p2pnet.net news:- Patrick Robin discovered Hollywood’s MPAA was using code from his blogging tool.

It’s free but, as Boing Boing observes, “requires that users link back to his site and keep his name on the software.”

“Cool, I thought,” posted Robin on his blog, “until I had a look around and saw that all of the back links to my main site had been removed with nary a mention in the source code!”

He goes on:

Now I know I’m not exactly reknowned for my legalese but I did think that the terms and conditions that I had released Forest Blog under were pretty solid, specifically the section relating to removing the back links:

You may not remove, alter or otherwise disable all or any of the hyperlinks to the Host Forest website (http://www.hostforest.co.uk). All images, links or text must remain unchanged and intact and visible when the pages are viewed unless you first obtain explicit written permission from the copyright holders.

I’m sure that the decision to remove the back links was made by some individual rather than a commitee at the MPAA but I find it surprising anyone working there would be so remiss to remove these links just because I let people download and use Forest Blog for free.

At the time I fired up my trusty template for people who like to borrow my work filled in the blanks with the MPAA website details and fired it off. Unfortunately I pretty much forgot about it after that until I saw it pop-up again in my referals a few days ago, so I’ll be firing off another email after the weekend and I might even put printer to paper and send them something via snail mail.

I’m not about to go and find myself a, very reasonably priced, lawyer to try and squeeze some cash out of them, but it would be nice if they’d actually stick the links back in. I’ll let you know how I get on.

Says Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow, “the MPAA believes that employers should be held responsible for employees’ copyright infringements. They want you to know that if you download movies at work, your employer will also be named in the suit. Infringe as we say, not as we do.

“This reminds me of Warner Music chief Edgar Bronfman, Jr’s admission that his kids downloaded infringing music. He shrugged it off, saying that he’d dealt with the matter privately. Other parents are not so lucky: when their kids get caught downloading music, the RIAA sues them for every penny, through a thuggish boiler-room operation.”

Doctorow is referring to the staggering blunder made by Edgar Bronfman, the Canadian who heads cartel member Warner Music, just before Christmas last year, as p2pnet posted..

“We asked Edgar Bronfman (right), the head of the world’s fourth largest music company, at the Reuters Summit whether any of his seven kids stole music,” said Reuters, and, “I’m fairly certain that they have, and I�m fairly certain that they’ve suffered the consequences,” Bronfman stated, going on:

“I explained to them what I believe is right, that the principle is that stealing music is stealing music. Frankly, right is right and wrong is wrong, particularly when a parent is talking to a child. A bright line around moral responsibility is very important. I can assure you they no longer do that.”

What did he do to them? – asked Reuters. “I think I’ll keep that within the family.”

Why, ask Santangelo’s lawyers, Sharon Thompson and Jordan Glass, wasn’t the same remedy, a stern lecture about right and wrong and the “bright line around moral responsibility,” offered to Bobby, who was only 12 when the attack started?

Instead, he and his sister, Michelle, who’s been ordered to pay $30,750 in a default judgment, are being publicly humiliated.

Stay tuned.

Slashdot it!

Also See:
Boing Boing – MPAA rips off freeware author, February 17, 2007
staggering blunder – Robert Santangelo bites back, February 9, 2007

If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 17th, 2007 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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