We had an interesting week here over at OSAlert. We had lots of talk about the Windows worm Conficker, information regarding computer sales figures, a sentence in the Pirate Bay case, and much, much more. This week’s My Take is about the irony of copyright law.
Week in Review
Let’s start with Conficker. Data gathered from enterprise users of Sophos’ Endpoint Assessment Test revealed that 10% of Windows machines have not yet been patched against the hole that enables the Conficker variants to spread, despite the fact that the patch has been out for six months, and was released before Conficker got out. At OSAlert, we also posed the very hypothetical question about who would be to blame if a similar situation ever arose in the Linux world.
This week was also marked by sales estimates for the computer industry for the first quarter of this year. Even though sales declined overall, the decline was less sharp then expected. The winners here were the netbooks, who continued to sell very well.
OSAlert also covered Grape, a Mac OS X program that allows you to manage your desktop in new and interesting ways. The project is still in closed beta, but OSAlert was allowed to give out beta invites to our readers, and you boys and girls took tremendous advantage of that – much more than I anticipated. I hope those of you who got the invites are having lots of fun trying out Grape.
The landmark The Pirate Bay trial came to its first conclusion this week, with the four founders of the website being sentenced to 1 year in jail, as well as a massive fine of 3.6 million USD for sharing 33 copyrighted files. Lots of discussion ensued.
Yesterday, we ended the week with the news that the first Macintosh-powered botnet has appeared. This botnet is constructed using machines infected by the trojan that emerged earlier this year. This trojan piggybacked on copies of iWork and PhotoShop CS4 found on warez sites.
My Take: Irony
How’s this for irony?
Henley, one of the founders of rock group The Eagles, has filed a lawsuit accusing Senate candidate Charles DeVore of violating his copyright. DeVore allegedly used two of Henley’s hit songs “The Boys of Summer” and “All She Wants to Do Is Dance” in two YouTube campaign videos without authorization. […] DeVore, who used Henley’s music to attack opponent Sen. Barbara Boxer, maintains he is authorized to use the music as part of his First Amendment right to political free speech.
I fully agree with Don Henley. If this Republican senate candidate wants to use Henley’s music in his campaign videos, he’ll have to receive permission to do so, just like everybody else. If the right to free speech were to enable this senator to disregard copyright, wouldn’t it then mean that everyone can disregard copyright using the right to free speech as the justification?
Mr DeVore, if you want to be able to use copyrighted content without permission, and I agree with you that you should be able to do so in short videos, then advocate changing copyright law. Don’t you find it ironic that politicians, who shove these strict insane copyright laws upon us in the first place under pressure form the big media companies, now suddenly want to give themselves exemptions?
Oh, the irony.
“Don’t you find it ironic that politicians, who shove these strict insane copyright laws upon us in the first place under pressure form the big media companies, now suddenly want to give themselves exemptions?”
“Politicians”. You are making a generalization and then using a specific individual’s actions to imply some kind of widespread hypocrisy. Do you have some evidence that this particular politician is some kind of copyright law advocate? Maybe he is in total agreement with you and has done nothing to enforce the status quo with regard to copyrights.
DeVore is a moron to attempt justifying via First Amendment rights. “Fair use” would be a better argument for the fact that he changed lyrics to poke fun/discredit something. Then again, his use falls more within the realm of satire than parody…
Copyright Act of 1790 both provided for an initial term of 14 years, renewable once by living authors for an additional 14 years.
Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 – extended terms to 95/120 years or life plus 70 years.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 – criminalized some cases of copyright infringement.
Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 – criminalized more cases of copyright infringement, permitted technology to “sanitize” works.
The U.S. copyright on Steamboat Willie released on November 18, 1928 will be in effect through 2023 unless there is another change of the law.
You may know steamboat Willie as Mickey Mouse.
Not only have they robbed us of public domain but now they want to rape anyone who dares to defy them.
I for one want to see the people take back what’s ours. Some of our greatest tools are the creative commons licences support CC content to hit them in the wallet. The only real way to get our public domain back is to make it a political issue
Edited 2009-04-19 21:15 UTC
“So now we’re forced to work together. How ironic.”
“Wait – that’s not ironic! Ironic would be if we had to work together to hurt each other!”
“I think it would be ironic if our guns didn’t shoot bullets, but instead squirted a healing salve that cured all wounds.”
“I think it would be ironic if everyone was made of iron.”
(2 hours later)
“Okay. So we all agree that the current situation is not totally ironic, but it is odd in an unexpected way that defies our normal circumstances.”
Maybe it’s ironic in an Alanis Morrisette sense (i.e. not ironic at all, just some slightly annoying stuff that happens).