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Slashback: Epson, AbiWord, Justification
It was the least they could do. Last week, AbiWord's PayPal account for donations was lightened to the tune of several hundred dollars. Now, an anonymous reader writes "According to this posting, PayPal has succumbed to the pressure. They have agreed to reimburse the AbiWord team for the money that was stolen from their account last week. I still want to know how the AbiWord account was broken into..."
Because licenses matter. specht writes "I am a bit surprised that nobody has reported this yet. EPSON KOWA made their scanner and printer software available for downloading again after they had to pull it because of a GPL violation (see the previous Slashdot story). More information about this (and why it had to be removed in the first place) are here . Kudos to EPSON KOWA and EPSON for working with the FSF to resolve these issues."
No, that's "Gorilla marketing." akiaki007 writes "As many might have noticed, Friday most of Manhattan was covered with butterflies. This article on CNN that states that NYC fined MS $50.00 and the cost of cleaning up the static-cling plastic ads. On a side note, most other companies probably would have been fined per ad, though somehow MS got off, pretty much scot-free."
Priceless -- which is nice when you're paying. Digital Soldier writes "HERE is an article from Government Executive Magazine justifying, from a security perspective, the use of open source software in government. In short, the article makes the point that open source software allows security administrators to be pro-active rather than purely reactive in their work. I guess they don't like waiting for service packs."
Lovely spam, lovely spam ah ah ah ah ... ghostrider_one writes "Australian IT is reporting that notorious Australian spammers T3 direct have appealed the recent dismisssal of their lawsuit against the person they blame for being blacklisted in SPEWS."
...that many marketing companies in London regularly go around spray-painting music artist's names onto street furniture...
Maybe us Londoners are more relaxed about that sort of thing?
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
$50.00 to Microsoft is like 1 cent to the rest of the world. I suppose that the reason they got is because they 'support' public officials. In fact I wouldn't be suprised if those public officials gave them support on the ads in the first place.
PayPal is not a bank. It's not run like a bank, it's not regulated like a bank, and deposits are not insured like a bank.
- Have a picture
"I still want to know how the AbiWord account was broken into..."
So do I!
I need a new digital camera...
I'm pretty tolerant about /.s occasional posting of the same article twice. But doing it within the same article is just too wierd ...
But there are others with complaints against PayPal.
Are they going to help them? here is a whole website about how bad they are. Several in fact.
I'm enjoying the idea of a handful of Microsoft PR employees rubbing these static-cling butterfly ads over their heads, vigorously no doubt, to achieve the desired sticky effect.
Of course the marketers knew what they were doing with the ads. Did they not realize they were breaking the law? Of course they knew. They were counting on it, and by making waves, they were counting on getting on CNN and maybe others (/.). If they didn't make a fuss and apologize and such, then I, who am not a New Yorker, would never have known or seen the photo of the campaign. It worked. That's why they did it, and took the risk. So what if they have to pay a few dollars, even per butterfly. Its cheaper than running an add, most likely!
I am certain that high-profile news stories on Slashdot, The Register, and elsewhere had nothing to do with PayPal's decision to refund the money to the Abiword account. Now if any of us loses hundreds of dollars off of PayPal, we can be comfortable in the knowledge that PayPal will refund the amount we lost.
As opposed to when Mickey and Minnie stood up to giant corporations?
I stole this Sig
Am I the only one to see the irony in the fact that a /. Ed goes a bit copy/paste mad and suddenly there's not 1 dupe but at least 16 comments (out of 32 at the mo) all saying the same thing. I mean, did you think that no one else had noticed?
And Microsoft had to pay $50 and clean up the garbage?!?!?!
Typical case of American Blind Justice, I think!
--
Evan "Ah, the classics..."
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Two facts:
1. I've never used PayPal.
2. I've never lost any money to PayPal.
Somehow these seem connected.
This time, I want to walk around town with a marker,
putting swastikas on all the butterflies.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Here's my question: did Pay Pal give AbiWord the information about the transaction so they can track down the thieves who did this?
If not, why not? Maybe there's NOT a security problem... and the thieves work at PayPal?
OK, it's ridiculous... but so is the idea that Pay Pal wouldn't help AbiWord with such info...
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
The idea of a grown man in a butterfly suit quite frankly scares me.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
what about the countless other people that haven't resolved problems with Paypal? It seems the only way to get a response from them is to have someone post a story on Slashdot so they'll buckle under the pressure :)
How is what Microsoft did in NY different from what IBM did in SF?
Je ne parle pas francais.
How about giving M$ a taste of their own medicine? NT users have to pay per server and per license fee, so why not charge charge M$ per square meter and per pedestrian that walked by at the time?
Update: 10/31 00:09 GMT by T: Oops, doubled news of AbiWord / Paypal situation update has been halved; apologies. Those responsible have been sacked.
Thank you.
... unsatisfying resolutions.
Paypal will resolve a problem with a prominent customer after a big fuss has been made about it. Otherwise, of course, no change.
Epson makes the smallest possible change to a license (not to forbid reverse engineering), so as to use an LGPLed library legally. It looks like Epson tried it on; it didn't work out, but it was worth a try.
Microsoft was almost certain to gain more by the stunt than it would lose in fines. $50 per "decal" would have been cheap, but it wasn't even fined that much.
You can [imprison a corporation], its called an injunction. It freezes them from acting
No. An injunction bans one from doing one particular thing. Prison bans one from doing just about anything. The closest thing to prison for a corporation would probably be suspension of the company's operations for several months.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The FDIC insures you against loss of money due to the bank. The FDIC doesn't insure your money if it is stolen from you pocket, it doesn't insure the money if it is Stolen from you by checks or by debit card.
Nothing insures you from theft unless explicitly stated. Visa states that you are insured for all purchases through VISA and ONLY VISA. Has *NOTHING* to do with FDIC insurance.
FDIC insures that if the bank is fraudulent, goes out of business or gets blown up that you get your money back up to the $100,000.00 insured.
Now if your dumb ass leaves a blank check or a debit card * pin number laying around FDIC isn't going to protect you from squat and it WOULD BE THE BANKS DISCRETION TO PAY YOU IF ANYTHING AT ALL.
I feel this sudden urge to make a joke about performing illegal operations and Microsoft, but after a while you just start to wait expectantly for the legal ones. So, once again, Microsoft has performed an illegal operation and will not be shut down. Look on the bright side of this one though. This one is actually minorly entertaining from the stupidity factor. You sit back and wonder about a few things. 1.) Which ececutive woke up one morning and said "I know what we can do to drum up buisness! Lets annoy and confuse people by having a bunch of people in butterfly costumes litter a section of a major metropolis! Customers will be SO impressed with our superior marketing that they'll switch ISP's in the DROVES!!!" 2.) How much it costs to get someone to throw dignity out the window and skate through NYC in a brightly colored butterfly costume. 3.) How they were able to find so MANY people willing to skate through NYC in a brightly colored butterfly costume. 4.) How hard did the judge laugh/cry while in his chambers that with all the dealings with Microsoft in court, he had to deal with this part, as opposed to something possibly weighty and constructive like the antitrust dealings. and finally... 5.) We know they paid the $50.00 fine and cleaned it up, but how much was it to buy the dignities of all the skaters, pay for the actual cellophane ads, buy/rent the butterfly costumes, and pay for the lawyers time in the courtroom that bought them such a low fine. When you think about ALL that, it was a little more expensive for their little ad campaign. Was it still cheaper than a TV ad? Probably. But still, I'm actually curious as to the $$ ammount M$ pays people for a slice of dignity and a few minutes ot time on skates...
----- I want my LART.
All you Microsoft-bashers crying about Microsoft getting off "scott-free" should read the article again. They had PERMITS for crying out loud! And the city didn't argue the fact that they had permits, only that the permits were improperly issued. Sounds to me like the CITY made the mistake, and Microsoft shouldn't have been fined at all!
Of course, I'm certainly no Microsoft-lover, but c'mon guys, be honest. If there's ONE thing that Microsoft has consistently done WELL, it's gotta be marketing. We geeks could learn something from them.
The Web is like Usenet, but
the elephants are untrained.