leaving with 90% of the country with only 29% of net worth.

The times article goes on to further discuss why the supporters of the republican party who fall in that 90% are absolutely insane for letting the party convince them that it is necessary for health of the American economy to keep the bush cuts going, but I will let the New York Times finish that story as they do a much better job.  Read the rest at the New York Times

Neighbourhood News Roundup: Nov 3 2010

Editors Note:

Recently we made an executive decision here at Urban Neighborhood to revamp the way that we deliver news about what is going on in cities around the world, as you can see from previous Neighborhood News installments we used to provide  the first couple paragraphs of the article in full with a picture and then hyperlink you over to the actual article at its source.  This was all well and good but ultimately a rather labor intensive process for content that was essentially a redirect to other news sites that were not providing any incentive. In order to make it easier to do the round up and therefore be more consistent with our installments we are switching over to a method more commonly found on entertainment websites and some of our favorite architecture blogs. So without further adieu here is your news round up for the week.

Hong Kong has decided to shell out some major bucks in order to build the worlds largest cultural district, the West Kowloon Cultural District is a publicly funded project with a price tag of 2.8 billion to be… well approximate… the intention is pretty simple, its plans on using the development to become Asia’s World City.

Since Dubai isn’t paying the the architectural big bucks any more architects like Rem Koolhaas are looking East and Rem has decided to jump on the aforementioned West Kowloon Cultural District gravy train to pay the bills. Rem has a proposal that is ether cultural appropriation or paying tribute to China’s Village history, depending on how you look at it.

The city of Chicago is about to loose out to New York once more, until now it might not have been the biggest city in America but it has had the country’s biggest building for decades, in a couple years One World Trade center is going to take that title away. There was hope that the title transfer would be short lived with the plans for The Spire, then the firm behind it filed for bankruptcy. At least they still have Oprah.

In Green News India has come up with a novel idea to use children to power its parks and playgrounds, now that we have your attention its isn’t as nefarious as you think, the city of Chandigarh wants to use kinetic energy from playground equiptment and solar power to light up its green spaces.

Skyrise Greenery, a website dedicated to green roofs and green spaces integrated into the built form presents its winners for the Skyrise Greenery Awards 2010.

Most tourist bureau’s concentrated on happy and fun but the Cambodian government has decided to take another route and concentrate on its dark history to pull the tourists in. The Atlantic writes about how the Cambodian government plans to develop Anlong Veng a sun-baked, mine-riddled frontier town into a theme park devoted to the Khmer Rouge. A regime that was responsible for murdering almost every in Cambodia who would be between the ages of 25 to 50 if they were still alive today, just in case yo have no knowledge of world history.

Over in Russia Ivan Marchenko discusses the poor state of architecture and the multitudes of unforgettable places that make up the capital and wonders if the sketches presented by designers for the central city are just tomorrows slums being proposed today.

Mason White presents an essay on ‘The Productive Surface’ for all you academics that discusses the shape of our environment and asks questions like “What does architecture and landscape already produce — intentionally or otherwise? And how is that component managed by design?”

For the cartographers and map lovers among us Think Big has a collection of strange maps that range from proposals  fill in the east river to create a Greater New York, to a composite map of European stereotypes.

The Transparent City

Photographed by Michael Wolf.

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be on the other side of the plate glass window? What would it be like to be on the outside looking in?

A new book of Urban Photography by Michael Wolf takes a look at the city from the outside in.

Chicago, like many urban centres throughout the world, has recently undergone a surge of new construction, grafting a new layer of architectural experimentation onto those of past eras. In early 2007, the Museum of Contemporary Photography‚ with the support of U.S. Equities Realty, invited Michael Wolf as an artist-in-residence. Bringing his unique perspective on changing urban environments to a city renowned for its architectural legacy, Wolf chose to photograph the central downtown area, focusing specifically on issues of voyeurism and the contemporary urban landscape in flux.

Pick up the book over at  aperture foundation

Golden Spiral City – A Concept

In geometry a golden spiral is a logarithmic spiral whose growth factor is related to the golden ratio. A golden spiral gets wider by a factor of φ for every quarter turn that it makes.

The golden ratio is found all throughout nature, in plants, animals and even in the human body. One of the most common examples of the golden spiral in nature is the shell of the Nautilus. Artists and architects have used it to proportion their works, in architecture the the golden rectangle, where in the ratio of the longer side to the shorter is based off of the golden ratio has been used for centuries. Notable examples include Michealangelo’s works, classical Greek temples and the Great Mosque of Kairouan. Le Corbusier utilized its proportions for his modulor system.

The Golden Spiral City plan utilizes, cycle paths and pedestrian greenways, canals, a light rail transit network, a street network and a major urban boulevard for access to the central core. As one approaches the city centre the block sizes get smaller and densities increase. The cycle paths and pedestrian greenways are shown in green, the Light Rail Transit network in red. The blue indicates the canal network, the light black the street network and the dark black shows the graceful curve of the boulevard into the central area.

The cycle paths and pedestrian greenways allow residents to use active transportation to move through the city. Providing an extensive network of seperated bicycle paths and pedestrian walkways. These routes also create a series of linear parks that thread through the city leading to larger green spaces at the intersection of the pedestrian routes.

In order to keep these paths active and safe they are designed with lane-way style housing and studio spaces. This achieves two goals, by keeping eyes on the street the pedestrian network doesn’t become a dangerous place after dark by insuring that there will be traffic from residents. These types of housing and studio spaces are also intended to keep the selection of  rental spaces diverse and accessible.