MPAA Violates Another Software License

Patrick Robib, a blogger who wrote his own blogging engine called Forest Blog recently noticed that none other than the MPAA was using his work, and had completely violated his linkware license by removing all links back to the Forest Blog site, not crediting him in any way. The MPAA blog was using the Forest Blog software, but had completely stripped off his name, and links back to his site. He only found about it accidentally when he happened to visit the MPAA site.

Comments

Not the first time

[Ydna]

This is not the first time the MPAA has been caught pirating the copyrighted works of others. They got caught making and distributing copies of This Film Is Not Yet Rated without permission (and after they claimed they did not make any copies).

Re:Not the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why your post is modded as "informative," because you haven't provided any information about the incident to which you are referring. Maybe if I post that the MPAA were caught red-handed drowning kittens and leaving the toilet seat up I can be modded "informative" too?

Re:Not the first time

[great throwdini]

I don't know why your post is modded as "informative," because you haven't provided any information about the incident to which you are referring.

Should you happen to rent or buy This Film Is Not Yet Rated the "incident" discussed in-thread is detailed during the audio commentary (by the film's director and producer) and again within a deleted scene (the phone call from an MPAA lawyer that informed the director of unauthorized copying was filmed, though the MPAA's half of the conversation was not directly recorded).

In a nutshell, the director had submitted the film to the MPAA for ratings review and was told that no one other than the raters would view the tape provided. He was also told that no copies would be made of the supplied materials. It came to pass that members of the MPAA admitted to not only screening the film for several non-raters but also to making at least one complete (and unauthorized) copy of the supplied tape.

Wikipedia covers this same ground though that summary is about as lacking as mine in terms of substantive references.

Here's the MPAA response:

[All_One_Mind]

From the next blog post on the authors site:

Well, I must say I'm surprised;to after getting no response to my previous emails to the MPAA about their use of Forest Blog at the tail end of last year I got a result within five hours this time, unless they were just replying to the original email?

Anyway, thanks to Paul Egge and Richard Kroon the situation has now been resolved and they've removed Forest Blog from their web server.

Re:Here's the MPAA response:

[devilspgd]

From the blog's update...

Here's a section of the email I received from Richard who I think is the Director of Application Development ast the MPAA:

The material has been removed from our Web server.

        * No Web links were ever provided to the blog.
        * The blog was never assigned a domain name.
        * The blog was never advertised to the public in any way.
        * The material on the server was a proof of concept awaiting approval to move into production.
        * The blog was only ever used for testing purposes.
        * Should we have decided to make the move to production, then we would have paid the 25 Pounds that would have authorized us to run a version of the blog without the logos and links.

Okay, great -- So the question is, how did Patrick become aware of it? If it wasn't linked, assigned a domain name, advertised to the public, and only for testing, why was *anyone* aware of it?

Re:Here's the MPAA response:

[Anonymous Coward]

If you feel like reading the article...
>> Way back in October last year whilst going through the website referals list for another of my sites I stumbled across

He got it from his server logs.
I'd guess someone working on it viewed it prior to removing all the link backs.

Re:Well, not anymore...

[MaverickUW]

Good thing you know how to use the currency converter.

I mean, come on. 150 pounds is not $97. 97 pounds is $150.

Besides, he could go after full penalties now, which is significantly more than 150 pounds. Sure, it's nothing to the MPAA, but still, it doesn't look good that they do so much to enforce IP then they lose in court for similar violations

Re:so what ? - his theoretical loss is only 25 pou

[freedom_india]

You are wrong. Here's why and also how a Good Lawyer can sue and win atleast 1.2 million dollars from MPAA.

First, the fact that MPAA violated his license. According to the DMCA under section 1204 penalties range up to a $500000 fine...

Next, each visitor to MPAA pages could have been a POTENTIAl licensee of the software. This POTENTIAL was lost by the author since no link backs were provided. Assuming a good lawyer subpoenas' MPAA website administrator and gets a total of number of visitors to the page(s) from date of violation till date of verdict, takes a very conservative estimate that atleast 50% of the people visited could have licensed the software, (same calculations that MPAA uses to send take-down notices and suits for damages), the author can easily claim atleast $1.2 million.

Now, once the case goes to court, by that time it has been proven MPAA had violated his copyright. The judge would have no qualms declaring MPAA guility under DMCA. The second play is for more damages outside the $5000000 fine.

If only 1,000 visitors visited the site since the day of violation the fine would stand reduced, however i bet it is more.

A more serious lawyer can pursue it even further and argue that since the MPAA in its role as a guardian of digital copyrights has ITSELF violated the DMCA (thus a case of fence eating the flock), it must be criminally tried and asked to pay a more amount as fine to the poor author.

One sympathetic judge is enough to screw MPAA in this case.
I would say, first get a GOOD lawyer.

Re:Well, not anymore...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he meant "on many an occasion" or "many a time". What you said was nonsensical.

True, but not exactly true - follow up needed

[Em Ellel]

After doing some similar research, I came to the conclusion it is either a clever marketing ploy by blog author, or more likely some hidden prototype site their web development team was using and as it was never linked from main page, it was never found by any spiders (yet referrers to authors site showed up in his logs, which is exactly how he found out about it), Turns out the latter is the case

-Em

Re:Maybe they should be investigated som more

[Chiaro Meratilo]

If you see his latest post, here, you'd see the MPAA's response.

Re:Maybe they should be investigated som more

[Patrick Robin]

I'm the creator of Forets Blog and, obviously, the author of this article so its only right that I respond to your queries.

1) The screenshots show as much detail as possible, I can/could only view the output of my system and not the source.
2/3) I came across the blog through my website referals when they accessed the RSS feed from my site. The site was live and online but I'm unsure whether it was ever linked to or if it was spidered by google, but it was on a live web server that was accessable by any member of the public. It has been removed from their web server since the article was written after some dialogue between myself and the MPAA.

I have been in communication with Paul Egge and Richard Kroon (Director of Application Development) at the MPAA and have copies of all of the emails that were sent.

Re:Maybe they should be investigated som more

[Patrick Robin]

I think you are getting slightly confused, the calendar isn't there to access archive posts but to view events that the blog owner has entered in to the system and the calendar operates independantly of which ever page is being browsed. When you are viewing the events for a given date, such as you have linked to, the calendar will change to show that month. If you are just browsing the site it will show the current month/year by default. If you look at my update on the site (http://www.patrickrobin.co.uk/default.asp?Display =5) you will see why the MPAA blog is no longer visible.

Re:It was found, how?

[Em Ellel]

If as the MPAA says there were never any Web links to the blog, then how did the author of the software stumble upon it? No Web links equals no search engine listings equals effective invisibility to the outside world. The MPAA claim on this point is pretty easily verifiable via Google and Wayback machine. The way the author found out is via referrer logs on his own server, I guess the software had some hardcoded links. This is explained in the article BTW.

-Em

Re:How hard is it to check the license?

[mstahl]

There's nothing in the definition that declares that the owner no longer has the object.

Yes, there is. The very definition of theft requires there to be intent to deny someone of their property. From the Oxford American Dictionary:

Steal take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it