I’m in California all this week for a conference, which so far has been kind of a bust. It’s a regular annual technology thing, with some training seminars and a lot of vendor exhibitions. Unfortunately, there just haven’t been many things I’ve seen here that I didn’t already know about. The web and the speed of transmission of information has really changed what conferences *should* be, but that’s for another post.
This post is about one of the training seminars. Now, keep in mind that most of the attendees at this conference are technology professionals. They make their living working with technology.
Today, I attended a session, which had typical PowerPoint handouts, but the second slide (after the title) was a huge “WARNING”:
“Materials may not be recorded or copied or used for any for-profit purpose or any other event use without prior permission. Violators will be prosecuted.”
First, the whole point of getting the information in the seminar *is* to use it for-profit: to expand your skills and increase your business. Now, I do realize that this disclaimer is really meant to try to discourage people from stealing the slides for their own presentations, but honestly, is this really necessary? More to the point, does the presenter think it’s _effective_? It won’t stop a real jackass from stealing the content, it doesn’t really provide any legal protection (a simple copyright notice at the bottom would have worked) and it insults the intelligence of the rest of us.