Being a Good Sumerian

We live in a DIY or DIE kind of world these days, and being an independent child of the 'alternative' 90s I wholeheartedly embrace that fact.  I was that kid putting out Zines and shooting Public Access shows. Today, with all the self-publishing and -producing tools at your fingertips it would be a crime to not take advantage of that landscape right now.

I guess that's what Nasim Pedrad's cousin Bo Mirosseni was also thinking when he made an "unofficial" music video for a band he likes, Sleigh Bells. It wasn't authorized by anyone, so he presumably funded it himself. Teaming up with his choreographer Ramin Shakibaei, they took a chance and scored by the video going viral. He went rogue in that MIA sorta way.

To quote Mirosseni from his Twitter feed: "If you love the internets the internets will love you." Just trying to be a Good Sumerian, I mean Samaritan, and help promote a fellow Iranian-American director's work I went ahead and showed some love since he was retweeting acknowledgment left and right. Networking is the name of the game, too.

Instead I got caught in a web of deceit, plagiarized by a wicked spambot that stole and republished my tweet in its entirety without attribution, landing the content on their unauthorized domain -- which they're trying to bribe Nasim Pedrad's management into buying.  And what does Bo Mirosseni do? He unknowingly RT's the spambot's tweet.

I did a bit of research and track down the goon behind the spambot and the leeching website. I emailed this fellow, a Canadian living in Ontario named Josh Grobar -- who unknowingly and idiotically made his name and contact info public in the WHOIS directory -- who replied with a blackmailing email that I don't see fit publishing here.

I should take a chill pill, and perhaps take some time learning about the copyrights and wrongs of our new media marketplace. Whatever that means.