Monthly Archive for April, 2009

Apple’s Gone Too Far: Bans Terrorism Via iTunes

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 3:47 PM on April 30, 2009 in Commentary. 0 Comments Tags: , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/JVh

I used to love Apple. I thought they were a wonderful company that made wonderful things. Then the iPhone came along, with its endless censorship and anti-competitive practices in the App Store, and quite literal Digital Rights Manufacturing in the iPod Shuffle. But even then, I still liked Apple. But now Failblog exposes how their egregious exploits of copyright and licensing law have gone too far:

iTunes EULA: You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of missiles, or nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.

(Original post, which you shouldn’t look at because Failblog’s 3235875 comments per post is browser-crashing)

    Artists Get The Internets Angry At Wikipedia For No Reason

    Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 1:28 PM on April 24, 2009 in Commentary. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/I5b

    Wikipedia Art: Everybody Look At Me!
    Being the Creative Commonsing, Fairly Using, “17 USC § 107″-number memorizing hippie I am, I was instantly riled up when I saw in my feed reader an Ars Technica article about how the Wikimedia Foundation is trying to pursue legal action against Wikipedia Art for “trademark infringement.”

    Wikipedia Art was an attempt at a conceptual “performance art” piece in the form of a Wikipedia article, acting as commentary on Wikipedia itself and…stuff. It was deleted from Wikipedia, not because it wasn’t art, but because it’s not an encyclopedia article. Perfectly reasonable. But then, allegedly, Wikipedia threatened a lawsuit and demanded the artists hand over the Wikipediaart.org domain name. This got the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is essentially an entire organization of crazy Fair Use-hippies like me, very upset. I mean, come on, Wikipedia? The paragon of free knowledge and culture going all RIAA on people?

    That’s what I thought. So I decided to do what nobody else had apparently attempted: get a comment from Wikimedia. On Twitter.

    • @XerxesQados: @jimmy_wales Are you okay with the threatened lawsuit against http://wikipediaart.org? Seems very anti-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Use #
    • @jimmy_wales: @XerxesQados There is no threatened lawsuit. #
    • @jimmy_wales: @XerxesQados : Wikimedia says: http://ow.ly/3PhY . I’m disappointed in the EFF – clearly misrepresenting the situation. #

    Well. Okay then. What Wales linked to was an official response from Mike Godwin, general legal counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation and predictor of Hitler.

    “Wikipedia editors brought the issue of the domain name to our attention, we corresponded with the Wikipedia Arts folks, raising domain name and trademark issues, and the result was a prominent disclaimer. No litigation was threatened or commenced.”

    In other words, Wikimedia asked for the domain name, not for the project to be shut down. They did this with VisualWikipedia.com as well, which is essentially a prettier wrapper over Wikipedia, and they now operate as VisWiki. Personally, I think it’s a bit of a stretch that people would get confused about whether any site with “wikipedia” in the domain was a Wikimedia project, but still, it’s nowhere near “threatening artists for fair use.”

    EFF, I love you, but calm down. Don’t let yourself get riled up just because some avant-garde artists want attention. I agree, the trademark enforcement doesn’t seem necessary, and it probably could be fought in court, but pick your battles. And YOU, Internet. Yes, YOU. Do more research before ranting on your blogs.

    Holy crap, I think I just did journalism.

      Update: Pirate Bay Lawyer Wants A Retrial

      Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 2:14 PM on April 23, 2009 in Commentary. 0 Comments Tags: , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/fPQ

      Time to clarify my last post, as the news has surfaced in English from The Local, whose slogan is “Sweden’s news in English.” Convenient, no?

      “A lawyer representing one of the men convicted in the Pirate Bay trial has called for a retrial after reports that the judge was a member of the same copyright protection organisations as several of the main entertainment industry representatives.
      [...]
      One of the groups of which [Judge] Norström is a signed up member is Svenska föreningen för upphovsrätt (‘the Swedish Copyright Association’), where he is joined by Henrik Pontén, Peter Danowsky and Monique Wadsted, all of whom represented the entertainment industry in the case against file sharing site The Pirate Bay.

      The judge also sits on the board of Svenska föreningen för industriellt rättsskydd (Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property), a group actively advocating for more stringent copyright laws.

      Norström argues that he was not however swayed in his judgement by involvement with copyright protection groups.”

      Of course you don’t think you have a conflict of interest, Norström. You’re a member of the scumbag lobby, so you have to stay in character. It’s rather disgusting how the “good guys” upholding the “law” are resorting to political corruption. Granted, Norström did dismiss a lot of the charges based on lack of evidence, but that just amounts to covering his ass.

        The Pirate Bay Trial Judge In League With Plaintiffs?

        Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 2:39 AM on April 23, 2009 in Commentary. 0 Comments Tags: , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/MgS

        Speaking of The Pirate Bay verdict, it seems there are some dubious connections between Judge Tomas Norström, who presided over the trial, and copyright lobbyists. One of the defendants, Peter Kolmisoppi, tweeted that the story was breaking in Sweden. At the moment, that’s the only place the story was broken. Here’s what I can discern from a translation into English.

        “I fredags dömdes alla fyra grundarna av The Pirate Bay till ett års fängelse och över 30 miljoner kronor i skadestånd. Men nu visar en granskning som P3 Nyheter har gjort att domaren i Pirate Bay-målet kanske är jävig. [On Friday sentenced the four founders of The Pirate Bay to a year in prison and over 30 million in damages. But now a review of P3 News has made to the judge in Pirate Bay case is perhaps biased.]
        [...]
        Vår granskning visar att det finns kopplingar mellan domaren i Pirate Bay-målet och målsägarsidan, det vill säga film- och skivbolagen och deras advokater.
        [Our review shows that there are links between the judge in Pirate Bay case and target ägarsidan, namely film and record companies and their lawyers. ]
        [...]
        Henrik Pontén, Peter Danowsky och Monique Wadsted som företräder rättighetsinnehavarna i Pirate Bay-rättegången är också medlemmar. Föreningen skriver på sin hemsida att de är ”en mötesplats för kvalificerade upphovsrättsliga diskussioner.” [Here is the judge member at leisure. Henrik Pontén, Peter Danowsky and Monique Wadsted representing rights holders in Pirate Bay trial are also members. The association writes on its website that they are "a meeting place for skilled copyright discussions."]”
        [...]
        Föreningen jobbar med frågor som patent och mönsterskydd, men har också verkat för en starkare upphovsrätt. Här sitter domaren med i styrelsen. [The association works with issues such as patents and designs, but has also pushed for a stronger copyright. Here sits the judge with the Board.]

        If I’m interpreting the broken translation correctly, the photo accompanying the article depicts the judge at a meeting with copyright lobbyists (debatable since “here is the judge” is used in two sections). There is also apparently evidence that he either knew the lobbyists personally or sat on their board. I’m definitely not getting the full story since the only comprehensible English is from Kolmisoppi’s tweets, but there’s certainly something fishy about this.

        I’ll be watching this, and I’ll give an updated rant as soon as someone who can translate from Swedish gets on the story.

          Arr, Google Me Timbers

          Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 1:58 AM on April 23, 2009 in Commentary. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/0CO

          The Pirate Google Logo
          In the recent Pirate Bay Trial, which the defendants “lost”, the argument was frequently made that The Pirate Bay does nothing more than Google: they post links to stuff, some of which happens to infringe upon copyright, but they don’t have a lot of control over what links are in their database. The Pirate Bay just happened to be completely disinterested in removing any links to anything that wasn’t a virus. It’s techically not illegal, which is why their conviction is such an outrage, and why Google does pretty much the same thing. To drive that point home in protest of this silliness, The Pirate Google has appeared.

          It’s nothing more than a Google Custom Search which adds “filetype:torrent” to the end of each query, which is doable on regular Google searches as well. Even if The Pirate Google is taken down by someone or other, that functionality will still be available in Google. Of course, given Google’s track record of being a pussy when it comes to defending themselves against Big IP Whoring (because “Big Entertainment” is kind of a stretch), it’s possible that this won’t last. Or it could catalyze Google’s growth of a spine.
          Continue reading ‘Arr, Google Me Timbers’