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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.!
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.
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...
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 :)
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
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
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 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 :)
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
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."
- "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."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?
Well, they made a mistake, fine, that's forgivable. The thing here is that the BSA's first email here stated:
"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."
Note the second part, where they claim to be acting on behalf of the copyright holder, under penalty of perjury. It's a step that they apologized, at least, but by their own statement, are liable to a lawsuit for perjury here.
This has been a test. Had this been a real emergency, we would have fled in terror and you would not have been informed.
.../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 $HOME.
Alternatively, one could say, "The Business Software Alliance (BSA) declares that OpenOffice is identical to Microsoft Office." Wow! That's how to sell software!
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
Micro$oft!
Been here long?
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
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?
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!
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.
This is more like, you run a shop and sell wicker baskets you created, so your door is always open (anonymous FTP access in this case). Someone walks in, masquerading as someone else (guest@nobody.com for the password field). A day later, you get a letter saying you copied a design of theirs; you contest, they agree.
The thing of note here is the time that it took to respond to this letter, if nothing else, the BSA should at least be billed with that, nonwithstanding the original letter's claim that under penalty of perjury the BSA was acting on behalf of the copyright holder (which they were not).
This has been a test. Had this been a real emergency, we would have fled in terror and you would not have been informed.
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 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.
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.
Yes, and now that there's a huge user base that depends on Office, the time is ripe to go after them for everything they've got.
MS no longer needs to build market share for Office... it's pretty much the standard. Now that businesses around the country have a $300 dollar per seat (or whatever) crack habbit that they can't (or won't) shake, the dealer's not allowing any more free samples. He's gonna hire enforcers to be sure he's paid for every last vial.
I take drugs seriously.
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!
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.
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.
They couldn't have.
If memory serves me correctly, and it has been known to fail me at times, one of the requirements under the DMCA is that an expedited "takedown" notice has to be stipulated "under penalty of perjury" to be valid.
Arguably, this was to prevent people from making stuff up to get other people's sites taken down. Otherwise I could send a letter to your ISP claiming that your site infringed on a copyright that I or someone who employed me held. The ISP would immediately take your site offline, doesn't want to loose its "safe harbor" immunity. By the time you contested it, your site would have been off line for a day or longer. This way, if you do send out a "take down" notice that you haven't checked and made sure that it did indeed contain infringing materials, you could be punished.
I think that the BSA should be taken to court. If they can have a program automatically generate notices to hundreds or thousands of sites automatically, whether or not they are actually infringing, it makes a mockery of swearing to something under "penalty of perjury".
Scripts shouldn't be allowed to threaten legal action. The DMCA is bad enough as it is. If someone doesn't put a stop to this soon, a large swath of the net could be censored by bogus "take down" letters. Saying "Opps, so sorry 'bout that" when some one calls you on your lie isn't good enough. What about all of the other sites that may have or will get taken down because of things like this that weren't caught?
Just my $0.02 (Canadian, before taxes)
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).
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?
No, it's more like this:
After college you use a small inheritance to open up a wicker basket shop. What's wrong with that? Just because you're a man doesn't mean you can't sell wicker bastkets! It has NOTHING to do with your sexuality. Anyway, one day an odd man walks into your shop, picks up a basket, and starts screaming "You haff stolen mein design! Look at zis basket!"
Quickly you rush over to get him to stop screaming. He looks at you oddly for a second, then mutters "my mistake" and shoves the basket into your hands and stumbles out. As you start to put the basket back on the shelf, you notice a strange capsule on the bottom. "Odd." you think.
Since it's your lunch hour the next time the shop is empty you put up your closed sign and sit back in your office. Examining the small capsule you realize that you can open it. When you do so a small piece of translucent plastic pops out. "Wait a minute," you think, "that almost looks like microfilm..." This has turned into a strange day. You put the plastic back in the capsule and hide it in the office safe, behind the picture of dogs playing poker. All through the rest of the day you puzzle over the odd events. Finally, you close up shop and leave; since tomorrow is Saturday, you open up late. Maybe you can head over to your alma mater, the local community college where you studied Wicker Science and use one of their microfiche machines to see if that strange strip of plastic really is microfilm.
As you stop by your office early Saturday morning you sense something is wrong. Quickly entering your office you're horrified to find that the place is trashed; papers are strewn about, furniture has been moved, and figurines from your porcelain kitten collection have been thrown to the ground, and now lay in shards. Breathlessly you check your safe; apparently they didn't check the painting, and the capsule is still there. You feel a cold ball of fear settle in your stomach; what the hell is going on?
If you've read this far you'll find it's not really an analogy, but I wanted to write a little story featuring a wicker shop. Maybe next time a post on slashdot mentions a wicker basket shop I'll write part II of the story.
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)
You missed the part where you actually get inside one of the baskets and hear a voice, "It is dark here. You may be eaten by a grue." :)
I do not have a signature
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."
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.
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....
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.
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).
That's a great idea. Maybe someone should get in contact with the folks from the TV show "This old house" and get them to take a bunch of photos of windows that are used from their shows. They have a lot of windows that are shipped directly from the manufacturers and sometimes I am sure some have to get shipped back. Put these images on a CD and make it into an ISO. Call it: Windows2003-TOH-RTM.iso. I'm sure the BSA will get a great kick out of it. (TOH in the file name is for This Old House.)
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.
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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.
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Touchy aren't we?
Engineering and the Ultimate
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!
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...
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
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
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.
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.