Linux lusers will understand the post title to be a badly broken recursive acronym on the usual theme. And only they will get that sentence. But while reading a law report Geeklawyer happened across the case of Planetary Motion, Inc. v. Techsplosion, Inc. [URL fixed] which has an interesting last paragraph:
"Software is commonly distributed without charge under a GNU General Public License. The sufficiency of use should be determined according to the customary practices of a particular industry. . . .That the Software had been distributed pursuant to a GNU General Public License does not defeat trademark ownership, nor does this in any way compel a finding that Darrah abandoned his rights in trademark. Appellants misconstrue the function of a GNU General Public License. Software distributed pursuant to such a license is not necessarily ceded to the public domain and the licensor purports to retain ownership rights, which may or may not include rights to a mark. . . ."
This would be the result expected by GNU licensees and one which most lawyers would predict but which one occasionally hears detractors utter. In the US jurisdiction Planetary Motion would seem to torch any argument along those lines. If the case came to the UK Geeklawyer would be pretty confident that any competent and competent court would hold the same. Apologies for posting about the law again.
Mashable reports that US Internet radio streaming company is shutting down UK access to its site after being unable to get a commercially sensible licensing agreement with the shysters crooks and shakedown artists of the MCPRS/PRS and PPL. This is a rather disappointing follow-on to the US campaign of the RIAA to suppress independent radio in the US, lest it threaten their control of the media. It looks as though their UK running dogs are continuing the campaign over here as proxies. The only people to lose are the public.
A second more alarming prospect now being mooted is for ISPs in the UK to disconnect people using file-sharing programs. The French government is running one of its traditional 'protect the artists' schemes forcing French ISPs to disconnect infringing filesharers; and the UK is following on.
This tendency of the French is based around their laughably pretentious self-delusion of being, and protecting, artists and intellectuals. For reason mentioned, infra, this idea is making its way across the Channel. What lies under it is the content industries search for cheaper ways of enforcing and protecting their own long broken business model. Whereas you might need to spend money on lawyers to enforce your rights they feel that they should be excused from such inconveniences. If you were abused you might need to go to court and make applications and arguments before a court. The content industries find this a bit tiresome and feel that they shouldn't have to. The difference is that unlike you they can buy politicians from the Tories and Neo-Labour parties.
In behaving in this way the content industries are not so much flogging a dead horse as trying to give it the kiss of life.
The Internet is more than just a place to do MySpace, Facebook or get porn (all fine purposes it should be said). For many it is a central part of their lives (saddo Geeklawyer will confess he would rather have Internet access than TV or sex. OK, TV not optional either) like electricity or a phone. It is a central civic right in a modern digital era. The proposed policy is an electronic exile and as primitive and unjust. Sure, if you infringe copyright you should be liable: but what needs to change is policy, business models and the legislative changes needed to match them. Geeklawyer would argue that this proposed legislation is an infringement of the human rights of people to talk freely and live liberated online lives.
On a cynical note Geeklawyer asserts that this is so called 'policy laundering': the MPAA/RIAA want easier ways to shut off infringers in the US but there their ISPs won't play ball. By running a proxy campaign in Europe and getting laws changed here they hope to go back to the US and say "See?! The Europeans are doing it - we are out of step, we need to raise our game to their level." This is the technique they used successfully to get copyright extension.
One sunnier note today it that it looks as though the government may allow people what they have been doing for a decade anyway: ripping CDs into electronic form so they can be legally loaded onto an iPod. A Decade late? Great. The government is displaying it's up to date comprehension of the tech landscape 
Published on
23 October 2007 in
Intellectual Property, competition, copyright, licenses, litigation and microsoft.
Tags: competition, EU, european, European Court, IT, licence, microsoft.
Microsoft's long held and well deserved reputation as a government eater has perished on the sword of the most unlikely and tremulous dragon-slayer: the EU Competition Commission. M$ have finally yielded to the Competition Commission and will make no appeal against the decision of the European Court in 2004.
This is a qualified victory for consumers: Microsoft will now have to engage with those wishing to interface to its systems and thus permit consumers to resist being locked into a proprietary system. On the down side while FLOSS users won't have to pay others will be put in the position of rewarding Microsoft by paying a significant licence fee.
Hmmm.
Personally Geeklawyer loaths professor Eben Moglen of the FSF. We bumped heads with a while back and he came across as yet another loudmouthed pompous American academic lawyer with an unobjective assessment of his own brilliance.
Geeklawyer thinks the GPL3 to be brilliant in its objectives but poorly crafted, as is so often the case with the product of drafting committees filled with non-lawyers. That the GPLs 2/3 are enforceable in large part seems clear.
What is not so clear is whether they are enforceable in the vital parts. Many UK IT lawyers such as Geeklawyer, Alex Newson at Freeth Cartwright and others suspect fulginous drafting threatens its viability.
Microsoft have recently declared that they are not bound by the GPL3 and the FSF differs in that opinion. It looks like some kind of showdown is possible.
As Oscar Wilde said of fox hunting, it is looks like "The pursuit of the indedible by the unspeakable."
Published on
29 March 2007 in
Digital Rights, Geek, Intellectual Property, copyright, licenses, linux and patents.
Tags: Debian, Free software, FSF, GPL, linux, Open Source, Software Patents, stallman, Torvalds.
News.com has done an interview with Linus Torvalds in which he is said to be pleased with the new GPL version 3 draft. Keeping Linus happy is a good thing since he controls the largest and most important Free/Open Source software project around: the Linux kernel.
Having read the interview it looks more like he is saying 'it's not as bad as previous drafts': hardly the same thing.
Continue reading 'Torvalds ‘pleased’ with the GPL 3 draft'
Geeklawyer thinks that getting someone to pay big bucks twice for the same thing is a pretty neat trick; he's only ever managed it once. When it's the government doing it to him however he is a little more outraged. For example trying making him pay a second time to get access to statutes, or Ordnance Survey mapping data for which he already paid via his taxes.
Now a petition is up asking for government sourced taxpayer paid for software to be Free/Open source Software. The broad principle Geeklawyer thought to be right so he signed. The devil is, of course, in the detail: how does one treat the work of private companies, should non UK residents get the benefit of our taxes for free etc. These issues need to be looked at hard, perhaps taking influence from the BBC's Creative Commons inspired license the Creative Archive License.
Signing the petition may encourage the government to think. Yea, it's long shot ...
Geeklawyer stumbled across a rather dull story about eBay and its rules of conduct in relation to merchants. In summary if you do business on eBay you agree to lots of stuff. The stuff includes VeRO which is designed to assert the rights of an intellectual property owner against intruders. Thus if someone on eBay decides to punt stuff over which you have copyright trademark patent design rights, yada yada, you can shut them down at very short notice on little more than an email to eBay.
Continue reading 'the Internet and paralegality'
Published on
28 July 2006 in
copyright and licenses.
Tags: artists, bars, BPI, CC, Creative Commons, ego, gym, licence, MCPS, mtv, treadmill, TV.
Geeklawyer will trumpet long and hard his involvement in the drafting of the UK Creative Commons Licence, while skirting quickly over the fact that it was a vanishingly minor contribution. Nonetheless, the ravenous ego must be fed.
He therefore pleads embarrassment when discussing this. He was however interested to see Andras' post over at Technollama at the surprising appearance of the CC licence in the mainstream. This was, Geeklawyer supposes, related to the recent loss by the Spanish copyright licensing societies of a case where they claimed the right to compel bars to pay for all works played in bars, even those of non-members such as CC licensed works. An astonishing cheek and one one wonders that they had the chutzpah to run the argument.
This public exhibition of the CC licence appears to be the sweet fruit of that case. Geeklawyer has always had a bit of a thing about collecting societies: they have real value but the downsides are pretty huge: they develop into money eating abusive monsters, the BPI MCPS etc, less concerned with the artists and more with sustaining their own interests.
If this all takes off Geeklawyer hopes to be able to return to the gyms from which he fled in horror & where they now play Oprah, Trish and other daytime dogshit talk shows, just because they are free to air - unlike MTV which incurs a public performance charge. Decent CC's shows might enable gym owners to show decent shows and allow Geeklawyer to pound the treadmills free from fear.
As is usually the case, what happens first in the US eventually winds up coming across the Big Pond. So it was with suing filesharers and so it is with the record companies targeting the ISP. the BPI is saying to Bulldog and Tiscali that they should enforce their own T&Cs by cutting off Internet use to filesharers.
Geeklawyer agrees that filesharing is to some degree wrong but then it's unlikely that any significant damage is suffered by the music industry. Indeed it isn't at all clear it doesn't help them by promoting artists and films. Some studies have indicated this while some, quoted by the music industry natch, say it damages them. Whatever.
Geeklawyer would say to the likes of Bulldog & Tiscali don't put these provisions into your T&Cs!!! Let the BPI chase your clients. In any event there's usually no proof that the customer is doing the filesharing rather than another resident in the household: a child relative flatmate etc.
Whilst MI5 struggle with a lack of resources to combat the ongoing threat of Islamic Extremism, readers will be pleased to learn that taxes have been spent on the prosecution of two London cabbies for urinating in the street. As a consequence of the conviction for causing a public nuisance their hackney licence i.e their livelihood, was placed under review for four months, before they were let off with a warning.
Public Carriage Officer senior service delivery manager Simon Buggey conceded that removing the offenders licences would have been excessive, "to do this for someones first offence of peeing in the street might be considered draconian." Really?
Ruthie can't help thinking that such minor level prosecutions are currently being brought to give a perception of control to the kind of people that vote. Never mind the hospital debt crisis or the threat of being blown up, we can surely at least tackle the littering problem. And every prosecution is another point on the statistics.
P.S. There are no public toilets open in Westminster after 11pm.
P.P.S Perhaps this is to ensure that MP's do not use them...
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