MPAA Violates Another Software License 297
Patrick
Robib, a blogger who wrote his own blogging engine called Forest Blog recently noticed that none other than the MPAA was using his work, and had completely violated his linkware license by removing all links back to the Forest Blog site, not crediting him in any way. The MPAA blog was using the Forest Blog software, but had completely stripped off his name, and links back to his site. He only found about it accidentally when he happened to visit the MPAA site.
Maybe they should be investigated som more (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe... (Score:1, Insightful)
It looks like a replay (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How hard is it to check the license? (Score:5, Insightful)
Civil (not criminal) (Score:5, Insightful)
As a civil issue ( the only other legal avenue ), you can only hope to obtain justice through the courts. It will cost $1000's to get a judgment, perhaps $100,000's. There is no justice. All we have is persecution it would seem with the powerful pretty much doing whatever they like with impunity.
While its not fair, the question any prosecutor is going to ask is if spending the taxpayers money on this is a good idea. Of course, spending the taxpayers money prosecuting a person charged with a traffic incident is always considered a good idea because its cheap (usually) and meant to keep the sheep in line and paying the fines.
Am I a cynic?
You don't get it. (Score:2, Insightful)
traditionalist thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not the first time (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Middleman? (Score:5, Insightful)
MPAA existential dilemma (Score:5, Insightful)
As it is now, the MPAA appears to exist for the sake of making lawsuits; its profit is based on the success of the lawsuits, and it is presumably paid by its members the startup cash needed to hire all those lawyers, to generate enough income to eventually make the lawsuit engine self-sustaining. Sounds like Microsoft/Baystar and SCO doesn't it? Or a recent RAM patent company?
When Sony embeds a rootkit they get clobbered with bad PR, and when EMI's copy protection sucks they get clobbered. Conversely, when EMI considers removing all copy protection they get even more, positive, PR. But when the MPAA sues soccer moms, the record companies seem to be wearing some kind of armor. All the bad PR sticks to their stalking horse, the MPAA. (Which like JASRAC in Japan has been the number one impediment to online distribution.)
I say the MPAA is a menace to the public and serves no purpose other than to make frivolous lawsuits on the behalf of big record companies while insulating them from the media. It does not exist to protect authors at all, but rather seeks to cause enough mayhem to scare people from trying other distribution mechanisms, by grabbing "rights" that never previously existed for music before the digital age. This is remembered well by anyone who grew up with cassettes or 8 track tapes.
I posted elsewhere in this thread that the MPAA's logic should be used against them to generate a huge award for the theft and performance of the Forest Blog software for a potentially huge number of page views. This model, in which a software author is granted the same rights as a music author, turns software downloading and web page views into something much more insidious than trite torrent sharing, in a legal sense. So I think now is a good time not only to make a legal case against the MPAA, but in fact to start aiming at them with big cannons like RICO and public opinion. Let the record labels do their own dirty work and pay for it individually when their customers get mad.
Update on his site (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here's the "/." response: (Score:5, Insightful)
How many of the targets of **AA action were afforded the opportunity to just say the same thing - "okay, sorry, I took it down, and it wasn't really meant for public consumption anyway, so we didn't do anything wrong", as opposed to being on the wrong end of a settlement demand?
Re:Apply MPAA logic (Score:4, Insightful)
It might be, if it were even possible. You can't sue anyone for copyright infringement in small claims court. There is exclusive federal jurisdiction for copyright suits, which means you'd have to go to federal district court.
Equate software to music. Equate running softare or viewing a webpage as a "performance" in the legal sense.
First, why? What possible advantage would that get you? Second, that is not likely to work. Merely running software could only infringe the reproduction and perhaps derivative rights, but there's an exception under 117 which may well be applicable here. Viewing a webpage is pretty much reproduction only. Having a globally-accessible webpage could be considered a performance or display (depending on precisely what it consisted of) but the present caselaw leans toward distribution instead. But it could be a moot point anyway; this author didn't write the web pages at issue, he wrote the program used to write the web pages. Portions of the page are based on his work, but probably not enough, given the whittling-away effects that a decent lawyer could achieve by using things like merger and scenes a faire, to matter much.
Since the license costs about $100, calculate based on a 300% markup over a $35 average MPAA cd price. The sum will be punitive damages for theft, plus the 300% of what the MPAA sues for a song, plus the price of a "performance" multiplied by the number of visits to any of the blog's pages, based on the evidence of the MPAA's server logs which is must produce in court. Although this sounds over the top, it is simply using the same non-common-sensical strategy the MPAA is using in court, and I think a judge and jury might just see justice in that, or at least a reason not to throw the case out.
No, it sounds utterly moronic.
There are two ways to compute damages for copyright infringement suits. First, you can get actual damages and profits. This means you get money in the amount you were actually damaged (in this case a paltry sum, since the software was available so cheaply) and also in the amount of net profit realized by the defendant that is attributable to the infringment (Gross profits, and profits that are attributable to other sources don't qualify). Since this is MPAA's blog, there are likely to be no awardable profits. Maybe $1 as a token sum.
The other way is statutory damages, which range from $750 to $30,000 per work infringed, and can go down to $200 or up to $150,000, depending on certain factors. But you have to have registered your work within a certain time limit in order to be eligible for this, and although I don't know either way, I'd be willing to bet that this work wasn't registered within the time limits. That means these damages would not be available.
RIAA does bother to register their works, however, which is why they routinely ask for the maximum amount of statutory damages ($150,000 per work infringed) which can add up if you infringe on a lot of works.
The crap you're talking about is just that; made up crap without a basis in reality. You don't get to arbitrarily name figures and multiply them by whatever. And there isn't even any such thing as punative damages in copyright, so that's out the window too. RIAA has a solid basis for what they do, even if you don't like it and don't understand it. You don't.
I think this ought to net a nice award for the author.
The reality is that this is probably not worth suing over; the author would probably lose money or at best break even. The best strategy is probably to write a nasty letter and then ignore it. A victory wouldn't be hard to get, but wouldn't be worthwhile either.
Re:Here's the "/." response: (Score:1, Insightful)
No, we get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
We want to remind the MPAA that "those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." If the MPAA wasn't complaining about other people's copyright infringment, then I wouldn't complain about its. But it is, so I will. Get it?
Re:Oh, the sweet paradox for Slashdot. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not about whether or not anyone supports or opposes copyright law. The MPAA has claimed in public that copyright infringement is immoral and unethical. Their motivation for doing this is obvious: If they inform the public that some action is illegal, while the public thinks there's nothing wrong with the action morally and ethically, then they risk having the law changed to reflect the public's opinion. Convincing people that they have the moral/ethical high ground ensures that they can continue to benefit from the current legal system, or even lobby successfully for stricter measures in their favour.
Remember their ad campaign:
YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A HANDBAG
YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A TELEVISION
YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A DVD
DOWNLOADING PIRATED FILMS IS STEALING
The message that they are obviously trying to advance is that copyright infringement is stealing, and therefore is immoral, unethical, and illegal. However, their blatant disregard for the exclusive legal rights of others under copyright law demonstrates the hypocrisy of this claim to the moral and ethical high ground. It shows that even the people behind the MPAA are not themselves convinced that the issue is as simple as "copyright infringement is stealing". How, then, do they expect the rest of the public to be convinced?
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Story isn't up to date (Score:5, Insightful)
The Forest Blog Author retorted, in his update to this story, that he doubts they would have been so kind if he 'borrowed' some movies for 'testing' purposes but never distributed them to anybody. He makes a valid point.
The entire trial over those dvd-codec software coders was based on them 'circumventing' a DVD's protection mechanism - it had nothing to do with them actually committing piracy, and were it not for the Digitial Millenium Copyright Act the MPAA would have had no case at all. Essentially they sued and won, establishing for the first time in history that you can purchase intellectual property but essentially not have ownership of the rights to even use it, however you see fit.
Remember that all laws previous to the DMCA were to protect against piracy, (bootlegging, distribution, etc). But now the DMCA actually limits your freedom of use, even for personal use. And it's been proven. If they can do that, why can they abuse fair-use of software they essentially got just by agreeing to it's terms of use?
I say he still send his case to the EFF and hope that they can use something in this as ammunition against the MPAA.
---
DMCA Doesn't Protect Against This! [douginadress.com]
There is a difference. (Score:2, Insightful)
Besides, the guy had released the thing for free on a Linkware license. How difficult is it to retain backlinks in the source code? Or even pay the mere 25 pounds he was asking for a commercial license?
Re:How hard is it to check the license? (Score:3, Insightful)
Astounding -- you knowingly expose your employer to legal liability by violating software licenses *and* you're a programmer? Did the whole "Free Software" thing that comes up on Slashdot every once in a while just sail right over your head or what?
You are in a much smaller minority than you apparently think. Between the habitually law-abiding, the regular folk who value their paychecks, and those of us who actively advocate Free Software, no programmer I know would use any software in their company's products or services without researching the license, much less intentionally violate a license.
DMCA (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:so what ? - his theoretical loss is only 25 pou (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How hard is it to check the license? (Score:5, Insightful)
Over and over.....copying is not stealing. It is copying. There is a difference. The powers that be LOVE when people call copying stealing. If I steal an object - you no longer have the object. If I copy an object, you still have the object. Copyright is a givernment granted monopoly so what I am doing in copying is ignoring your monopoly. What I actually do with that copy then defne the damage that potentially could occur to your income from that copy.
I grew up copying my friends albums on tapes. We all bought stuff, but no one bleated then about stealing. We called it sharing.
How many people out there are buying NOYTHING and only aquiring music via copying. Very few I would imagine.
Re:Well, not anymore... (Score:4, Insightful)
Corporate criminals are clever enough to distance themselves from all crimes they oversee. They're going to release a statement about how this page was handled by some lowly contractor, who takes all fault, they removed it as soon as it was found, and walk away clean.
Re:Not the first time (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Its sorta legit.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You don't get it. (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't fool yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
The MPAA and RIAA are concerned about nothing more than maximizing revenues for the organizations they represent. Period.
The mention of the artists is only to make it appear as if the MPAA and RIAA have some sort of noble purpose. The MPAA and RIAA represent the media content industry executives, not the artists.
Re:Here's the MPAA response: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Maybe they should be investigated som more (Score:3, Insightful)
Sue the motherfuckers! Get a lawyer and sue the shit out of them! Give them a taste of their own medicine. They NEED to be on the receiving end of their own bullshit.
Their guilt is manifest by the fact that they've removed the work in question from their website. If it wasn't a problem, they wouldn't have felt the need to do so.
Re:Its sorta legit.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The actual point of the software is to be used by large number of people to read/respond to postings - this was not done in this case, just an internal mock up of a site (which of course should not have been posted on a public website, but still).
And despite my dislike of all things with AA in the title (sorry AAA, aardvarks) and given our collective thirst for revenge against THIS *AA, it does not seem to be THAT outlandish to use the software in this way, and even the author of said software agreed.
-Em
DMCA should have been the response (Score:3, Insightful)
He should have filed a DMCA "Takedown" notice [wikipedia.org] and then sued.
Sauce for the gander and all that....
Re:Its sorta legit.... (Score:3, Insightful)
In short, the MPAA's alleged "defence" is pretty piss-weak, and had they offered it up in court, the counsel for the prosecution would have ripped them apart.
The owner of the software did the wrong thing, however. By approaching the MPAA as soon as the breach was discovered, he made it easy for the MPAA to destroy the evidence and act as if nothing had happened. He should have gathered as much evidence as possible (preferably via third-parties, like the RIAA and MPAA do, which leave no suspicious entries in the server logs) and only when there was a lot more evidence should he have acted. The ideal time to act would be after the blog goes live, preferably after it's been running for a while. Then is the time to get a lawyer to serve notice of infringement, have the police seize the servers and so forth.
Re:Maybe they should be investigated som more (Score:2, Insightful)
I doubt the people in charge of their websites are the same asses in charge of the group's corporate strategies. Suing in this case would not help anything.
The people who download the music aren't always the same people they sue...