There’s a terrible new web site out there engaging in, at best, copyright infringement, and at worse, fraud. It’s called AllThis.

If AllThis targets you, they will:

• steal your photo & bio off Twitter
• slap it on an AllThis page, to make it look as if you endorse their system
• put up a big yellow “BUY” button on it
• and a teensy weensy greyed out notice, for the eagle-eyed, which admits (indirectly) that you’re not actually endorsing it… YET
• tweet about you with @allthisfeed, claiming your time is for sale
• argue with you when you tell them to stop stealing people’s stuff

They will remove you from their site if you threaten them. But no matter how many people do that, they continue to pretend to not “understand” why you are “upset”. And they keep on thieving from other people.

Clearly individual complaints are falling on deaf ears. They are not interested in coming up with a way to grow their business without misrepresentation and theft.

So, the best way to stop this is to enforce our copyrights. If they steal from you, don’t bother telling them to remove the profile.

Send a takedown notice to their DNS service and web host

Here’s who to write:

Web Host: GoGrid. Their email is abuse@gogrid.com.

DNS Service: Dyn.com. Their email is abuse@dyndns.com.

NEW: Asset Host: Amazon Cloudfront. Their email is abuse@amazonaws.com.

Here’s what you can send:

SUBJECT: Abuse Report – Copyright Infringement

I am the copyright owner of the photograph being infringed at: (insert URL here)

A screenshot of my image being infringed is included to assist with its removal from the infringing Web sites.

Moreover, this web site claims to represent me, has a prominent “BUY” button displayed next to my (stolen) photograph and bio, and is tweeting that people can “buy time” to talk with me on their site. I never signed up for an account, gave them my email address, or anything that would constitute permission or endorsement of this service. As far as I’m concerned, this comes close to fraud.

This letter is official notification under the provisions of Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) to effect removal of the above-reported infringements. I request that you immediately issue a cancellation message as specified in RFC 1036 for the specified postings and prevent the infringer, who is identified by its Web address, from posting the infringing photographs to your servers in the future. Please be advised that law requires you, as a service provider, to “expeditiously remove or disable access to” the infringing photographs upon receiving this notice. Noncompliance may result in a loss of immunity for liability under the DMCA.

I have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of here is not authorized by me, the copyright holder, or the law. The information provided here is accurate to the best of my knowledge. I swear under penalty of perjury that I am the copyright holder.

Please send me at the address noted below a prompt response indicating the actions you have taken to resolve this matter.

Sincerely,

Your Name

Is this justified?

Yes, it is.

I and several others have tweeted with the @AllThis account to try to get them to change their ways, but they don’t “understand” that what they are doing is wrong. Nor will they stop doing it to other people.

More importantly, copyright infringement (and borderline fraudulent representation) like this is certainly against the acceptable use policies for both GoGrid and Dyn.com.

So, this is our last and best resort.

Hi, there.

I originally intended to avoid a Thanksgiving post. Why? Everybody does it. It gets spammy. It’s a little rude and a lot cliché.

But then I realized something important:

If I had to choose between pissing people off, and NOT getting this message out, I’ll pick the message all the damn day long.

My friend Amit Gupta desperately needs your help.

If you don’t know who Amit is, he’s the founder of Jelly (casual coworking), PhotoJoJo, many other movements & parties & things… Amit has touched SO MANY of us in the tech community, even if we don’t realize it.

He’s also one of those rare people who’s always up for helping a stranger. He’s a friend to everyone, and manages to make you feel special and listened to, no matter who you are.

And he was recently diagnosed with acute leukemia.

Did you know that, to survive leukemia, you need a marrow donation? Probably, right? I knew that. Leukemia seems like it’s a cancer we can cure.

Well, Amit is South Asian.

Did you know that the chance for a perfect match for a person of South Asian heritage is a whopping 1 in 20,000?

ONE in TWENTY THOUSAND

That sounds like a death sentence.

But you can help Amit beat the crap out of those odds.

If YOU or SOMEONE YOU KNOW is of Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan etc. descent…

YOU can help save Amit (and others!).

All you have to do is spit into a little tube, or show up at a donation drive and rub a lollipop stick in your cheek.

IF you ARE a match for Amit, there are people ready to help you pay for travel to donate.

Thanks to medical advancement, donation is pretty much just like giving blood (it just takes longer).

If you’re thankful for anything…

If you’re thankful for anything this Thanksgiving, PLEASE consider helping save my friend Amit. Because he’s got so much more awesome in him to give to this world.

PLEASE swab, if you’re of South Asian heritage.

PLEASE forward this to any friends or acquaintances you know who may be.

PLEASE forward to this to any cultural centers or communities with Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, etc., ties.

Click here to tweet.

Click here to email this to your friends.

Click below to like this on FB and share with your friends:

If you or they register as a marrow donor, you will be helping NOT ONLY Amit, but so many other innocent, wonderful boys & girls, men & women who might otherwise NEVER have a chance at a match.

Remember: 1 in 20,000. You can help beat those odds.

Please Hurry — Here’s How

To be in time to help Amit, the marrow registry needs your swab very soon — by about November 30th.

Here’s how to get it there:

• SWAB AT A DONATION DRIVE – FASTEST & EASIEST WAY!
• ORDER a home testing kit

ATTEND A DRIVE

There are drives coming up in:

• Bangalore
• Chicago
• West Michigan
• NYC
• Maryland
• North Cali
• Cambridge
• Bay Area
• Boston
• San Francisco

Click here for the full list & details.

AND for more information on how you can help, even if you cannot donate marrow for medical reasons.

SWAB AT HOME

Here’s the information for swabbing if you are…

• in the US
• in India
• elsewhere

Thank you for reading.

Please don’t just leave this in a tab. Please don’t just fave the tweet and move on.

Please take action now.

Thank you.

• You shouldn’t feel comfortable with your meager little dreams.
• You should do a startup.
• You should chase the hockey stick.
• You should go viral.
• You should quit your job and work 90 hour weeks.
• You should be prepared to have everyone think you’re crazy.
• You should feel a manic, blind-eyed devotion to your Great Idea.
• And if you don’t, well, you should use special terminology like “pivot”.
• You should practice your elevator pitch.
• You should work on your deck.
• You should find a cofounder.
• You should learn about angel rounds, Series A, B, C, bridge rounds, and convertible notes.
• You should press the flesh.
• You should hire a team. Write witty job postings on Craigslist. In code.
• You should hire a CxO.
• You should go big or go home.
• You should experience a Liquidity Event.
• You should go back to being an employee at the acquiring company.
• You shouldn’t ask questions.

Well, well. Should you now?

When you’re bricked in on all sides by the same message, it’s time to ask yourself: Who benefits? Who benefits from all this feverish stumping for the magical healing powers of entrepreneurship? Who benefits from the chest-thumping rhetoric of freedom, when the idealized end is yet another fucking job?

In short: Where’s the money?

Find the money, and follow it.

It starts with venture capitalists and other people who bet on startups like they bet on horses. It ends with young people who’ve bought into the dream.

In the middle, it crosses through snake-oil salesmen. It touches journalists. It infects bloggers.

The same old myths about entrepreneurship, repeated, over and over, ad nauseum — repeated, shuffled, turned into top 10 lists, turned into a Cosmo quiz. “Are You a TRUE Entrepreneur?” “10 Signs Your Angel is Bored in the Boardroom” And like Cosmo, it begins as rah-rah troop rallying but ends in the poking of your deepest insecurities. Or as kindly, fatherly advice… from somebody who wants a part of you.

What is truly only one option begins to seem like the only option. It’s repeated so often, from so many different angles, that you start to believe it. It seems like common sense, like your own idea.

And that’s why it’s dangerous.

Who doesn’t love a unicorn?

Unicorns are magic. Unicorns eat moonbeams and shit rainbows. Unicorns are ice cream and bacon, all rolled into one.

Mmmm, bacon ice cream.

Unicorns: like Santa Claus, with hooves

There’s just one catch: Unicorns don’t exist.

And, honestly, they’re not that exciting.

A beautiful horse with magical properties? Oh god! Stop the presses! Such wonder! Such creativity!

…Or not. People saw horses all the time, even white horses with flowing manes and majestic heads. And it’s not as if no other horse-like creatures have horns. (Goats and deer, baby, goats and deer.)

It’s quite another thing entirely to imagine a warm-blooded, rubber-skinned mammal of the sea, who lives under 5 meters of ice, with a giant spiral tooth sticking out of its head. A horn that’s almost as long as its body.

Some narwhals even have two horns! And they use them to joust!

I mean, hot damn! How awesome is that?

Real narwhals are awesomer than fake unicorns

Narwhals beat unicorns hands-down in the creativity department. They don’t come with bacon ice cream, but you can make your own.

Oh yeah, and narwhals are real. Which means they win.

You can’t monetize glitter and rainbows, even if they do come from a unicorn’s butt

The past year and a half, I’ve been building up my own product business. It’s felt like I’ve been working in a void. There’s barely a thing out there for a single designer or developer who wants to create her own real, but tiny, business. Ditto for small teams that like the freedom that smallness gives them.

The discussion always seems to revolve around funding, or getting acquired, and retiring.

Or growth. Or hiring. Or tech tricks. Or it’s about affiliates and IM products, and getting rich off teaching people’s parrots to talk.

Or it’s about hyper-optimization, and split-testing which way you should orient the toilet paper roll. (The answer is over, not under, by the way.)

Or everyone in the group agrees that they are working on the next big breakthrough, when really they’re just building a social network for dogs.

Unicorns, every one of them.

What’s out there now is serious where it should be lighthearted, and glib where it should be serious. To my mind, the most important topics of all go unacknowledged entirely.

I come to slay the unicorn

I am a believer in small, creative, flexible businesses. I’m an even bigger believer in creative people doin’ for themselves, making their own products and working directly with their customers, the people whose lives they can touch.

I think these tiny businesses foster happiness, and forge superior products, and better relationships.

That’s the reason I’m doing what I’m doing, for myself, and why I want to help you do it, too.

So I can’t look at this gaping void in the conversation, leave it void-like.

And thus, Unicorn Free was born.

I hope you’ll join me.