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UK Government Confiscates Firefox CDs
Alsee writes "The idea that Free Software can be sold has some government officials perplexed. Times Online has the story. A UK Trading Standards officer contacted the Mozilla Foundation to report catching a business selling copies of Firefox. The organization confiscated the CDs with the intent to prosecute said business. When informed that such distribution was authorized, the officer first expressed disbelief that Free Software could be sold then said 'If Mozilla permit the sale of copied versions of its software, it makes it virtually impossible for us, from a practical point of view, to enforce UK anti-piracy legislation'."
As Section 3.5 states: Do not confuse the MPL with the GPL, folks. Well, Mozilla falls under the MPL. I'm not sure any other software falls under this license. For that reason, anyone distributing software that falls under other licenses should be investigated. I'm not sure how people distributing Mozilla legally at a charge prohibits you from arresting people who are distributing copyrighted software which they made their own copies of.
My work here is dung.
"we are too stupid to make a distinction between Free software and commercial software. We can't read nor do we understand licence agreements."
In other words, they can't do their job in a proper way.
My GOD ! They're giving it away ! How can we control this !
... you're going to put us out of our jobs, I mean, who would we prosecute then??!?!"
Someone should take this guy to the bar and explain it to him over a 'free beer'.....
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
A while ago when broadband and CD burners weren't too popular, I tried selling burned Linux CDs on eBay for people with dialup. Within a day or two, they pulled my auctions and said "You can't sell burned CDs of any type on eBay."
The blurb is highly misleading. No CDs were confiscated. Rather, the officer did the right thing: upon uncountering the "suspicious" distributor, he first contacted the copyright owner (the Mozilla Foundation) to ask what gives. In particular, no confiscated CDs had to be returned.
As another poster above points out, the Trading Standards Office should have been able to figure this out by reading the license, but you cannot fault them for going to the people who licensed the software initialy.
"If Mozilla permit the sale of copied versions of its software, it makes it virtually impossible for us, from a practical point of view, to enforce UK anti-piracy legislation, as it is difficult for us to give general advice to businesses over what is/is not permitted."
Here is the crux, Miss, what is/is not permitted regarding software is entirely a function of the license that is agreed to by the involved parties. There is no blanket set of rules - what one party's license prohibits, another party's license may encourage or require. The 'general advice' you should give to businesses is that they need to read and understand the licenses associated with whatever software that they are involved with (something you apparently had difficulty doing yourself)
Litter is British slang for prostitutes.
This is one of the most asinine things I've heard in a long time! Just because one piece of software says that it can be distributed even though it's free does not mean that suddenly anti-piracy legislation is unenforceable!
I don't disagree with you that it's asinine, but you have to understand it from their point of view.
The word is coming down from on high to start policing copyright infringement, because some politicians are getting paid by the RIAA (or the UK equivalent). So government kicks into action to try to police that sort of thing. They encounter somebody burning copies of software and selling those. This is an instant red flag to them. Then they come to find out that not only is it totally legit, but actually encouraged.
In their mind, this makes the main thing they're looking for suddenly not always illegal. They don't know the license on each and every piece of software or other copyrighted material. They are looking to do their job in the easiest way possible. They were thinking somebody selling burned CD's = illegal. They were operating on that assumption. Now they are told that they must actually verify what's on those CD's and the licensing terms.
The "virtually unenforcable" is the giveaway line here. It's still perfectly enforcable, this woman just found out that it's not easy to enforce. They could see two people selling burned CD's, and one of them is legal while the other is not. The actions, on the surface, are identical, now they actually have to do work to determine legality.
It's a simple failure of comprehension of the task that they have been asked to do. They thought it was simple, but it's not, and they're understandably in shock at that fact. Okay, you and me understand copyright, and we knew this from the beginning, but this person clearly didn't. That is the disturbing part, and shows that the message being put forth by the RIAA is taking greater hold. Violating copyright is indeed illegal, but what constitutes that violation is more complex than simply burning CD's and selling (or giving) them to other people. The message they're pushing is that it's always wrong, and that message is getting through.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I'm mostly in agreement with what you say, but I'd just like to clarify that there is a huge difference between licenses like BSD, GPL, etc. (free and open source software licenses) and the typical commercial EULA: the GPL need not be agreed to in order to use the software. At worst, you don't abide by the GPL and are bound by the copyright law of your land. If you do abide by the terms of the GPL, then you are granted permission to do things (probably) forbidden by copyright law such as copying and redistribution. The EULA on the other hand, attempts to force you (legally dubiously) to agree to it as a precondition to using the software. It attempts to impose restrictions over and above those imposed by copyright law. Like you, I find this practice heinous. A pack of lawyers vs. the average Joe who has already bought and paid for the software does not seem a fair negotiation.
Two questions: When copyright expires on a piece of software, am I still bound by the EULA (assume for a moment that the EULA is a valid contract)? I suppose I could read the EULA to search for an expiration... And second, is there any commercially available proprietary software that does not include a EULA (other than the default copyright restrictions)? I think I would buy it just on principle.