From what I can tell, Stephen is one of those guys who like to get involved, who see life as a positive challenge. He works tirelessly works to make things better, cooler and fairer. We like Stephen for exactly these reasons. His curiosity and determination to actually do relevant stuff reminds us of our own. After all, that’s why we started Myows. Stephen has helped us with technical issues in the past, participated actively in idea generation and debate and is one of those members who make this project worthwhile.

If you want to check out Stephen’s work – take a look at http://poxmedia.com/ and http://stephenlovell.me/ . Here’s what he had to say for himself during a recent Skype interview…

Chris: Thanks for taking the time out to chat today man.

Stephen: You’re welcome, my pleasure.

Chris: You’ve been a pretty active member of the Myows community which is really cool and encouraging for us, when did you first sign up?

Stephen: Oh wow, it was right there near the beginning, I believe it was the week you guys ran the free account contest. I found out about it a day or two before that and then signed up.

Chris: Brilliant, and you work for yourself?

Stephen: For the most part. I’ve had a regular day job here and there along the way but it doesn’t offer enough variety for me and, as a creative person, I thrive on some variety in my life.

Chris: Well I was going to comment on that actually – because not only do you seem to enjoy straddling the fine line between design and developing… but your graphic styles are also pretty diverse.

Stephen: Yes, it helps keep me sane, “lol” but at the same time I think it gives me a versatile edge to be able to tackle a project from different angles depending on the needs of a project.

Chris: What kind of title would you hope to have applied to you in the course of your career? As in ” there goes Stephen, he’s a friggen’ amazing ……..”

Stephen: That’s a very good question. In a perfect world I think Artist would be most appropriate. It’s fluid and it’s not so much a static label. It breathes creativity, but at the same time can be used in a professional sense. But, for sensibility’s sake Designer would probably work best. It denotes one who follows some loose set of “rules” to convey a message, at least to most people I think.

Chris: Nice definition! That distinction between artist and designer is an interesting one I think – especially in these digital days… Creatives like us seem to have a tough time defining ourselves sometimes

Stephen: Yes, and since we are also self-marketers it’s more of a matter of which title sounds more professional and attainable for the [insert type of client] I’m trying to attract to hear.

Chris: Yeah, exactly.

Stephen: In the end, I’ll work my ass off, do what I’m passionate about and let whatever label falls on me be. In this world we live in, I’m not sure I could control it anyway.

Chris: True, speaking of self-marketing and professionalism, we’ve been looking at ways that Myows can help provide more services that not only protect and manage copyrights but also help the budding creative signal his professionalism to the outside world (including clients) – that and the fact that she/he takes her/his work seriously. Deterrent measures is one example of this.

Stephen: That sounds like a very bold and extremely useful direction to move in.

Chris:  I believe you were looking at some ideas with Max (one of the Myows founders) a little while back?

Stephen: I was in fact. To a degree I think the Drupal module got some of this right, but what I had suggested earlier was that depending upon the CMS the plugin/module is created for OR even the the service Myows is integrated with (Tumblr, Vimeo, Flickr, etc.), the person could have the ability to upload an image onto the site to put in a post, they are presented with a two way choice. 1.) Create a new OW, 2.) Attach to an existing ow (yes the second option could be abused, but the fact that the original image is on Myows the case would fall apart if the images didn’t match up in the end anyway)

Stephen: which ever route they went the image would then be wrapped in a (abstractly thinking) “box” denoting it is an OW within the site, blog, etc. and upon hover you’d get a little Myows graphic with the ow#. (The Drupal plugin has a similar functionality here), BUT moreover upon clicking the little graphic on hover a drawer, or whatever seemed UI appropriate at the time would appear and show more detailed information about the ow including a link to see the copyright, OR even the ability to click a link and request a license with the owner of the OW so that they could legally use the image.

Stephen: If this was handled generally through WYSIWYG editors within services and cms’s you could wrap text, video, images, etc. and have the Myows plugin/module/etc. detect the content type and give appropriate interfaces tailored to them if need be. So you could copyright a poem & the picture in the poem separately

Stephen: Furthermore, the ability to use a jQuery color picker to change the color of the Myows hover graphic would be a very nice touch to that module/plugin/etc.’s settings so you could match it to your site’s theme/design/and so on.

Stephen: I think that is pretty much the gist of it.

Chris: That would provide really nice seamless integration with the ‘outside world’ … makes good sense. This kind of functionality fits within a broader matrix taking Myows out there and at the same time provides Myows with a great opportunity to gain presence! We’re going to have to come back and pick your mind on this in due course as we begin developing on the platform we’ve built so far.

Stephen: Oh by all means feel free to ;D

Chris: Out of interest, seeing as you seem to be quite an adventurous guy in terms of trying new things out… have you ever tried any of the other copyright-related sites or non-repudiation services out there before we came along?

Stephen: nope, Max showed me two of them and to be honest I don’t think I would try them. One of them seems heavily involved into the education market I believe. They don’t have an inviting atmosphere, if you will. If you’ll pardon the unprofessional approach, Myows just feels inviting and cool, bottom-line. (And not the jock that beats you up cool, but the big brother everyone wants to be friends with)

Chris: Nice, that’s a great description of the brand and very much who we are / what we were going for

Chris: Glad we succeeded on the branding front

Chris: I really like your new site BTW.

Stephen: Oh, thank you. It took longer than it should have and there’s still work that hasn’t been put in there yet. Busy, busy ;)

Chris: Yeah – the cobbler’s kids have no shoes, my little design company also needs to revamp and clean up our site… (and it’s still Flash… very 2007)

Stephen: Oh well, you do what you can with the time that you have.

Chris: Yeah and it’s usually for clients…

Chris: Well, before we call time, is there anything else you want to put out on Myows – any other ideas, likes or dislikes?

Stephen: I mentioned it to Max, but I still think a badge system at some point would be fun and helpful in building a community in Myows.

Chris: Yes Max mentioned that – great idea, we’re putting it on the golden list!

Chris: One more quick question before I sign out and go hunt some dinner: Where does the name “Pox media” come from?

Stephen: Branding specialists would probably kill me. There is a Dr. Stephen Lovell of Russian History I believe, for as long as time has existed he has killed my search results, so I knew I needed a pseudonym. I wanted a word/title that wasn’t currently being used so I could have originality and I liked the letter “X” (lol), the way it sounded. So I wanted to also be fluid in title so I added media and eventually after Google search after Google search, etc. I decided on POX media. Not a grand adventure, but it worked. I’ve been using it ever since.

Chris: Cool, well it stuck in mind!

Chris: Awesome Stephen, well thanks again for your time man. I’m sure that we’ll be drawing on your enthusiasm and creativity again soon…

Stephen: Later!

Chris: Cheers!



I recently stumbled upon a Myows member with some very cool feedback and I wanted to pick his brain a little and share some of his ideas and insights with the rest of you . I love how regular guys and girls like us are getting together and essentially using the web as a platform to counter the kind of copyright theft and fraud that that same web interconnectedness has allowed for in the first place. Fighting fire with fire!

Antoine Guedès is a gifted illustrator and general web creative. This is the edited version of our conversation (with Antoine’s permission)

Chris: I like your work. Cool stuff!
Antoine: Hey! Thanks, I’m glad you like. I’m working on my new personal site actually… my first Tumblr theme.

Chris: Nice! How’s Belgium? You guys got summer yet?
Antoine: It’s just crazy in Belgium. Last week we had summer time with 24 C° like and this week… It falls to 12 C°, anyway it stays sunny so it’s enough

Chris: Climate change… riding that bike to work. Only problem is it’s raining down here! So Max tells me you do some cool illustration work?
Antoine: Yes, I do. I love doing illustrations.

Antoine: The two alien illustrations are protected with Myows. They’re part of my WordPress theme for alienatwork.be

Chris: Brilliant.
Antoine: And this one too, illustrations I made for Rubbik’s newsletter (a Belgian web agency):

Chris: So would you describe yourself first and foremost as a graphic artist? Web creator?
Antoine: Well, both graphic artist and web creator, so general digital creative would be better. I do design, xhtml/css and illustrations
Antoine: in fact, I’m a student. I’m studying for a bachelor in communication, but I work as freelancer at the same time – it’s my passion, a hobby.

Chris: Ambitious! Well your work is awesome!
Antoine: Thank you :-)

Chris: So how long have you been using Myows for?
Antoine: Mmmmh, well I think since January or February. I subscribed to Myows not long after it was launched. I first read an article about Myows on a blog and I found it interesting because as a graphic artist I really care about my copyrights… and about my customer’s copyrights too. I remember I talked a bit with Max. And he was really cool.

Chris: Yeah – We’ve realised since we started just how little the average creative knows about their rights – there’s a lot of knowledge sharing that needs to happen…
Antoine: Oh! And I uploaded my first work on Myows the 4th of March

Chris: How many OWs have you got saved so far?
Antoine: Seven so far. I’m waiting to finish my new personal website to upload some more. I have a lot of projects to show on my portfolio… and to protect too.

Chris: Well you should be able to upload those in bulk which will help when you start placing loads of material on your site. Also, with the API ready to roll, we’re hoping to get a few useful add-ons to make it even easier to protect files
Antoine: Yes, I think Myows is an awesome idea and I’m sure it’s got a crazy future!

Chris: I hope so. Do you find the process easy / user-friendly on the whole?
Antoine: Yes really! The concept is brilliant and that’s what I love about Myows. I’m sure even those who haven’t heard about their copyrights before will realize it’s importance. Myows really helped me for my personal use and also for a college project about copyright.

Chris: Well that’s what we’re aiming for so I’m glad it’s coming across that way.
Antoine: I saw about the API. I’m hoping to see some awesome stuff in the future. The dropbox things would be really great! Dropbox and Myows have both changed my life, so if the ideas could be merged it would be crazily better. I already spoke about that to a good developer friend

Chris: We’re looking into all sorts of interesting combinations at the moment so we’ll keep you posted!
Antoine: I think Myows could become really important… in Belgium we have a company that takes care of copyright issues in multimedia but it’s not free…

Chris: Well we hope we can provide you guys with the help you need. It’s why we started Myows in the first place – because there was no service to help us protect our own work! So tell me, if there was anything for us to add to Myows to make it even better for you, what would it be?
Antoine: I thought a lot about a payment service if we go over the free available space. I think for cheap cost it could be even interesting, especially for designers or other creatives who have a lot of work to protect or want to host/protect their customer’s work. I also thought about another thing… it would be great if we could creat fields. It’s hard to explain, so let me take an example: I finished a big project for a client, Rubbik for example… I have to protect the mockup, some illustrations, the wordpress theme zip file, and some others stuff. It could be great if I could post all of this in one field

Chris: So almost like creating an extra field for the job title so you could upload a bunch of files all as part of one job?
Antoine: yes, that’s it

Chris: That’s a great recommendation Antoine! We will definitely discuss this at our next Skype meeting on Friday (my meeting with Max and the Dave)
Antoine: I’m glad I could help out

Chris: I also love your idea about hosting customers’ work under your profile… We’ll look into that too!
Tell me about paying accounts, what do you think would be a fair price per extra gig of space? And what additional features would you like to see on a paying account (if any)?
Antoine: nice, happy you like the idea too. Well, I think personally that if a premium account doesn’t exceed 8 Euros per month it would be really cheap… it would suit me. About space, I don’t really know. In Belgium we often pay about 5euros for extra gigs. It’s quite expensive here though. As for additional features, why not suggest the possibility of multiple accounts to manage customers account for example?

Chris: Or perhaps for a company to have multiple users (staff) accessing one account at different levels of access? That all makes sense!
Antoine: oh yes… for a company to manage =)

Chris: Exactly! Well that’s all really helpful, thanks so much for your ideas and your support man! I will definitely bring all of these up for discussion with the rest of our little team. Whatever lands up being in paid accounts, if we launch these one day, you’ll have one for free! We’ll keep you posted!
Antoine: You’re welcome! Thanks for the interview. It’s a great chance to explain myself.

Chris: For sure, thanks for your time and good luck with your future studies and work…
Antoine: Nice, I look forward to see what’s next!

A few months ago, web designer Matt Hill from Friskdesign interviewed me to find out more about Myows, and how I planned to create the first copyright management app.

Read the full interview on the friskdesign blog, as I believe it provides a valuable insight into how Myows was born.

As they sip cups of fresh, strong coffee in their small Cape Town office, Max Guedy and Chris Human chat animatedly about how their business plan took shape. Like many a good idea, myows.com (MYOWS as in: MY Original Works) – which provides members with hard evidence of their copyright – was born more out of necessity than from a strategically researched market gap.

In a rakish fedora and with a charming French accent, Max explains that he wanted to display his design and photography portfolio online, but discovered it was all but impossible to do so without making himself vulnerable to copyright infringement.

Chris, who speaks in quick, eloquent sentences and with obvious passion, knows first-hand what can happen when original work is not sufficiently safeguarded against copyright dispute. He lived through a legal battle over the corporate identity of his fledgling brand-building company, Engage Brandcraft. “We had put blood, sweat and tears into our work, but at the end of the day we had no proof that it was ours. Or at least, we had no decent evidence pointing to the fact that we had created our own work, evidence that would stand up in court,” he says.

Copyrights, Max explains, unlike patents or trademarks, are automatic and instantaneous. From the moment you design a logo, write a poem or compose a piece of music, you have copyright over that work. Upholding that copyright is, however, another matter.

Their experiences led the friends to two conclusions. Firstly, they needed to be proactive about protecting their creative work. And secondly, they needed a reliable third party – someone reputable and neutral to – back up their claims. Ultimately, they needed to link themselves, their work and the date on which it was created.

It was on an introductory IP law course they attended together that the challenge became especially apparent. The course lecturer could not provide a satisfactory answer to the question of how to prove exactly when someone was in possession of a particular work – the obvious question when there is an allegation of unlawful copying between two parties. (So-called ‘poor man’s copyright’, or sending a copy of your work to yourself through the post in order to have it marked with a date, does not hold its own in court). “This was our light-bulb moment,” recounts Chris.

And so they embarked on the development of Myows, online technology that would provide creatives with legally viable evidence of their copyright. The core function of Myows service is its date-stamping technology. Each time a member uploads their work to the website, a time-stamped copy is placed on a super-secure server. The precise time is recorded and attached to that document and a certificate is produced against this evidence. The certificate, document, date (and a hash-code for added security) are then recorded together on the server and backed up in a geographically remote location. Neither the date/time stamp nor the file is modifiable and the process is entirely automated.

This way, if you discover you work has been copied, you can take immediate action, hopefully resolving the case without having to resort to tedious traditional legal processes. Myows.com provides step-by-step guidelines (along with templates, advice and other useful resources) for dealing with cases of copyright infringement. But if you can’t settle the dispute through paralegal channels, you still have irrefutable proof from a neutral third party connecting you to work at precise moment in time, which will come in very handy when you’re standing in front of a judge.

“It’s not about playing God,” stresses Chris, who’s quick to point out that creativity is strongly linked to the zeitgeist, “And it’s not always about right and wrong”. Infringement cases are not necessarily as simple as out-and-out theft. A design, concept or style may gain currency, increasing the likelihood of similar work being produced in the same period by two or more people. With Myows, creators can simply present and compare certificates to resolve conflicts over authorship.

“It’s about providing a service we wish we’d had, with minimum fuss, in the context of a supportive community committed to the values of originality and authenticity,” concludes Chris.

It’s exactly this combination of simplicity and personal experience that defines the Myows system and has provided the two friends and entrepreneurs with solid foundation on which to build what could soon become an indispensible global service.