Tag Archive for 'stupid copyright tricks'

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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.

        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’

          Pirate Bay Founders Found Guilty. Of Something. They’re Pretty Sure.

          Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 2:55 PM on April 17, 2009 in Commentary. 0 Comments Tags: , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/sqS

          This article was written by Thilus and originally posted on his LiveJournal. It is being reposted here, almost verbatim (with some minor grammatical changes), at his open request. While these are not my words and I don’t share some of his anecdotal experiences, I couldn’t have said any of this better myself.

          So we finally have an official verdict in the first round of prosecution against The Pirate Bay, or rather the four brave souls willing to play the part of human shields over it.

          All four defendants were accused of ‘assisting in making copyright content available’. Peter Sunde: Guilty. Fredrik Neij: Guilty. Gottfrid Svartholm: Guilty. Carl Lundström: Guilty. The four receive 1 year in jail each and fines totaling $3,620,000.

          “Assisting in making copyright content available.” What the hell? I was doing that myself when I was fourteen, from the cheap computer in my family’s dining room over a free modem connection. Congratulations, authorities: you’ve succeeded, after all this pomp and circumstance, in royally screwing up the lives of four industrious people with the same charge you would have used to convict me at fourteen for sharing scanned comic books over AOL.

          Me, or anyone else, really. It’s the vague and pervasive wording on this that really bothers me. Find me someone in modern society who isn’t guilty of “assisting in making copyrighted material available.” Go on, I challenge you. Yes, your IPhone counts as entrapment. So does your TiVo, your PC, your XBox, and probably a fax machine.

          Over a million dollars in fines each and one year in jail. I doubt the money will even be a problem in a case like this… it’ll come form somewhere, these guys aren’t stupid and they’ve had a long time to prepare. And jail time is supposed to accomplish what, exactly? Do I even need to go into how utterly backwards and counterproductive that is? No matter what kind of prison circumstances these guys end up in (I really have no idea, either), it’s supposed to what, give them a year in which to build even more hate for the system and plan what they’re going to do when they get out? Or give them a year to turn into paranoid, survivalist animals? No matter how I look at it, this counts as complete bullshit.

          If nothing else, these guys are obviously damned good at what they do, and not likely to appreciate being dicked so hard by The Man. Why not throw them a bone instead and put them to some sort of positive community service. Heal the breach a little, don’t make it worse, you fucking idiots. Cops everywhere are all the same, root out the evil and all that’s left will be sunshine and rainbows. Bullshit. Black and white thinking only means that eventually something purple will appear and run your colorblind ass over because you couldn’t see it.
          Continue reading ‘Pirate Bay Founders Found Guilty. Of Something. They’re Pretty Sure.’