The afghan children are being released after having been held for about a year as "unlawful combatants". Its good news, kind of: U.S. frees 3 teens at Guantanamo base

Its good news as long as we ignore the facts that the treatment of these teens, and all other prisoners at Guantanamo bay is against international law.

My life isn't any less hectic right now, but I feel I have the obligation to follow up this story, with all the heart warming support I see from the blog community. (Thanks guys and girls!)

After I received the letter from Nikken threatening me with legal actions if I didn't remove pages listed in the e-mail. Because, according to Nikken, they were in violation with their copyright. The letter was also sent to Morten, a friend and active Nikken critic. It appeared they were trying to silence any criticism against their business, business style and products.

As you can imagine I was first shocked, then appalled, then angry. Taking a few to calm down, I answered them and then let you all know what was going on.

My answer to Nikken was that I would never remove anything from my site, and that if they wanted to pursue with legal actions they should let me know and I would forward them the address to my lawyer.

Four hours later I received an answer from their "Compliance" department. (I wonder who's compliance they could be seeking...). The author of the first e-mail lets me know that the e-mail, complete with all the legal threats and copyright claims, was a - read this carefully - STANDARD E-MAIL - and was not referring to all of my homepage/pages but to a couple of specific comments that, it appears, a couple of their distributors had left commenting the blog posting. Also note that the author does not say that the former threats and claims of the first e-mail should be discarded, instead she says the first e-mail only applies to a couple of comments on the named page.

So the comments (in Norwegian - and from the spring 2003) are in violation of the Nikken copyright? I can't see how they could be. The first comment tell me that I am dead wrong and don't know what I am talking about. The second goes on for lengths talking about new age tech stuff with the kind of scientific language you'd expect from a shampoo commercial.

Nothing in the comments that I can understand to be in violation with their copyright, unless they have copyrighted new-age-science-blabber. But, I'll say this: I can understand that they might be shamed and want the comments removed out of pure embarrassment.

But wait, there is more.... Later in the evening I receive an e-mail from one of the two (apparent) distributors. He informs me that he has received threats from Nikken that he will be suspended as a distributor if he doesn't get his comment removed from my blog. He also lets me know that the offending part of the comment is a LINK to his "homepage" for Nikken products! To top it all off it seems to be a homepage that is controlled by Nikken (The whois information for the page shows Nikken UK Ltd as the owner).

Amazing isn't it? They are real generous with threats at Nikken, thats for sure. Not sure how I would have felt it if I was one of their distributors being threated with suspension for a single link.

So why such a big deal about a link? Why go out and threatened two people and their blogs and claim that they are violating Nikken's copyright? It doesn't seem sane, does it?

Being curious, I have asked the Nikken representative to explain to me why I should remove the comments, other than legal threats from Nikken. So, I am sure the story will continue and that I'll hear from Nikken again. But after this I doubt I will be ever allowed to attend a Nikken meeting, nor become one of the fortunate to sell their magic products and make insane amounts of money.

Morten has written about his experience with the whole Nikken ordeal: Ceci n'est pas un blog: Cease & Desist, but not really

I have never liked threats. Especially when they come from big corporations that try to stifle any dissenting voices.

In this case its Nikken, a MLM company that sells "magic magnets" (I won't say what I think they are, in fear of being sued).

So far I have received a letter (You can see it if you want, its in the "more" section of this post - but be warned, its in Swedish - and NO, its not written by the Swedish chef, unfortunately).

In brief the letter seems to indicate that Nikken UK thinks I have violated their copyright just by mentioning their company, and linking to fellow Norwegian blogger Morten Wang. Morten has been an avid researcher of the activities of Nikken and their products. For reference, take a look at his Nikken Archives (In english).

Let me just briefly translate the most important parts of the e-mail I recived from Nikken today:

Vi har nyligen uppmärksammat att du har information om Nikken UK Ltd. på internet. Du är inte tillåten att marknadsföra Nikken på något sätt på internet. Om du även visar Nikkens produkter, så bryter du mot copyright lagar.

Vi ber dig formellt att avlägsna all information om Nikken från din sida/sidor och svara skriftligt att den/dom är avlägsnade innan den 11.02.2004.

Translation:

"We recently discovered that you have information about Nikken UK LTD. on the internet. You are not allowed to market Nikken in any way on the internet. If you even show Nikken products you violate copyright laws.

We ask you formally to remove all information about Nikken from your page/pages and in respond in writing by the 11th of february 2004"

The copyrighted information I am supposed to have published? A short story about Morten Wangs writings and research about Nikken, its products, distributors and "MLM" type business.

If you know norwegian, you are welcome to check out the initial posting about Nikken.

Here is the e-mail I recived in full:

From: "Compliance" Subject: [Compliance] http://weblog.bergersen.net/jarle/arkiv/000447.html AND http://home.online.no/~warnckew/writings/norwegian/nikken/

Hemsidor hittade på www.spray.no:

http://weblog.bergersen.net/jarle/arkiv/000447.html
http://home.online.no/~warnckew/writings/norwegian/nikken/

Milton Keynes, 27.01.2004

Bäste Jarle,

Vi har nyligen uppmärksammat att du har information om Nikken UK Ltd. på internet. Du är inte tillåten att marknadsföra Nikken på något sätt på internet. Om du även visar Nikkens produkter, så bryter du mot copyright lagar.

Vi ber dig formellt att avlägsna all information om Nikken från din sida/sidor och svara skriftligt att den/dom är avlägsnade innan den 11.02.2004.

Om vi inte har mottagit någon skriftlig bekräftelse innan ovan nämda datum, så finner vi oss tvungna att kontakta våra juridiska representanter.

Vänligen kontakta oss och meddela ditt ID nummer innan det ovan nämda datumet om du är Nikkendistributör.

Vi hoppas att innehållet i detta brev är klart för dig.

Tack för din förståelse.

(If you need this letter in English, please don't hesitate to contact us)

Med vänliga hälsningar,

Carola Tostin
Compliance Avdelningen
Nikken UK Ltd.

Being an avid photographer myself, I thought the article by Jonathan Duffy @ BBC News Online about Why digital cameras = better photographers was quite interesting. It also echoes a lot of the thoughts I have had myself. Especially being able to waste a number of pictures to get that ONE good shot is nice. I sure would never have been able to afford shooting 350 rolls of film to produce 10 pictures (Jonathan mentions that is what the photographers at National Geographics average when shooting a story).

Oh, given the opportunity, please feel free to visit my own little photogallery, with pictures from my own little exotic country Norway, as well as more know places, such as New York, San Francisco, Berlin, London, Jamaica etc.

[Via Gizmodo]

Nice article with many good tips from fellow norwegian blogger Anders Jacobsen: Optimizing Movable Type - Keyword links

While it will be interesting to see if the keywords will help making the search engines find blog entries, his tip will help you make content in your blog be more accessible to your users via MTs own search.

He also lists a lot of other good tips for making MT blogs more accessible, and of course - more visible in search engines.

Sacrificing some night sleep to watch the "Bush in 30 seconds" awards show direct from Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC via streaming video. Isn't the Internet great?

Check out the finalists and the information about them

So far, we have these winners:

Animation Ad
“What I Been Up To...” by Ty Pierce and Mark Wolfe.

Youth Market Ad
“Bring It On” by Jared Ewy, Angel Sexton and Drew Adams.
(My personal favourite so far, unfortunately not a contender in the main category).

Funniest ad
“If Parents Acted Like Bush” by Christopher Fink, Valerie Schwanneman, Rebecca Schwanneman and Debra Ladner Fink

Now of course, the connection to the broadcast is down - so who knows if I will get to see the winner of the main category...

Later... Finally back with the web broadcast. Michael Moore talking about how the web has become a powerful weapon for the people, taking away a lot of power from the tinted media world. Great to see so many thousands of contributions to the contest.

And now.. the main category winner is.......
"Child's play", by Charlie Fisher of Denver, CO

Interesting rant from Canadian "blogger" Mark Prince. It echoes a lot of peoples sentiments about the United States: Big Brother Cometh

Personally I have noted that a lot of people seem to become more and more negative to Americans in general. Something I don't think is fair, after all - there is good and bad people in America as in any other country. But the US of A does have a image problem. One which can't be fixed by anything other than a change in attitude toward the rest of the world.

The 15 finalists of the "Bush in 30 Seconds" advertising contest has been announced: Bush in 30 Seconds finalists

A lot of thought-provoking ads among the finalists, with the first one on the list - "Child's play" being my personal favourite.

And the finalists does not include the much talked about Hitler ads, which never were parts of the finalists.

Interesting article by Brian Berstein about Tools that refine web searches.

Brian writes about Vivisimo that groups searches from Google in a more intuitive way. Seems to work OK for English, but not so good for other languages.

While Brian writes extensively about Vivisimo, he also touches on some other interesting search refinement tools, such as Grokker, Touchgraph and a few search engines that rival Google.

Today Apple announced its new iPod mini - a mini version of its blockbusterselling iPod.

The player comes with 4 GB hardrive, and the rechargeable battery lasts for 8 hours. The player will retail for $249 and will be available in stores from next month. (April in Europe).

As some of you might know, several companies have come forth that offers to paint the dull iPods in various colours. And it seems Apple has kept its ears to the ground and picked up on that trend, because iPod Mini will be available in multiple colours, including silver, gold, blue, pink and green.

Ari Paparo has put together an impressive list of Blog Search Engines

I honestly didn't know that there was so many services out there to search blogs and their feeds.

[Via Digme via Weblog Hype]