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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."
Can boilerplate language be "plagiarized"?
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.
Its not a DMCA, and saying "It's perfectly normal" doesn't make it legal. Who owns the copyright on the text which was copied?
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
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.
Well, the accusation of libel and defamation and not copyright infringement.
From the summary: "Chilling Effects, a site dedicated to publicizing attempts at squelching free speech"
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
This is more on the "we don't care about anyone's right to be copied but ours" area of legal that can get them slapped by a judge, hopefully.
Except their complaint has absolutely nothing to do with copyright. Theirs is one of libel and defamation.
The fact that nearly everyone around here instantly assumes that any legal action has to do with copyright says a lot about the level of critical thinking that goes on here.
Copyright violations and plagiarism are not the same thing. One has a narrow (or not so narrow) legal definition while the other is a common word indicating an generally unethical copying of work and presenting it as one's own. So IMO yes it can be plagiarized even if it isn't a legal issue.
Official Code of Georgia Annotated, in case you were wondering.
#DeleteChrome
The "powers that be" in this particular case is some guy in Florida who buys China Ubuntu boxes, slaps a Commodore sticker on them and sells them as Commodore machines. It's not some Fortune 100 company, it's a dude who runs the business out of his furniture warehouse. He hasn't even filed a suit or hired a lawyer, so it's the internet equivalent of "Take that back." I don't think this particular incident is terribly good proof that "He who has the gold makes the rules."
I mean, right now I could paste some legal jargon into this post demanding that you admit your statement was injurious to me, and it wouldn't really indicate anything at all about our legal system.
> Why not? Somebody at some point created it.
Under US copyright law only "creative expression" is protected, not mere "sweat of the brow".
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Hrm. Lately, i've seen a lot more 'creativity' in contracts, EULAs and the such, than I've seen in many other industries.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
What criteria makes you think it is not a copyrightable work?
The person who makes boilerplate text has created:
The person who customizes boilerplate to send a letter has simply changed some blanks in the text, to personalize it, creating a new letter that is a derivative of the boilerplate text
The selection of words used in boilerplate are not dictated by circumstances. Many different choices of words are possible to express essentially the same idea, as with any letter.
So how is the choice of wording for a particular boilerplate letter, not a 'creative expression' ?
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.
On the other hand, your taking the action of pasting "some legal jargon into this post" might be a seen as an indicator that the U.S. legal system has become so seriously flawed that those who wish to abuse it feel no compunction against doing so, while those who take the pasted "legal jargon" seriously may be doing so because they are only too aware that the U.S. legal system has indeed been weaponized.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"