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BSA Accuses OpenOffice Mirrors
sqrt529 writes "A German university was accused by the BSA of pirating MS Office, because they mirrored OpenOffice.org. The scripts from the BSA only check for "Office" in the filename and then automatically send out notices to the ftp admins. Did any of you get similar notices from the BSA?"
This is really funny actually. I'm going to start uploading mp3s named "office.mp3" to ftp sites now for fun.
Remember,democracy never lasts long.It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. John Adams (1814)
"I've got an idea! Let's write scripts that will automatically log in on FTP servers, waste bandwidth, cost people money, and also do a shitty job looking for pirated software!"
Yeah, that's really bright. If I were operating any servers that had been raped by the BSA's scripts like this, I'd be extremely pissed off. They should realize that bandwidth isn't exactly free, especially not in countries != US.
The Boy Scouts of America should stick to tying knots and keep their jamboreeing noses out of I.T.!
"It's not a bug, it's a feature."
1. Create automated application to look for piracy 2. Shoot self in foot
this HAS to be one of the dumbest things I've heard!
If Office Depot had an ftp site where you could get their latest catalogue, they'd be accused of pirating M$ Office?!
I think they went a bit too far this time.
~Jon~
This space for rent, inquire within.
And imagine what the BSA would have loved to do to these servers if they were allowed to hack the offending boxes.
FTP is a file-sharing protocol, isn't it?
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
Soon they will be going after anything with Money. Or might as well go after anything Windows.
I know that some search sites "spider" ftp sites, but couldn't ftp site owners change the license agreements for their sites to disallow the spidering of their site for the explicit purpose of trying to find specific files. In this way the search spiders can still work, but a spider "looking" for anything specifically would not be allowed? I don't know if this type of thing is common in other contexts that may negatively be impacted by such a change though?
Those damn communists and their "open sores" threaten the good, god loving corporations.
This sig was cut off by the sla
A German university was accused by the BSA of pirating MS Office, because they mirrored OpenOffice.org. The scripts from the BSA only check for "Office" in the filename and then automatically send out notices to the ftp admins.
Dadgumit, the Boy Scouts of America have gone too far this time! Back in my day, we helped little old ladies across the street... Now they're policing for pirated software? Sheesh...
In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don't wobble.
-- Yun-Men
From the letter:
BSA represents that the information in this notification is accurate and states, under penalty of perjury, that it is authorized to act in this matter on behalf of the copyright owners listed above.
So the BSA has perjured itself; now what is the penalty?
... a sneaky way for MS to hit OpenOffice by threatening mirror servers with legal action? The SysOp at uni.Muenster wasn't sure whether he was on shaky legal grounds or not. If the name OpenOffice gets any way muddied, people would turn off it. In short - more FUD.
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
BSA represents that the information in this notification is accurate and states, under penalty of perjury, that it is authorized to act in this matter on behalf of the copyright owners listed above.
And how is this different in truth from the common statement "You are receiving this message because you opted-in to our marketing list to receive special offers."
Filename:
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).
It seems almost astonishing that even the BSA can be as utterly incompetent as this (does BSA stand for Bloody Stupid Alliance?). Unless you go for the conspiracy theory that they're deliberately hassling their clients rivals...
At least they were quick to admit the mistake and quick to speak of correcting it, which would make sense, otherwise they would be doing not much more than pissing off admins everywhere
Yeah, I see alot of pranksters naming files this weekend.... LOLKARMA BURRRNNN
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
The damn troup leader actually comes to my door! We didn't do these type of things when I was in boy scouts! =P
Quote: "As you know, illegal on-line activities can result in 50 million people on the Internet accessing and downloading a copyrighted product worldwide without authorization - a highly damaging activity for the copyright holder."
Well I suppose 50 million people downloading OpenOffice would damage Microsoft's Office sales :)
Yes! And they can chage their Paradigm while they're at it!
~Jon~
This space for rent, inquire within.
What is perhaps more disturbing is that the script logs into an anonymous FTP site using the password "guest@nowhere.com". The site allows anonymous access only if you provide YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS as the password. guest@nowhere.com is not the email address of anyone at the BSA. The BSA therefore ILLEGALLY ACCESSED that ftp site and should be taken to court for COMPUTER HACKING.
Hey you stole my joke :)... I can forgive you.. i love that joke.. and I'm glad others think of it..
:P
Here's my post.
Ha beat you to it.. but seems nobody noticed mine
Who makes you Sig?
As president of Ashdo Software Inc., I take software piracy very seriously. Recently, the sophisticated scanning software of the Business Software Alliance has detected that your website "www.slashdot.org" is most certainly hosting and distributing illegally-obtained copies of proprietary Ashdo programs. You are hereby ordered to cease and desist the above activities, which I'm sure are also in violation of the DMCA in some way or another.
Sincerely,
Hiram Ashdo
President, Ashdo Software Inc.
cc: BSA
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
From the BSA letter in the article:
>> FTP Login Name: anonymous
>> FTP Login Password: guest@nowhere.com
Hmm. Using a spoofed (or at least, invalid) e-mail address?
As most FTP servers allow anonymous access if you "Please provide e-mail address as password", I'd call that gaining access under false pretences. Is the BSA representing those same companies that get so pissy when people (for privacy reasons) use spoofed details on web "please register" forms?
If they can do it, so can we. I won't feel so guilty - not that I did anyway - next time I install software and register it to "nobody@mindyourownbusiness.com"..
Send them a bill for the bandwith used.
Then take them to small claims court when they don't pay!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I think that the practice of letting computers/searches/scripts do all of the work without applying any human intelligence to the process has become more and more common. Yes, it's worse in my mind when the BSA does it because I'm biased against them in the first place, but to be fair it's spread to just about everybody in my recent experience. I just moved, and when my wife and I changed our driver's licenses over she got a semi-threatening letter because she didn't also change over her car registration (our only car is registered in my name for no reason I can think of). I recently had my account put on hold by PayPal and then restored, but in the interim I sent a question to their help staff regarding something else entirely. Someone (apparently a bot?) from PP replied to me and said, basically "we can't restore your account until you do X, Y , and Z. Please contact us if you have any further questions. Thank you!" I don't think it's a good thing that organizations have become this brain-dead, but the BSA certainly can't patent a method for making themselves look like idiots by letting a search tool plow blindly through a set of data for them. Plenty of prior art there...
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
Microsoft had nothing to do with this. This should be a YRO article.
If you check the BSA e-mail, they logged into the anonymous FTP resource with the address "guest@nowhere.com", which is obviously fake.
... they have lied when asked for their e-mail address!
In the UK this could be construed as attempting to access a system un-lawfully
>> Based upon BSA's representation of the copyright owners in anti-piracy
>> matters, we have a good faith belief that none of the materials or
>> activities listed above have been authorized by the rightholders, their
>> agents, or the law. BSA represents that the information in this
>> notification is accurate and states, under penalty of perjury, that it is
>> authorized to act in this matter on behalf of the copyright owners listed
>> above.
They apologized? Whoop-de-fucking-do. Give them a little taste of their own medicine. Fire a few broadside volleys of lawyers at them.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
What exactly should they have done if not this? If your answer is that their search engine is inherently a flawed concept to begin with, then you are arguing a different issue.
I don't see what this has to do with my rights online.
/syle
It's clear the much feared BSA has made a mistake.
However, since their actions in the past have caused untold scrambling to find licenses on the part of many law-abiding but sloppy businesses, I think it is only fair that BSA likewise be caused to scramble. Because the BSA, likewise, has now been sloppy.
The university should have lawyer draft up some pompous letter indicating that
[I know, it will be only a paper tiger and never stand up. But I'm sure I'm not the only one that fantasizes about seeing the BSA have to eat their own dogfood for a change.]
"Provided by the management for your protection."
/me is glad the Cold War is over :-)
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I saw one on FC "Want to get back at your boss...?" The BSA is really a bunch of scumbags. Sheesh.
I don't know what's funnier... that they're claiming copyright infringement of OpenOffice, or that they thought Microsoft Office came as RPMs!!
This is the part I refer to:
-
What was located as infringing content:
Oh hell, I needed a laugh this morning...Filename: /mandrake_current/SRPMS/OpenOffice.org-1.0.1-9mdk. src.rpm /mandrake_current/i586/Mandrake/RPMS/OpenOffice.or g-libs-1.0.1-9mdk.i586.rpm
(199,643kb)
Filename:
(35,444kb)
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).
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
No, you're confused.
It's Mr. Rogers that passed away, at 74. Now that's an American Icon.
Back on topic: The BSA rep apologized for the mistake, which implies she's a) not a lawyer, and b) knew something about OpenOffice- if only that it's GPL/free-as-in-beer.
It would have been more of a story if the BSA started trying to find out which company owns OpenOffice, or just blindly pressed on with their accusations... but they didn't.
There should be some way of specifying that FTP are not allowed to be spidered. There is robots.txt on websites, a similar idea should exist for FTP's... Or, you could just find out the IP block(s) of the BSA scanners and disallow them from entering the FTP :)
Shouldn't it be under "It's funny...", not "Y.R.O."?
What was located as infringing content:
/mandrake_current/SRPMS/OpenOffice.org-1.0.1-9mdk. src.rpm /mandrake_current/i586/Mandrake/RPMS/OpenOffice.or g-libs-1.0.1-9mdk.i586.rpm
Filename:
(199,643kb)
Filename:
(35,444kb)
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).
Corinna Beck
Business Software Alliance
1150 18th St NW Suite 700
Washington,DC 20036
EOF
Sure this isn't a hoax? I can't imagine them being that stupid in Washington.
The Boy Scouts of Ameria should sue the Business Software Alliance and force them to change their name, kind of like what the World Wildlife Federation(Foundation?) did to the World Wrestling Federation which is now WWE.
They might also be sued for for cyber squatting on BSA.org,com,net,etc...
Seriously, though - isn't this an "evil stupid BSA" topic? We'e had a dozen or so "evil stupid BSA" stories in the last few months - why not make an "evil stupid BSA" logo? Since "BSA" is also the initials of the Boy Scouts of America, why not make it like a three fingered salute with a big "NO!" slash through it?
Then again, after hundreds of stores on Google there's still not a Google Topic, so maybe you have to piss of Slashdot before you get your own topic. I'd say you have to advertise on Slashdot, but Google already does that (with those little, yellow, different server rack accessories).
Schnapple
I think I need another cup of coffee, for some reason "BSA" registered in my head as the Boy Scouts of America before the Business Software Alliance....sheesh.
Anyone have the IP ranges of the network the BSA scans from? I don't need my bandwidth wasted by these clowns.
"Powers. I have them."
. . . this is all quite humorous, and certainly a source of embarrassment to the BSA, who apparently can't write scripts sophisticated enough to distinguish MS Office from OpenOffice. (I wonder if Sun has received a similar notice about StarOffice? Just think of the field day Scott McNealy would have with that one.)
But I think it was just a silly mistake on the BSA's part. This story really should be filed under "It's funny. Laugh."
- "IDSA has a good faith belief that
... [WoS] infringes the rights of one or more IDSA members."
- "[BSA has] a good faith belief that none of the materials or activities listed above have been authorized"
I'm sorry, but Ms. Beck's apology doesn't cut it. A web robot cannot assert a "good faith belief."A question can we turn in BSA for using priated software?
:)
It would be very ironic If we could try and have them make the same big mistake
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Someone knocks at your door. You don't know who the hell it is but you let them anyways. You serve them tea. Then they accuse you of copying a wicker basket design of theirs. You say nope, its all my own original work. They agree. Then you send them the bill of .73 cents for their tea bag.
Who is the dickhead in this situation?
Just remember everyone, Unix-like operating systems (Free-BSD, Linux, GNU/Linux, HPUX, Solaris, etc.) have the capability to have "Empty" files. When you do an `ls`, they CAN show up as huge....
I think I'll go making a download page at my website with "Office.zip", "Word.zip", and "Outlook.zip", which all will appear to be 600 megs or larger.....
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
Why on earth would you write a script/program that automagically sends out nastygrams without a human being first checking to make sure the "hit" is even valid?
Pirated software can actually increase
profits in the long run. Would DOOM
have been so popular, consequently giving ID
profits on Quake, had millions not had a
pirated copy?
One reason MS office is so popular is because
years back it was often pirated, increasing the
user base that depends on it.
.../mandrake_current/SRPMS/OpenOffice.org-1.0.1-9m dk.src.rpm
Hmmm, seem's as if their regexps need some fine-tuning...
-- There is no place like $HOME.
Alternatively, one could say, "The Business Software Alliance (BSA) declares that OpenOffice is identical to Microsoft Office." Wow! That's how to sell software!
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
Let's see... where did I put that procmail recipe to send an automatic reply saying "Bugger off bloodsucking retards" to any mail from bsa.org?
Has anyone else noticed that the BSA corporate logo resembles the act of penetration? Kinda sets your expectations ...
Hell, even with VBS you could program a decent ftp-spider. (If you were able to...)
And: reviewing your search results before sending cease & desist letters can even be done without programming anything! Needed software: brain 1.0, maybe the BSA lacks here.
Kosi
Mr. Schild forwarded the BSA letter to the Open Office team, with the observation that "someone is trying to remove your product from FTP-Servers." If it weren't for Heinlein's razor, I might raise an eyebrow that a legal agent of Microsoft is trying to purge the net of a competitor's product.
As it happens, I'm due to meet with the chairman of the BSA in the UK, a fortnight from now, to grill him about issues like this. What would you put to him, in that position?
To avoid infringement and further confusion they should rename the program. To better represent the work environment where producivity software is used these days. Call it OpenCubeFarm.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Oh, and it's becoming highly publisized. If they
truly are microsoft in disguise, wouldn't this
mearly be business as usual?
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
seriously. they sent you a legal notice that was false. they logged into your ftp server with false information.
if you sent the bsa a legal document that was false, could you get away with, "oops, sorry?"
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
IANAL but I've seen all the episodes of Ally MacBeal.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
From the linked list;
"Hi
We received this message from Christian Schild of Muenster. I immediately
contacted the BSA and clarified the situation; they apologized for the
misunderstanding.
--
Quote:
Dear Mrs. Suarez-Potts,
I apologize for the obvious mistake I made.
Apparently our system detects the OpenOffice files as MS Office programs and
alarms me, which in turn sends the notices. I failed my part by not
reassuring clearly enough which property was infringed and now that I am
aware of that fact we will try and fix the search terms of our system and of
course be more aware of the possible mistake.
Thank you very much for your e-mail.
Sincerely,
Corinna Beck"
So the BSA rep apologized for the error and all was forgiven. At least they had the decency to rectify the problem before it got out of hand.
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
I note that the BSA email includes the details of how they accessed the "violating" software. This includes the anonymous ftp login using
login: anonymous
password: guest@nowhere.com
I doubt that the address guest@nowhere.com connects to the person that runs the script for the BSA. If servers had the policy requirement that all anonymous access required a valid email address as the anonymous login password the letter from the BSA would provide a valid point to charge the BSA with illegal access to a system.
Also if the BSA does not represent the copyright/left holders for OpenOffice then the BSA is open for a claim of false representation.
>> Based upon BSA's representation of the copyright owners in anti-piracy
>> matters, we have a good faith belief that none of the materials or
>> activities listed above have been authorized by the rightholders, their
>> agents, or the law. BSA represents that the information in this
>> notification is accurate and states, under penalty of perjury, that it is
>> authorized to act in this matter on behalf of the copyright owners listed
>> above.
Is it just me, or is the BSA mail discussed here a classic spam run? First scour sites for hits on anything that might remotely look like a reason to send the message, then send an impersonal, blatantly commercial email to the administrative address(es) of those sites. Walks like a duck... -wdb
Not only do I have OpenOffice installed, but also X-Windows... Oh boy - I must be in deep troubles now...!
Hey, cool. Can we make this an offical slashdot poll?
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
If I create a file on my ftp server called "Office.Exe" will I eventually get a threatening email? What about a file called "Windows3.11" or "FrontPage".
But, if everybody did that the BSA would have to apologise a lot more and may even eventually be thought to be an inefficient or incompetant organisation.
On the other hand it may just be simpler to find out the ISP they use and block them using a packet filter...
I don't see where anyone else has noticed this, but doesn't the BSA more or less falsely identify itself by using the e-mail address of guest@nowhere.com?
Infringement Details:
First Found: 24 Nov 2002 15:31:40 EST (GMT -500)
Last Found: 24 Feb 2003 01:19:59 EST (GMT -500)
IP Address: 128.176.191.21
IP Port: 21
Protocol: FTP
FTP Login Name: anonymous
FTP Login Password: guest@nowhere.com
I'm sure the owners of that domain would be happy to know about the false identification the BSA is using...
I have a new company policy... all MS Office created documents must be safed as:
f ilename]_office.ppt
[filename]_office.doc
[filename]_office.xls
[
Yes, it is FUNNY as in Funny-Ha-Ha. Why is it listed under the Microsoft Bill-Borg? Smells like blind incompetence on the part of the BSA (or whomever did this work for them, and your guess on that account is as good as mine.)
I wonder if the tables could be tipped, using this , to counter BSA Terrorism.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Someone please write a script to search ftp sites for "Office" and additionally check for the OS licence on any hits. Then send the offending admins notification that they're in violation of the Open Office license...
Any real pirates who want to distribute MS Office, will just rename the file on their ftp servers to something obfuscated as soon as they cotton on to this scripting lark.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
I have a friend who had a program called 'decss' which removed CSS tags from a webpage, hosted on a University computer. The MPAA emailed the University with a threat of legal action if the program wasn't removed. Really quite humorous.
The Anti-Blog
Time to add their mailserver to the spam filter.
Everybody else should probably do the same. If you
aren't mature enough to know when and who to email,
you don't deserve to send email to any of my
machines.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
Is a real site at 128.121.175.50 and has a web page.
If the BSA don't own the site haven't they committed identity theft?
To whom it may concern: Bite me. Herman
If you sell flour or sugar in little bags, in a back alley, pretending it's cocaine, you WILL get in jail for selling cocaine, even though it wasn't.
What the AC misses is that Doom was shareware! Millions of people bought the *shareware* copy!
Only episodes 2 and 3 were pay-for-play. Sheesh.
(and what the hell is wrong with slashdot today???
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Not too much of a stretch. Microsoft has been a major contributor to the BSA since its inception. It harasses companies based on rumors of software non-compliance co-opting US Marshalls to act as a the gestapo. It is also growing power and influence worldwide.
Read this interview with Gates himself for more insight on Microsoft and the BSA.
To sum it all up, the BSA *is* Microsoft.
Whoa! Looks like we're up to level RED! Seriously, drop a line to the FBI notifying them of "terrorists" that attempted to hack into your machine with false information. Let the FBI kick their doors down. I'd do the same, but unfortunately, they didn't check any of my FTP sites :( (I just checked my logs for the past few months).
The BSA's notice states that they make their claims under penalty of perjury.
As their information is easily shown to be false and incorrect, and as it's also easily shown that they should have known enough to check simple facts like these....
How about applying to the court for the application of the penalty for perjury, which I believe is time in jail, to the folks who are responsible for this obviously faulty notice that they obviously didn't bother to check for accuracy and that they themselves have sworn to the accuracy of.
Penalty of perjury isn't just a form of words like "How do you do" or "Have a nice day". The penalty is real and should be applied where warranted. The BSA requested the penalty for perjury in their notice. It should be delivered.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
I can see it now...
Download OpenOffice 1.0 - Hear what people are saying!
"Virtually identical to Microsoft Office" - Corinna Beck, BSA
Does anyone have the source for this story? It's rather unclear if this is a genuine story or just a rumor.
Ladies (ha!) and gentlemen, I have discovered why MS named their products in such a way. It makes keyword searches harder.
Ever try to search for 'The The' on Gnutella? It's NOT easy.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Hmm... when I log into the server it asks me for my complete email address:
User (128.176.191.21:(none)): ftp
331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password.
Password:
Yet the BSA used
>> FTP Login Name: anonymous
>> FTP Login Password: guest@nowhere.com
But nowhere.com exists, and is someones homepage! Is it good that they
a) abuse someone elses domain by logging requests as being from someone else
b) don't comply with the very valid request to supply contact details for the person accessing the ftp server.
Grr!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
After building up some more money, I've often considered doing the following (this applies to music but could easily apply to other mediums):
Putting up a server with tons and tons of mp3 files named after popular songs. Don't put up the real files however, just audio clips with a voice saying "this is not the file you are looking for" and enough silence or noise to make the filesize/length similar to an actual mp3 of the song.
Next, let several well-respected citizens, or perhaps those in law see that the site does not contain any real copyrighted music.
Wait for the cease and desist. Ignore or send a somewhat ambiguous reply stating something like "there's nothing to cease" but not mentioning the lack of actually pirated files
Wait for the court case...
Even with a crap lawyer, having some strong witnesses and playing 1-10 of the supposed pirated files to demonstrate that the *AA (or BSA) do not actually check file contents but simple use shitty filters and scare tactics should make the case an easy win - and leave the plaintiff with egg on their face.
*note: This works better since I'm in Canada. Loser pays the legal fees, and there's always the countersue, etc, as well as I believe measures for frivolous lawsuits.
ftp> ls -la . ..
227 Entering Passive Mode (127,0,0,1,249,244)
150 Here comes the directory listing.
drwxr-xr-x 2 502 502 4096 Feb 28 15:40
drwxr-xr-x 12 502 502 4096 Feb 28 15:36
-rw-rw-r-- 1 502 502 0 Feb 28 15:37 BSA-are-morons.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 502 502 0 Feb 28 15:36 Microsoft.Office.XP-sucks.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 502 502 0 Feb 28 15:39 hazxxx0r
-rw-rw-r-- 1 502 502 0 Feb 28 15:39 illegal
-rw-rw-r-- 1 502 502 0 Feb 28 15:38 illegal.mp3
-rw-rw-r-- 1 502 502 0 Feb 28 15:39 microsoft.salty.bastard.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 502 502 0 Feb 28 15:37 microsoft.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 502 502 0 Feb 28 15:37 office.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 502 502 0 Feb 28 15:37 openoffice is better than microsoft word.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 502 502 0 Feb 28 15:38 touchisagreattool
-rw-rw-r-- 1 502 502 0 Feb 28 15:39 warezr0kr.rar
226 Directory send OK.
now i just sit back and wait for them to spider my ftp and send me a notice, then i can have the joy of telling them to piss off.
hopefully this will fuck them off a bit.
The BSA really f*cked up on this one.
First it confused "office" and "openoffice" while officially representing Microsoft. Microsoft is fighting attempts to invalidate its use of trademarked generics for its products (e.g., claiming that Lindows is infringing), and MS lawyers will have a far harder time defending this practice if even their own representatives are unable to correctly identify Microsoft products. (And no, trademarks can't apply to every possible phrase containing the words Windows, Office, Word, etc.)
But now we learn it's using Lisa Seaman's domain for commercial purposes, almost certainly without authorization. "nobody.com" is a registered domain, and while she may not have many practical solutions to the dofuses (dofi?) that use her domain personally, an organization using it commercially (they get money for strong-arming people, right?) is a different thing.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Sounds like they can launch a perjury suit against the BSA. How the heck can they feel in the least bit legally justified to send out automated letters with this type of language in them?
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Being and Eagle Scout, I should have sent them a cease and dessist letter asking them to stop infringing on the Boy Scouts of America's trademark, using the business-reply-envelope of course. I thought about sending them Mardi Gras beads from the party and a condom with a note saying "It's a fake company. The address is my old Fraternity house. Good thing I'm in the area and stop in for parties. There's a good Mardi Gras party tonight. Next time tell the girls at the office." I've heard that companies have to pay the extra postage if you make the business reply mail too heavy. Plus, it'd be great in a few years to see something I did getting put on one of those "most outrageous yet genuine recieved mail" joke emails that go around. If I get another letter maybe I'll send them some sand from the next beach party.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
This years programming excellence award goes to the programmers at BSA. Apparently all we have search for is "office" to findout if you have a pirated version of M$ office. kudos to the programming team
Ok, I doubt anyone from them would dare to do it, but I'd love to see an official BSA representative to step up for a /. interview.
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
and put in the public/pirated/ms directory. Maybe the files can be filled with repeat copies of the US Constitution and the GPL. Add links from your website. Put out advertisements for it on Kazaa.
End of Line.
Interesting. Mandrake's default GUI is KDE and it automatically installs KOffice for you in default installations. But the BSA algorithm didn't find the KOffice rpm. Could it be they really are targeting OpenOffice? Trying to get whatever gullible system administrators they can find to remove it from their sites?
Don't use nobody@mindyourownbusiness.com
:-D
Use the reply to address from this C&D letter. Make sure you check all of those "Yes! I want valuable...blahblahblah" boxes too.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
What is really sad here, isn't that they are spidering ftp sites, but that evidently when their script gets a keyword hit, the legal team just gets the sites address and sends them a nastygram. You would think that there would be some verification that the file they found was what they claimed it to be.
I am network contact for one of the dutch largest toy companies, Bart Smit who sell online games. I have received at least 5 seperate "DEMAND FOR IMMEDIATE TAKEDOWN" emails from the BSA and Microsoft Anti Piracy. When replying and explaining the matter, I never got a reply so not even an excuse. I now have their envelope from addresses in my spamfilters. Sorry, bad luck for them.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
If Ms. Beck is an attorney, someone (anyone who knows of this) should file a complaint with all the states in which she is licensed. She has made a false statement and a false threat, which is serious lawyer misconduct.
How about we kill everyone that looks remotly like bin laden, eventually we will get him.
Hence the Office scan...
Posting useless rant since 2003.
Subj: MIT's policies regarding copyrights
---------------
In recent weeks, many members of our Community have received a letter from BSA (Business Software Alliance; www.bsa.org) and/or heard BSA sponsored advertisements regarding software licensing compliance.
At this time, I write to remind people of the Institute's copyright policy (see: for a complete statement of the policy):
At this time, MIT is not aware that the BSA has been granted authority to enforce the copyrights of its members. If the BSA contacts you regarding an alleged infringement, MIT's standard practices should be followed. The BSA should be directed to Stop-it, the MIT unit with responsibility for following-up on copyright infringement complaints resulting from network-based activities. Stop-it is found at stopit@mit.edu or at .
Without specific written authority from a copyright holder or other valid legal authority, the BSA has no right to inspect MIT computers for illegal copies of software. MIT most likely will have licenses covering the software in question. Those licenses often spell out the audit rights of the vendor as well as the rights MIT has to make copies of the software. Anyone approached by the BSA with a complaint of software piracy should confirm the license status before proceeding further. In the event appropriate licensed use cannot be confirmed, James D Bruce, VP for Information Systems, should be contacted for appropriate follow-up with BSA representatives.
For further advice on matters concerning BSA inquiries or copyright infringement in general, please contact the Office of Intellectual Property Counsel at (XXX) YYY-YYYY, the Office for the VP for Information Systems at (YYY) XXX-XXXX or Stopit (stopit@mit.edu).
Why not just use one of these convenient, yet real, addresses:
webmaster@bsa.org
info@bsa.org
supportBSA@bsa.org
software@bsa.org
"We are far too easily pleased." --C.S. Lewis
From the BSA apology: (italics and emphasis mine)
Apparently our system detects the OpenOffice files as MS Office programs and alarms me, which in turn sends the notices. I failed my part by not reassuring clearly enough which property was infringed and now that I am aware of that fact we will try and fix the search terms of our system and of course be more aware of the possible mistake.
Apparently, they automatically assume that some one/organization is a crook by the "which property was infringed" statement. No human oversite of the 'bot, no extensive verification routines, etc. and the result is frivolous threats and accusations. This isn't the first time I've heard of this happening. To me, this sounds like routinely making false accusations against innocent people and businesses.
IANAL, however let's see if I can layout objectional behavior and possibly illegal behavior:
Frivolous accusation of wrong doing without due diligence to verify allegations made by threat. This cost the University money because employees had to deal with a claim without merit. At least 2 employees, and a potentially expensive number of man-hours. No doubt, the person who received the threat sent it to their boss, who either sent it to their boss or the legal department. At least one meeting would have ensued as well as researching the claim that the University stated that they did to check that in fact they were not distributing MS Office. That could be several thousand Euros or even more that ten thousand Euros based on time involved where these people could have and would have been engaged in productive work.
Despite the point of entry being anonymous FTP, the BSA engaged in what might possibly be theft of service (by consuming a finite resource for other than the purpose the allowed reason of access that the University pays for). This may also prevent others from using the system legitimately because of the expense of the system.
Trespassing possibly. SPAM has been cited as trespassing due to the use of others assets for transmittal and storage. Perhaps this can be construed like this as well.If in fact accusations like these directed against the University of Muenster have been occuring for some time against others for doing similar things, than the apology (from the organization since I can't speak for the individual) most likely is not sincere and means that this behavior will in all likelihood continue, the the University and others. I believe we can be reasonably sure that the BSA has not ceased this behavior because of this incident.
I feel that this situation is akin to this scenario: I give or sell a dozen cookies to people or organizations in Boston. Then, I walk into every office in New York City and exclaim that because there is some food on a desk, food waste in the trash, etc., that they obviously stole my cookies because cookies are food. Cookies are the metphor for software and an unlocked door at an office is the metaphor for anonymous FTP.
What this shows is that the BSA is engaging in activities in multiple countries. Because their membership is dominated by the major software companies, and here they threatend the distribution of a competing, if free, product, perhaps this can be construed as collusion by the software giants and anticompetive behavior. Can someone cite other similar instances?
It's illegal if not as they're either posing as them...
get together and charge the BSA with fraud. After all, the BSA claimed they represented the copyright owners of OpenOffice, didn't they? As far as I can tell, they don't.
This just makes the BSA look extremely lazy... you'd think they'd at least have someone that verifies what when script finds before the emails are sent out.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
I get these in my daily job search email.
=============SPONSORED ADVERTISEMENT==============
Bust Your Boss!
Is your current or former employer using pirated software
in their office? Hit'em where it really hurts - report their
illegal software use today.
Click to visit www.bsa.org
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
why not place on every server one or more link to msoffice.exe pointing to a fake file? BSA would send million of notices... (and spend a lot if the notice is sent by snail mail)
They should have to identify themselves to the server(none of this nobody@imacoward.com crap), download the file, and compare that file against a database of their member's software before any cease and desist letters go out.
Of course, some of the software they download might get installed... and they might start to like it... and they might turn against the overlords.
Did any of you get similar notices from the BSA?
I wouldn't know - if the envelope says BSA, it gets spit on and circular filed immediately. I did keep one BSA letter that I trot out to BSA member vendors when they come knocking, though.
Karma: Professionally Doomed (mostly affected by inability to keep opinions to self)
"vi over emacs"
Everyone knows Pico is all you need.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
This USA Today account of a small business owner that went through license flogging, a fine, then wiping clean and starting fresh with open source software.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
...was certainly more well-mannered than mine would have been!
I have an FTP full of pictures of Windows from houses. Is the BSA going to come after me?? ;-)
This burns me every time I hear one of their "Grace Period" ads on the radio. On what authority can the BSA come into my place of business, audit, and fine me? They aren't a government or law enforcement agency, are they? What could they really do if they show up at my door and I tell them to take a leap?
In California, it's probably extortion, too. "Extortion: To unlawfully obtain money, property, or any other thing of value, either tangible or intangible, through the use or threat of force, misuse of authority, threat of criminal prosecution, threat of destruction of reputation or social standing, or through other coercive means." That's a felony. Because there was an illegal predicate act, the "unlawfully" element of extortion is satisfied.
Some legal action is definitely indicated.
If they don't comply with the audit sue for the additional costs incurred to accused organization to protect itself from future false accusations (extra, unnecessary due-diligence required to deal with the BSA's reckless behavior).
Hopefully this can become a $1M mistake for the BSA which might begin to moderate their behavior.
Here Here! Mod this parent up---We should blacklist the BSA.
On second thought, isn't this e-mail that they are sending out spam? Shouldn't the BSA be submitted to the RBL?
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
OpenOffice.org is a registered trademark. I believe that MS has commited a trademark violation by conflating the valueable OpenOffice.org band name with its own crummy one. This letter is clearly likely to cause confusion and to intimidate users of OpenOffice.org software who fall prey to this confusion. It is also likely to dilute the OpenOffice.org trademark because potential users of this software may mistakenly beleive that its use is somehow an infringement on Microsoft's intellectual property.
OpenOffice.org should immediately send the BSA a cease and desist letter, and if necessary take legal action to stop this garbage.
IANAL but (pay attention this is important!) ...
Even though the legal claim is bogus, it is important that everyone that receives such a notice replies within 10 days to (in pretty much these words) respectfully agree to withdraw offending files, provided that the BSA can prove that there is a legal reason for you to do so.
The alternatives:
* To ignore such a notice is a strike against you should you ever go to court against the BSA.
* To be disrespectful is also a strike against you should you ever go to court against the BSA.
* (Strangely,) To disagree is a strike against you should you ever go to court against the BSA.
* And finally, to admit any wrongdoing is a definite strike against you in court, and would give the BSA a good reason to bother you even more....
While on yahoo I saw a BSA add that said stick it to you boss, report software piracy. Interestingly, the page that pops up when you click on it is a php page. http://www.bsa.org/usa/report/report.php
Maybe the BSA will illustrate that using open source is a better alt. than the proprietary software, mainly because of their efforts to crack down on piracy. Could this be an open source silver lining?
> > the BSA ... logged into the ... FTP ... with the address "guest@nowhere.com"
> Ok, I agree, but let's think here. I generally use the
> address "-a@" when logging into anonymous FTP. This is
> because (shock) I believe that anonymous FTP should be,
> well, anonymous. If someone really wants to track me
> down, he can get my IP address easily.
> Is it "OK" for normal folks to do this, yet "not OK" for
> the BSA? Or is it "not OK" for anyone?
A few things: First, your address ("-a@") would just give an error in any normal email client. The email address that the BSA provided was owned by someone else.
Secondly, the BSA was using some sort of automated crawler, so they could have possibly posted this email address to hundreds or thousands of places, which means that the person who owns nowhere.com will be getting a bunch of erroneous hate mail and a huge load of extra spam in the future. This could affect this person from both a financial (bandwidth abuse, loss of productive time, etc.) and an emotional (I don't know about you, but I get absolutely thrown into a breakdown when I get large amounts of flames and spam) standpoint.
And then there's the fact that the BSA is using this person's email address for commercial gain. They stand to make money indirectly for doing this service from their client organizations. There's a lot of collateral damage involved, but the end result will likely be a temporary decrease in intellectual property infringement of software products (it's kind of like if we napalmed all of the Middle East: yeah, other countries would get messed up, but the primary target of removing Saddam Hussein from power would be achieved). So it's an ethics thing. Are you okay with making millions of dollars by knowingly hurting millions of innocents? If you are, then it's all good.
Incidentally, it never occurred to me that these domains are owned by somebody, and I now regret using them in my anonymized passwords. I think that I will use a method like the one you use when I want to be anonymous.
-JC
One appropriate response to this sort of letter that I don't see advocated much on these forums: find out what Bar Association has authorized the lawyers sending the letter to practice law, and send the Bar Association Ethics Commission a politely-worded formal letter of complaint. IANAL, but IMHO the lawyer is definitely engaging in unethical behavior under the Canons by sending legal notices on behalf of clients without any kind of legal basis to do so. It would be nice to get them sanctioned.
Me :)
...is the fact that the BSA is logging into an FTP server that requires a (valid?) email address as the password for anonymous logins with an apparently false email address (guest@nowhere.com). So far as I can tell from a WHOIS lookup and visiting the home page for nowhere.com, the owner of that domain has nothing at all to do with the BSA. Seems like nowhere.com's owner may have a legal claim against the BSA, but how am I supposed to know, I'm only a lawyer ....
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Essentially RICO allows an enterprise to be defined as primarily criminal in nature even if it is involved in some non criminal activities. For example a massage parlor chain that makes 10% of its money from massages andd 90% from prostitution could be charged under RICO.
The poster is suggesting that the BSA's abuses are so widespread that the BSA should in and of itself be considered a criminal organization and not a legitimate organization that has committed some crimes (though to the best of my knowledge the BSA has never been charged with a crime at all so the original poster is really off base here).
It is quite possible that the email address was changed in the post by the university folx.
Beyond that, I'm still wondering why they haven't been lambased by the university for using a bot on there ftp server. I thought that was frowned upon by those who operate them because of the bandwidth cost.
When VCR's are outlawed, only outlaws will have VCR's.
Note that they impersonated someone from "nowhere.com" when they signed in to the FTP server - that domain is owned by:
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Hmmmm - so a programme has gathered email addresses from web pages, and sent inappropriate messages to them. That sounds like spam to me... just report it to the BSAs ISP - they may be violating the terms of their service agreement :-)
Cheers -- Dave.
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On the bright side, Corinna Beck is real. I telephoned the BSA 202-872-5500, waded through the directory (hit 3 and then type in "BECK", 2325, and asked her if she could clarify their policy on issuing warnings to web sites with the word "office" on them.
She put me on hold and didn't pick up again before I gave up, but at least she exists.
Anyone have the BSA's IP addresses? I want to protect my network against this sort of intrusion.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Microsoft Office, Windows 2000, msoffice.zip, microsoft_office_XP.rar,windows_dotnet.zip, Windows_XP_registration_crack.zip, Microsoft Office, Windows 2000, msoffice.zip, microsoft_office_XP.rar,windows_dotnet.zip, Windows_XP_registration_crack.zip, Microsoft Office, Windows 2000, msoffice.zip, microsoft_office_XP.rar,windows_dotnet.zip, Windows_XP_registration_crack.zip, warez, crax, naked_bill_gates_XXX.zip
What was located as infringing content: /mandrake_current/SRPMS/OpenOffice.org-1.0.1-9mdk. src.rpm
(199,643kb)
Filename:
Filename: /mandrake_current/i586/Mandrake/RPMS/OpenOffice.or g-libs-1.0.1-9mdk.i586.rpm
(35,444kb)
Notice the line:
Filename: /mandrake_current/i586/Mandrake/RPMS/OpenOffice.or g-libs-1.0.1-9mdk.i586.rpm
(35,444kb)
The bolded text is what the script must have caught! how hilarious! it searches for *MS*OFFICE* LOL What a lame script! whoever wrote that script needs to be shot!
Is someone now claiming that open office worskpaces have negative side effects in regards to Multiple Sclerosis.
Did Birmingham Small Arms convert their headquarters into the open office plan style? & as a consequence rates of Multiple Sclerosis shot up? Is that what their interest is?
I'd like to quantify my appreciation for that AWESOME post with a reply. :-)
I think it is time to start to develop a special "BSA Honeypot Server", wich is just producing big big files with filenames wich are very close to commercial products.
I would kill my self to see them diging around at my ftp and trying to download the files.
To fool them eaven more you could add serval *.nfo and *.diz files to the directory containing those "fake" files.
And don't forgett to use the letter Z as much you can: aPPz, GaMeZ, UpLoAdZ, WaReZ, SerialZ, CrACkZ, KeyGenZ, etc...
In your anonymous FTP directory, do the following
/usr/dict/words | grep -v \' | xargs touch
# cat
Sit back and wait for the spider. In fact, just append those touches to the string Microsoft.
Maybe the postal fees will kill the BSA.
Carpe Deez
Somehow, I doubt it serves as a real legal notice. Why? Because there's absolutely no proof of delivery. The email server could have choosen to eat it. Server-side spam filters could have stopped it. Client-side spam filters could have stopped it. I thought legal stuff, like supoenas and other stuff must be signed for, to have proof?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
The problem got "out of hand" when the BSA sent an automated legal threat without bothering to check ANYTHING in their claims. They lied, under penalty of perjury, by claiming:
> to represent the copyright owners of OpenOffice.org;
> the material was posted illegally;
> it was a "good faith belief" (I don't consider ANY results from a search engine to be accurate until I check it myself);
> that anything they said in the notice is accurate.
Legal threats cost real money. They have a real chilling effect on people's freedoms. They must be taken seriously, even if nonsensical.
The BSA is wrong here in so many ways it's hard to count. They deserve to pay with more than just an apology.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
>What would you put to him, in that position?
Well, I would tell him to put even more pressure on the despicable criminals that distribute commercial software illegally, and indeed encourage him to lobby for draconian laws against software piracy.
No, I'm not trolling. I am convinced that the BSA and their ilk, and Microsoft's mandatory registration procedures, are Open Source's biggest friends. Think about it: as long as Windows and Office were essentially free (the price of 2 downloads from a warez site and 2 blank CD-Rs), there was little incentive to use alternatives just because they were free (as in speech). By making it harder to obtain and install Windows and Office illegally without risking a visit from the police, people may begin to see the advantages of Open Source.
Furthermore, the sinking prices of computer hardware make it increasingly hard for Microsoft to justify their outrageous prices - it's hard to compete with the price of free (as in beer) software. At the very least the competition will get us lower prices and maybe (I'm quite the optimist, you know) better quality from Microsoft.
So, let the BSA raid corporations and fine them to bankruptcy. Let them pursue warez site operators and even individuals who use illegal copies and keygens. Spread the word that using illegal copies may put you into jail. But most importantly, spread the word that there are legal, free alternatives. Along with the corresponding installation CDs filled with Free software, of course.
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
Gooooooogle [ office site:bsa.org ]
Hehe, perhaps they should clean their own site firstSearched pages from bsa.org for office. Results 1 - 10 of about 450. Search took 0.13 seconds.
..
The BSA should be required to compensate any organization the resources it takes to comply with their demands. Wether or not the target organization is or isn't in compliance.
If they suddenly had to start paying the time for IT organization spend counting licenses, or in this case investigating an allegation, they'd be way more careful about picking their targets. They couldn't afford to roll through entire cities telling companies to "audit or die."
With your heart beating heavily, you grab the capsule and head off to the college.
;-)
:)
The library is busy, with both microfiche machines in use. You pace impatiently, waiting for one machine to become free. After the longest five minutes that you can remember, the student at the right hand machine gathers up his papers, pushes the chair back, stands up and leaves.
Quickly, you grab the chair and sit, tense with anticipation of what you might find. Opening the capsule hastily, the film flutters out onto the desk. Carefully, you place the film in the viewer.
Blurry lines come into view. A few seconds play with the controls and you start to see a photograph of a document. It looks like an internal memo for some organisation. At the top of the page, a small logo that look like an eye in an equilateral triangle stares blurrily at you from the screen. Underneath the logo, two succinct sentences explain:
"Le Méridien Heliopolis, Cairo. March 1st, 4pm Main Bar.
"1-555-648-9777"
Why would this need to be on microfiche? What was the eye in the triangle? Why was there a phone number?
You quickly copy the details and, pausing only to see if your activities have attracted attention (they haven't), you grab the film and head to a nearby phone booth. You stare at the phone for a long time before deciding to call the number. I mean, what harm could it do? A public phone. Whatever the number was, you could call it and hang up if things got weird.
You dial the number. Within one ring, a women answers, addresses you by name, and tells you that your flight will be leaving this evening and that it would be in your interest to be there on time. Oh, and your ticket, passport and expenses can be picked up from the AirEgypt check-in.
"But, hang..." - the phone is already dead. You redial. This time you get a line disconnected tone.
Your shop is trashed, you're no longer the Wicker Man(tm). Curiosity killed the cat but, after the day you've had, you decide you need to follow this through.
The pickup at the airport is smooth, the passport is a perfect fake. "Dr. Kim Brown, Phd". Apparently you are an Australian importer going to check out some sculptures for your company. Wicker to sculptures? You're sure you can make the transition easily enough.
The flight is long and uneventful. You sleep fitfully with omenous dreams. You awake as the screach of tyres on asphalt announces your arrival. You go straight to the hotel and unpack. Still an hour to go.
AT five minutes to four, you enter the bar and buy a large shot of Bourbon to steady your nerves. As you bring down your glass, you see a man sat opposite you smiling.
"Dr. Brown, welcome. Please come with me. I need your help to move some 'rocks'."
You follow the small stranger down several back alleys until the streets open up and you are in a field. With real rocks. Not rocks.
"Help me push this rock", your guide motions.
Both of you push the rock, but it is stuck solid.
"We need some more help. Go to the street and grab five or six people to give us a hand. Tell them I'll pay them 5 pounds each if they'll help."
Ten minutes later I return with six locals, happy to make some easy money. We all push together, but the stone is still solid. My guide thinks for a second.
"We need more help."
He asks each of the locals to run off and grab some others to help.
Suddenly, realisation dawns on you and you run, run for your life. What a fool you have been. You travel halfway around the world under mysterious circumstance, only to find out it's a damn Pyramid Scheme.
Better luck next time, eh?
cLive
ps - if you made it here, well done
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
I reckon their script follows a route over some ;)
:)
ftp-search engine like http://ftpsearch.unit.no
(i know it has moved). Then they might log on and
try to download the file, check if it has a reason-
able size (5kB isn't MS-Office) and then trigger
some stuff. That would be quite elegant, but by
no means an excuse for the stupid matching they
made.
-rw-r-r MSOffice.tif 153.412k - Mary Shellys Office. Historical Document. High Resolution.
I initially had a strange feeling that the BSA
runs a bandwidth eating monster, which would
explain why so many ftp-sites are so slow this
days... but who knows.
Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.
It would have been more of a story if the BSA started trying to find out which company owns OpenOffice, or just blindly pressed on with their accusations... but they didn't.
Don't worry. They still have time, they've got another thing coming when they discover StarOffice and KOffice.
http://www.bsa.org/usa/report/report.php
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Alright, so now that all of Satan's children who are trading the Evil Microsoft Office know that someone is out to get them, I bet they will rename their MS office files to OpenOffice version 2000/XP/whatever. Be careful, next time you download your favourite GPL'd Office suite, it may be the real deal.
Why not sue Microsoft for libel and defamation? According to the letter, the BSA was informed by Microsoft that you had illegal copies of their software on your servers.
Doesn't that constitute libel? Saying untruths about one company to another?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Why does everyone assume the phrase "On behalf of the copyright owners listed above" indicates that the BSA is claiming it is authorized to act in this matter by OpenOffice?
To me, this simply states that they are authorized by Microsoft to look for MS products and take action. I really can't parse it any other way. Now, the fact is, NO copyright owners are listed anywhere in the letter. Both "Microsoft Office" and "OpenOffice" show up above the phrase, so the obvious assumption is that they are operating on behalf of whoever owns "Microsoft Office," not whoever owns "OpenOffice."
That being said, spidering sites and sending out automated threats kinda sucks, but they apologized when their mistake was brought to their attention.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The search string was probably something like "MS.*Office" and it matched the full path:
Tom
Someone needs to make a script to feed that report.php a huge list of urls!
--jeff++
ipv6 is my vpn
After all, you'd hate to end up in a situation where you needed to prove to your hardware that your software was a legitimate, signed copy of a "legitimate" operating system. (where "legitimate" means the same thing it does with SSL certificates: paid off the right people)
Focus instead on having them crack down on people who do the copying, if possible try to have them communicate the message "You can't copy Microsoft's (or Borland's, or Corels's, or whatever) stuff freely". Get the name of the software company in there, and make it clear that it is the nature of the ownership of the software that makes this act illegal.
We don't want to spread the meme that copying software is illegitimate and fundamentally shady; instead, we want to spread the meme that (traditional) commercial software is owned, and that that's why copying it can get you in trouble - we want people to approach buying closed source as similar to renting a car, not buying one. With this meme firmly in place, free software alternatives don't automatically appear legally shady or risky (I've been in places that had explicit IT policies which barred people from installing any "free or shareware" software); however, if people felt at all guilty about giving away copies of free software, that would hurt us.
Above all, we don't want copy-protection schemes mandated in generic computing software.
FYI: You can use @example.com, which is IANA reserved.
I love it when groups like this threaten to audit our software licenses and I can calmly tell them "sorry, we don't permit Microsoft software on these premises. Would you like a copy of OpenOffice?".
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I figure the EFF, with several prominent legal people "on call", might be very interested in this as a possible test case of the legality of the BSA's modus operandi...
Does this strike anyone as a fairly effective terrorist strike against a country? Terrorism doesn't necessarily have to involve killing lots of people...
...I'm assuming, of course, that this isn't already happening today
1. Acquire some paperwork containing the BSA letterhead. Probably not that tough by the sound of it
2. Scan and print some blank letters that would pass casual muster as having been printed by the BSA
3. Print the standard BSA "cease and desist" message and send it to EVERY business in the country
4. Large chunks of the corporate population stop what they're doing to devote time to checking their software compliance. I doubt any business of more than (say) 100 employees running non-free software could verify their software licences are 100% in order without wasting quite a bit of time
5. Productivity goes down, profits go down, people get laid off, country enters recession, etc., etc.
Total cost: a lot of stamps and envelopes
The "country enters recession" scenario is maybe a bit extreme, but I can see how this would hurt a lot of businesses and cost very little (and not involve those expensive pilot training courses)
There have been several comments that the BSA claim to represent the copyright owners is false because OpenOffice.org is not a member of the BSA. I wanted to point out that while it is true that the OpenOffice.org is not a member of the BSA and has probably never asked the BSA to represent them, they also still are not the owners of OpenOffice. Rather, anyone that contributes to OpenOffice is required to sign a Joint Copyright Assignment (JCA) which assigns the Copyright to Sun Microsystems. While this might seems like a simple symatics, you should also take not that the JCA does not require that future version be provided under the GPL or even under the SCSL. I raised this issue over two years ago and was told that the JCA would be changed to assign copyright to OpenOffice when they became a legal entity. Since then nothing has changed. While Sun MicroSystems has had a history of avoiding membership in the BSA, they still may change their minds.
On a side note, Santa Cruz Operations (or formally Caldera Systems) *IS* a member of the BSA and therefore indirectly (or directly) contributing to issuing these false positives with strong threatening legal language against Free Software works. As already pointed out the "apology" was not in regards to the claim of infringement being false but rather the apology was in regards to the fact it did not figure out "which property was infringed." Anotherwords, the SCO sponsered group still claims there is a copyright infringement but no longer that they represent the owner. At the same time, the notifiction clearly shows that the site is distributing the source code, thus complying with the terms of the GPL (one of the two licenses which can be used for distribution of OpenOffice). Anyone that does buy products from SCO may wish to let them know that their membership in the BSA helps contribute to activities of threats of legal action against the distribution of Free Software and probably will have a chilling effect on the adopting of Free Software based products if it continues.
I am changing all my FTP banners to include language that any BSA (or like organization) is disallowed from scanning the archives for purposes of collection of evidence for legal proceedings and that violation of this is evidenced through mail or email indicating any potential legal actions related to "fill-in-the-blank" ...
Any suggestions for wording?
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
It's because MS actually _OWNS_ the word "office" - and the word "word" for that matter. Arrogance!
Well if you will use common words as the name for your program, then you make it far more difficult to have an automated tool searching for people pirating it.
Also, those who are really pirating it will likely start renaming it 0ff1c3 or such.... the idea of substituting numbers for letters first started as a means of hiding warez from sysadmins while keeping it recogniseable for anyone who wants it.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
BSA notices, I generally ignore them, and once even replied with a string of profanity. The licensing agreement by which they claim to have the authority to search your stuff is in fact NON-EXISTENT. The software vendors cannot CEDE control of your click thru agreement with them, or assign rights to a 3rd party without their entering into the agreement as well. Tell them to blow off and call the vendor directly and complain about harrassment. But of course, you'd BETTER be squeaky clean :) There is not much you can do if they go the law enforcement route with a search warrant, but they've at least had to go to a judget, and THEY ASSUME GOOD faith with the police.
Quick, do a checksum of both OpenOffice and MS Word. They must be exactly the same! Finally, I cracked the methodical process witch BSA uses to validate their claims!
...
# md5
Oh wait a minute...
nevermind
No wait I got it again. They use the following algorithm:
1) Does the file have a filename? (yes: goto 2, no: goto 2)
2) send email to everybody claim they are pirates
3)
4) Profit!
In Soviet Russia [Profit] Profits You?
It is quite nice that the BSA rep did apologize, but personally I think they were just covering their ass, not being nice. They routinely use scare tactics (Isn't that all they do anyway? They don't really have the force of the law) and it seems like someone goofed on their end by making a lazy, half-assed script to search for stuff. I just wish they would go mind their own business and stop sticking their noses in everyone elses.
Anybody looking for a good email address to use when signing up for pr0n? Try copyright-europe@bsa.org
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand