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You might try not the use the events page as proof (http://www.hostforest.co.uk//Events/default.asp?Y ear=2006&Month=12&Day=04), since that does change the calender. But the events calender is not what was shown in the screenshot!

I have a strange question: why is the article he supposedly took a screenshot from dated September 29th, 2006, but the calendar for the archive of posts is February 2007? I thought perhaps the calendar in this software might display the current month regardless of which post you're reading, but if you look at this link to the author of the programme's own site, here, you'll see that the calendar does indeed change with the post you're reading. Which means the article on the MPAA blog is supposedly from over 3 months ago but the calendar is showing this month. Either the screencap is faked, the web admin who set up the software doesn't know what the fuck he's doing, or the software needs work. There's also no mention of the blog ever being there in Google or the Internet Archive despite the former surely having a copy and the latter already having an index of tens of thousands of pages from the MPAA site, and not a single one of them matching a search for this blog. Maybe the guy just wants to do some viral marketing, maybe he supports the MPAA philosophically and wants a bunch of overhyped, gullible nerds to get upset so he can make them look foolish later. Or maybe it is legitimate and he just happens to have stumbled upon the site, the link just happens to be taken down, and all mention of it from the face of the Internet has disappeared forever. That seems really likely.

Actually, we're both wrong. Somehow, I red the 25 pounds as 50. Since they're only running 1 commercial blog, the price is 25 pounds. http://www.hostforest.co.uk/Purchase/default.asp

That's an amount not even worth chasing via the small claims courts which is a lawyer free zone.

One respondent to TFA suggested using the MPAA's own logic against them in court. Another suggested suing them in small claims court which is apparently much easier.

I submit that a software author is the same as a music CD author on an artistic level, perhaps more so since he does not have all the studio people to massage his work into something palatable.

If this artist is left on his own, he could make some cash in small claims court, or at least his 150 pound license fee if he is not the litigous sort perhaps.

However I think this is also a very good opportunity for a big guns lawyers supplied perhaps by the EFF to find the paper where the MPAA writes down its killer legal strategies, and tear it up into tiny pieces, much as IBM is doing to SCO.

Equate software to music. Equate running softare or viewing a webpage as a "performance" in the legal sense. Use MPAA rules. Since the license costs about $100, calculate based on a 300% markup over a $35 average MPAA cd price. The sum will be punitive damages for theft, plus the 300% of what the MPAA sues for a song, plus the price of a "performance" multiplied by the number of visits to any of the blog's pages, based on the evidence of the MPAA's server logs which is must produce in court. Although this sounds over the top, it is simply using the same non-common-sensical strategy the MPAA is using in court, and I think a judge and jury might just see justice in that, or at least a reason not to throw the case out.

I think this ought to net a nice award for the author.

When you think about it, SCO has lasted this long because it is like a pathogen that bends the organism that is the legal system to its intent, far beyond the realm of common sense: If they don't show the infringing code it is common sense that they ought not be able to argue beyond that. The MPAA also also exhibits pathogenic qualities; it sues its own customers for such outrageous sums that it is not only beyond common sense, you have to wonder if their worth is based more on legal games than actually what their members sell. Unless we take advantage of such amazing incidents as this one and use their own weapons against them, it will just continue. We now have a chance to stir up some talk about whether the MPAA is also over the top, and what to do about it.