Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft To Issue Blanket License To NGOs
itwbennett writes "Following a recent report that Russian police have used software copyright raids to seize computers of activist groups, Microsoft announced it will issue a blanket software license to nonprofit groups and journalist groups outside the US. The new blanket license should remove software piracy as an excuse for 'nefarious actions' by enforcement authorities, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith wrote. The new license 'cuts in one swoop the Gordian knot that otherwise is getting in the way of our desired handling of these legal issues,' he said. 'The law in Russia (and many other countries) requires that one must provide truthful information about the facts in response to a subpoena or other judicial process. With this new software license, we effectively change the factual situation at hand. Now our information will fully exonerate any qualifying [nonprofit], by showing that it has a valid license to our software.'"
Being on the State Department or EU terrorist list is probably going to keep a group for qualifying.
Here is a wiki of who is on whose list
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_designated_terrorist_organizations
Why do Slashdot articles sometimes use such weird terminology? Am I supposed to know what a "blanket software license" is? And a search on the internet has mainly articles with the title "Microsoft to Issue Blanket License" as result.
Which is precisely the reason you're automatically considered a terrorist if you *don't* use it.
If this actually made any moral or political sense, they wouldn't restrict it to NGOs outside the US. But it's just a PR stunt, and clearly labelled as such by the narrowness of the change.