MPAA Steals Code, Violates Linkware License
Written by Smaran on February 17, 2007A 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, and had not credited him in any way.
Patrick Robin, a 29 year old web developer from South England, is the developer of an ASP-based blogging platform called Forest Blog. He distributes it freely under a linkware license, asking that anyone who uses it merely link back to his site where Forest Blog is offered for download. If someone wants to remove the links back to his site, they must purchase a license. A personal license costs 10 Pounds and a commercial one costs 25.
Amazingly, the MPAA seem to think they’re above “formalities” like licenses and such. The MPAA blog, located at www.mpaa.org/blog_default.asp (currently down - pic), was using Patrick’s Forest Blog software, but had been completely stripped of his name, and links back to his site. He only found about it accidentally when he happened to visit the MPAA site.
Clearly, there seems to be a lack of concern by the MPAA of others’ copyrighted works. Therefore, is it unsurprising that their customers seem to have the same attitude towards their movies?
According to Patrick, it isn’t something new to find his blogging software being used like this. What he finds really odd is that an organisation whose goal is to “protect” copyrighted creative works has no qualms in, essentially, stealing other people’s work. The MPAA still haven’t replied to a letter he sent them about the illegal use of his blogging software.
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108 Responses
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Bbum Response is correct. They probably didnt do it themselves, but the MPAA dont normaly have any problem suing mom and dad when little jimmy is pirating movies.
Protecting outdated business models via litigation is not a smart move.
I’d suggest a different approach: why not show the kind of leniency that we would like to see coming from them?
Think of the fence-sitter who happens to work for that organization (”Hey, it’s a living”). Is suing them going to turn him from his evil ways, or cement his believe in strong enforcement of copyright law (”They’re no different from us!”).
Somebody has to take the higher ground, and it might as well be us.
you take the higher ground and they’re just going to keep stepping all over you. Pull their site with DMCA, repeatedly.
mpaa are bunch of fucking scumbags,
i hope they all fucking die
I went to the MPAA website and used their online piracy reporting form to report to them about this particular act of piracy. Heh.
Motherfucking Pissfaced Asshole Association. Fuck these bastards. Go get ‘em coder.
Ah, the irony…
They sue us for copyright violation, but violate copyright themselves? Beautiful.
Haha.. MPAA; get a clue why no one listens to you or like you! Just give up.
Sue them or not, consider the impact on their prosecution efforts in court when the defendant or defense counsel turns it around and starts asking them about this copyright violation. Their case just went from strong to weak.
You should let them keep doing it for a while, then hit them for $250,000 per violation, like they do.
RAND0M C0RT CA5E!!!
I vote in favour of getting their site pulled and going to small claims court. They’ll likely settle. Report it to your local news paper and hope that large news organisations will pick it up from there.
-j
Wait… confused… are we thinking that copyright laws and licenses are valid and important this week, or is this the week we’re supposed to think that they suxorz and we can do anything we damn well please?
Let’s be careful that our opportunity for sweet, sweet revenge does not steamroll our principles.
They wouldn’t have even needed to buy PDF software as they could just download the Free OpenOffice (from openoffice.org) which supports PDF creation.
It’s not “stealing”. Yes, the MPAA violated the license, and yes, they are hypocrites for doing so. But if Patrick Robin didn’t lose his work, then there’s no stealing going on here, not by the MPAA or anyone else.
What the MPAA did is unauthorized copying (or unauthorized use). That’s a different sort of offense from “stealing”.
-Karl Fogel
Good text about stealing other’s work. Specially when you can see the similarity with those logos on the right hand side (”listen”, “advertise”) and the shoutcast.com logos (http://www.shoutcast.com/download/)
Oh and remember the Sony rootkit in copy protected CDs. It violated an open-source license (VLC media player, under the GPL).
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