[Legal] FC: BSA (Microsoft) screws up, targets OpenOffice distribution (fwd)

[Fedor Zuev]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 13:18:57 -0500
From: Declan McCullagh <declan на well.com>
To: politech на politechbot.com
Cc: copyright-europe на bsa.org
Subject: FC: BSA (Microsoft) screws up, targets OpenOffice distribution

The actual thread:
http://distribution.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=581265&listName=dev

-Declan

---

Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 09:25:28 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Story on Slashdot regarding the BSA using incorrectly targeted
blanket threats
From: "Barclay McInnes" <barc на netdud.com>
To: <declan на well.com>

Hi Declan;
      You might find this story of interest:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/28/1317244&mode=thread&tid=109

Long story short:  The BSA uses an FTP spider that goes around looking for
files with certain keywords in them, and if the site contains files that
make a hit, the file is noted, and a form nastygram gets sent out to the
site's operator(s).  In this case, many of the OpenOffice.org mirrors are
getting the notices because, horror of horrors, they matched the "office"
keyword.  Example from one of their notices:

Filename: /mandrake_current/SRPMS/OpenOffice.org-1.0.1-9mdk. src.rpm
The above computer program(s) is/are being made available for copying,
through downloading, at the above location without authorization from the
copyright owner(s)

Isn't this some kind of actionable harrassment?  They're wasting
everyone's time and money with this type of "enforcement".




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