MHJ.tc

Neste Oil has ISP close parody site on IPR grounds

I didn’t find this in English anywhere, so a quick summary: Neste Oil Group (based in Finland) has had a parody / criticism site “Neste Spoil” closed down on the grounds of copyright infringement. The site criticizes Neste Oil for its use of palm oil diesel. The site was hosted by Swedish ISP Loopia.se. Greenpeace, who was behind the site, claims they have not received a notice of copyright infringement. Greenpeace says that Neste went through World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO, but that WIPO has not yet dealt with the claims and that Loopia.se reacted too quickly. Here is the Greenpeace’s copy of the site on their own servers.

Here is Google’s cache of the site. It is mainly a parody of Neste Oil’s 2011 annual report, and reads things like:

We achieved our 2011 safety targets and cut the number of accidents at our sites. Unfortunately at the same time we heavily increased the pressure to establish new palm oil plantations especially in Indonesia. Already now two thirds of new palm oil plantations are established in rainforests. 95 percent of recent increase in palm oil production in Malaysia and Indonesia is because of the growing demand for biodiesel.

Regardless of what one thinks of Greenpeace and palm oil fuel, if anything, the issue is clearly a bigger one that needs to be brought to attention of a wider audience. Criticism and parody are the first ones to suffer when civil liberties such as freedom of speech are threatened. Neste Oil tweets here that “there is no need to use a domain name confusingly similar to our trademark to exercise a right of free speech”. The name “Neste Spoil” is clearly a case of parody, and as such should not fall under trademark infringement. Unless Neste Oil has in all carefulness trademarked “Neste Spoil”, too.

The bigger issue, if anyone needs reminding, is that this kind of non-judicial procedures could be commonplace if ACTA, PIPA, or various other guises of the same initiatives were to go through. 

Has Loopia.se acted too soon? What kind of a takedown notice did they receive? 

Here is Helsingin Sanomat on the issue (in Finnish).

Coffee or a nap?

At some point in the afternoon you may get the afternoon slump. Some get a lunch coma some get a late afternoon weariness. But what should you do about it?

I’m for a nap any day of the week. And yes, there should be more opportunities for napping in office environments. Oddly, it’s also considered bad behaviour to doze off for a while if in company of others, while a cup of coffee seems to be fine. These are just my experiment-based observations. Your mileage may vary.

Seven Most Important Things in a Startup Mentor

Being or having been an advisor to a couple of startups, mentored at Startup Weekends, Springboard etc. and of course working as the Marketing Geek for HackFwd, I’ve seen a bunch of startup-mentor/advisor (synonyms for this text) relationships and how they’ve worked. Now that a promising team was looking for a mentor and trying to figure out how to go about, I distilled my personal opinion about the matter into these seven points.

The best things a mentor or an advisor brings to the table, in order of importance:

0. Brainpower

- Self-evident. Always aim to surround yourself by people smarter than you. This goes for advisors as well as employees.

1. Connections in your industry 

- “It’s who you know”. A connected advisor can open doors that you can’t even knock on yourself.

2. Been-there-done-that experience

- This is partly hard advice, partly just mental support. Don’t underestimate this - reason why personal chemistry with a mentor must be awesome, and when the toughest time comes, having a mentor who you can really rely on can mean the difference between persisting and giving up.

3. Industry / Product niche experience

- If they know what’s worked and what not in the past, that’s good to know, but if you’re doing something entirely groundbreaking, this can be distracting.

- Caveat: if they have done a life’s career in a different industry that you’re in, their advice will be looking at things from that industry more often than not. Your visions may differ, and your mentor will look at the problem you’re solving from their own perspective.

4. Credibility to back the founding team

- This is mostly external startup cred points only, but if that helps you get in the press, talk to big customers, and attract awesome hires, the advisor is well worth it.

5. Technical / business area expertise

- While this tends to be the number one selection point for mentors, I think it’s generally overvalued, because the mentors rarely have time to be ‘on tap’ when you have technical / business problems. Instead, they are usually solved by 1), above: knowing who can solve your problem exactly.

6. Idea, feature and product feedback and ideas

- Least important on this list, because this you must get from your users. Unless they have tons of experience about the exact people you need, you may be better off thinking about how to gather and manage user feedback (see “customer development”, per Steve Blank & Lean movement).

Your thoughts? @mhj

Image: Mentor (A’lars) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Related articles

• How I Try to Mentor Startups (And Hopefully Add Value) (instigatorblog.com)
• Startup Secret No. 28: Woo your mentor-to-be (news.cnet.com)
• The Startup Genome Report (sophisticatedfinance.typepad.com)
• New Mentors In Residence Give UM Startups An Edge (detroit.cbslocal.com)

Libet experiments on consciousness

The implications of the most significant experiment in human nature will soon hit the species in full force. I hope to write about this in depth soon, but in the meanwhile, read up on Wikipedia.