Microsoft Claims Ownership of Linux Copyright
In a takedown notice sent by microsoft, investigator Mr. James Young asks MyBitTorrent to remove several linux and other non-Microsoft torrents.
Among the products Microsoft didn’t like was a “Windows-to-Linux-Migration video” and NeoOffice 1.2, which is a version of OpenOffice that works native on Mac OS X.
The so called “internet investigator probably did a search on keywords like “microsoft” and “office” and didn’t even take a look at the actual torrents (probably automated).
The notice states “The information in this notice is accurate, and I hereby certify under penalty of perjury that I am authorized to act on behalf of Microsoft, the owner of the copyright(s) in the work(s) identified above. I have a good faith belief that none of the materials or activities listed above have been authorized by Microsoft, its agents, or the law.”
While sorting through the links that they demanded be removed administrators of myBitTorrent.com found themselves perplexed. Among the usual dozen or so Windows and Microsoft Office takedown requests were several for Xandros Linux, and other non-Microsoft products.
To start with myBitTorrent.com is not a torrent tracker site, rather it works similar to Google and simply caches the torrents and provides uses with a useful easy to search index of the majority of the torrents available throughout the web. Basically myBitTorrent.com provides links, to links (torrents) to files which may or may not be of copyright material, they simply have no idea of what the material is no more than Google really knows if a site or files they link to contains copyright material and/or links to copyright material.
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