Slashdot Mirror
World Intellectual Property Day
Dotnaught writes "The Business Software Alliance wants everyone to know that today is World Intellectual Property Day, 'an initiative to educate young people about how intellectual property rights foster innovation, creativity and economic opportunity.' To mark the occasion, CopyNight, a monthly gathering of people interested in restoring balance in copyright law, is hosting a get-together tonight in various cities throughout the U.S."
By signing up with allofmp3.com. Wish I had done it sooner, it's absolutely fantastic.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
"We must continue our shared public-private efforts to deter piracy and promote intellectual property rights in every corner of the globe. Our children's ability to learn, create and innovate must be protected now and in the decades ahead."
A classic maneuver; stating two unrelated topics in the same paragraph deceiving lay readers into drawing nonexistent conclusions between them. This is especially prevalent with statistics, where correlations between two data sets are often shown (which do exist), but where any actual connection between the two is purely happenstance. For example: "After using product X for 2 weeks Rob's weight dropped 25 pounds." At first glance Rob's use of product X and his weight seem to be related, but their not. The real reason for his weight drop was he stopped having his hourly burrito during that time period.
- Piracy and children have nothing in common, and this man's an asshole for even implying such a connection exists.
My chiropractor found out about the BSA the hard way.
He had 2... count 'em 2, machines in his office, both running Win2k, Microsoft Office, and some accounting and scheduling software. He got a nice little letter from the BSA saying they wanted to do an audit.
He had no idea where his license info was, it's just him and his wife running a 2-exam-room office and he called me in a panic. I had told him about the Ernie Ball Case previously - he was all sorts of freaked out. Short of shelling out hundreds of dollars for new licenses, he was screwed. Granted, Ernie Ball is a larger company that might be able to suck it up, but it could mean financial ruin for a husband & wife operation.
He's now happily running Debian and OpenOffice on both machines. He had been planning on buying an updated version of his accounting/scheduling software regardless, and we found that it runs perfectly under wine.
He won't be hearing from the BSA again any time soon.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.