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Plagiarizing a Takedown Notice
ChipMonk writes "Over at hobbyist site OS News, editor-in-chief Thom Holwerda published a highly skeptical opinion of the announcement of Commodore USA's own Amiga line. Within hours, Commodore USA sent a takedown notice to OS News, demanding a retraction of the piece and accusing the site of libel and defamation. What's funny is that the takedown notice was mostly copied, with minor edits, from Chilling Effects, a site dedicated to publicizing attempts at squelching free speech. The formatting, line breaks, obtuse references to 'OCGA,' and even the highlighted search terms were left largely intact."
Wouldn't you want to copy the content of the top search reference for "Takedown Notices"?
Can boilerplate language be "plagiarized"?
That would be home made Kombucha
and not copyright infringement.
I would guess that most takedown notices look pretty much alike.
Might as well save the money that a lawyer would charge to cut and paste this document... because you're probably going to pay that money to your lawyer for something else.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
The correct situation in this, as in all cases, is for the original author to issue a takedown notice. I bet they already have one on hand...
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
God damn it, I hope all this is false... I really want one of those keen Commodores.
Yes, it's slightly amusing given the context but it's certainly not actionable. It's perfectly normal to copy a boilerplate legal notice from some template you found on the Internet and change it around to suit your purposes. Is anybody seriously suggesting that every DMCA takedown notice has to be originally written from scratch?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
They want to chill speech. There is no need to be original when they can just copy it from a site that catalogs the worst oppressors.
Freedom of the Press belongs to those who can afford it.
We had it good for a while, but the powers that be want the old structure back. You'll be able to talk trash on some small, out of the way website, but if it's large and part of the "new media" they'll want it to play by the old rules; meaning, he who has the gold, rules. You don't have to hire lawyers, just cut-and-paste a threat.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
This isn't something that is being invented, or a work being created. Since the boilerplate is not a copyrightable work there's no issue with plagiarism.
Yay!!! Thank you for this story! Whatever your point is or the controversy is supposed to be, all that matters is that I now know that there is movement again on the Commodore/Amiga front. Who knows when I would have learned about any of this otherwise? CommodoreUSA owes you a debt of gratitude for this advertising I'm sure.
Most of what brought me into the computer age was my C64 and later my Amiga. Many today won't have been old enough to remember that computer/software/game stores like Software Etc. in the malls at one point were at least half Amiga software, written by Microsoft even. If that oil barron hadn't bought out Commodore and purposely run it into the ground to bankrupt it Commodore would have shaped the entire computer industry!
Today a computer is a computer, but back then an Amiga was so far ahead of everything else it was amazing! A fully windowed multitasking color OS that was easy to use 10 years before Windows 95. Think about that shit. Even Billy Gates was writing software for it. God, what could have been... And the games for it were amazing, and not just for when they came out.
I'll have to read up on what the new version of the company is up to but good luck to them. Years ago I thought about how Amiga would be the perfect way to reintroduce the concept of a complete computer in a keyboard etc. I'm gratified to see that someone else had the same idea and dream. I hope it succeeds in some way.
From the article:
Unless proven otherwise, I'm assuming for now that Commodore USA is, at best, a hoax, and at worst, a very inept con.
If you're going to claim someone's business is somewhere between a hoax and a con, you'd better have something better than supposition based off a legal settlement and your subjective opinion of the company's website.
It's called libel, and it's not free speech- and the author seems to be assuming they're guilty until proven innocent. He's got no right to complain about being treated the same way.
Please help metamoderate.
Official Code of Georgia Annotated, in case you were wondering.
#DeleteChrome
That depends on country. For example, in Russia by law texts of all legal contracts and notices are out of copyright.
The only exception is contracts which are not yet used, which can be treated as literary works. I.e. if you ask a lawyer to write a contract then it'll be protected by copyright. But once you use this contract in a deal with a customer, this contract falls out of copyright. Your counterparty can freely post it, shamelessly plagiarize it and so on.
Who owns the amiga rights now?
The announcement say people are makeing a case over that as well?
Is that the next step you can use a Takedown Notice for stuff that you don't even have to rights to but just have a clam to the rights?
it is my understanding that you cannot copyright a legal document (in the USA).
The top CGI picture of an Amiga with a CD-ROM, at http://www.commodoreusa.net/products.html, I recognize from an Amiga forum from at least 3 years ago. It was made by a forum user, not any employee of Amiga or related company.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
When I clicked the link to TFA, I thought I recognized some of those pictures...
Sure enough, from back in March: Commodore 64 Primed For a Comeback In June.
Basically, this is a Chinese knockoff company selling PCs built into the keyboard and/or monitor (from modern hardware) with a Commodore logo slapped on.
Commodore must think that they're in England.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Arguably if they are sending down a takedown notice, this is not about getting 'credit ' for authorship. In fact they are not publishing anything when they send a takedown letter, or authorizing anything to be published. So it is questionable that it could be called plagiarism when they aren't even publishing a work.
The letter has a specific utilitarian purpose, and while the sender may be signing a statement to swear in affirmation to what the letter says is true... Signing a legal statement does not in any way imply or guarantee you wrote that statement.
Not only is authorship not implicitly understood when sending a letter like this, it is assumed and known that such letters or contracts are provided by the person or organization's legal team / advisors, and not really a work of authorship by the company sending it .
That is: "cease and decist" letters and "contracts" are factual agreements between two parties, not pieces of art, that the parties to the agreement get any credit for writing; they only get credit (in the case of contract) for having come to the agreement, when both parties sign.
In five minutes worth of googling, I found : Barry's homepage, a page showing he doesn't own the "building" for his world headquarters, two press release articles showing he likely has the licensing rights, wikipedia articles not edited by him saying he owns the company etc, and three engadget pages which showed the guy has been working this deal since 2009. He began selling machines, and after Commodore Gaming said he didn't have the rights back in April he updated his site to indicate that he didn't yet have the rights, and a later article by the same author saying that he finally, maybe, got the rights.
Based on all I found, I'd say it's a safe bet this guy isn't a scam. But based on his homepages, I'd say he spent a bit too much time in the 60s getting stoned and it's affected his mind. He also seems to own a few other companies, which he runs out of his girlfriend's house maybe?
My conclusion is the blogger who got the takedown notice couldn't be bothered to do any research to back up his opinions, and is a jerk just looking for page hits. Barry was rightly indignant, but his knee jerk reaction makes him look like the bad guy here, and I'd say the blogger is in the wrong and owes an apology. although, I'd defend his right to be an ignorant opinionated ass. The takedown notice was stupid, and Barry should have talked to a lawyer first, since he'd have no case anyway. Let's put these two jerks in a wrestling ring and let them fight it out. It might be just as entertaining.