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WURFL Founders Fire Off DMCA Takedown Against Fork
An anonymous reader writes "ScientiaMobile, the company formed behind the open source library WURFL, an API used to do mobile device detection for web applications, has issued a DMCA takedown notice against the OpenDDR project on Github. ScientiaMobile claims that OpenDDR is 'ripping them off' by forking their database, which used to be licensed under a liberal license. Newer versions of the device database are licensed under restrictive licenses which do not allow any modification or redistribution."
Just another example of the blatant abuse that is possible with these laws. SOPA will only make it worse if it passes.
Konami once sued Roxor Games for infringing Konami's patents on Dance Dance Revolution. Why can't Konami just send a takedown notice to OpenDDR for using a confusingly similar trademark?
So it's like this,
When the software is born look look at us, help our community were are open source blah blah blah.
Suddenly the cow fattens , Oh no this is proprietary code blah blah yes open source , but our work business model etc.
Seen this movie a lot of times, sadly
There are far too many disputes in tech these days around formerly-open-source stuff that some bastard decides to co-opt and pretend he owns. This case strikes me as simple, clear-cut, winnable, and potentially precedent-setting. It would be good if the EFF brought its weight to bear on this issue - it could be crucial to the future of FOSS.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
To give ScientiaMobile the benefit of the doubt, it is possible they simply don't know how the licensing system works and don't realize that changing the license later on doesn't restrict uses of earlier versions that had been distributed under GPL. This would make them idiots, however. Presuming, of course, that OpenDDR doesn't use the newer version of the database (which I am assuming they don't and seems to be the idea from skimming TFA.)
The alternative is that they are simply assholes deliberately trying to abuse the system. So they are either idiots or assholes.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
From http://openddr.org/takedown.html, the original file had terms of use as below
Seems clear to me - as long as OpenDDR are making public any changes.
"All the information listed here has been collected by many different people from many different
countries. You are allowed to use WURFL in any of your applications, free or commercial. The only thing required is to make public any
modification to this file, following the original spirit and idea of the creators of this project."
OpenDDR used the last snapshot of WURFL that had very liberal licensing. This snapshot dates from April last year. In July, the wording on the database file became a bit more restrictive, stating it was only for use with the WURFL API, but not in the terms of anything approaching a formal license. The subsequent version was the one that had the legalese restricting modification or redistribution. So the OpenDDR people were actually pretty careful about this.
The sad thing is that most of the WURFL data came from third party contributions. These were probably submitted with a belief that the data would remain available the same way it had always been. The the WURFL developer (essentially one guy) decided to commercialise it. The moral of this would appear to be:
it looks like this person is responsible for the stupidity: https://twitter.com/#!/luca_passani
i've advised openddr to contact the SFLC but this is twitter: can i recommend that people also advise openddr on twitter to contact the SFLC, as well as pressurise the moron who doesn't understand what the DMCA is for.
I used to release works that I made under MIT or artistic - thinking the GPL was too extreme for my tastes.
It is becoming clear to me that businesses _predictably_ try to "proprietize" anything they can - morals are never part of the equation. The only defense you have when writing software for the public (and keep it that way) is the include clear, strong, and pervasive licenses such as the GPL.
The legal framework we live in, at least here stateside, basically demands we protect our works' right to be free and shared in an active fashion. Corporations only have incentives to try and lock down and monopolize anything they can - it makes sense and history continues to repeat itself. Looks like RMS was right; everything I write is GPL from here on out.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
you can't copyright a database (at least in the US).
Citation needed.
Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991). Is this citation in the correct format?
an individual map (and the intentional flaws introduced by the cartographer)
Flaws like so-called "trap streets"? Nester's Map & Guide Corp. v. Hagstrom Map Co., 796 F.Supp. 729, E.D.N.Y., 1992. "To treat 'false' facts interspersed among actual facts and represented as actual facts as fiction would mean that no one could ever reproduce or copy actual facts without risk of reproducing a false fact and thereby violating a copyright. [...] If such were the law, information could never be reproduced or widely disseminated." (Id. at 733)
the ability to copyright your interpretation of the facts, your method of storing them, your dataset, is fairly unlimited.
To what extent does this copyright in the method of storing them survive automated conversion to another method?