The MPAA recieved a DMCA takedown notice
Usually, it is the MPAA issuing DMCA notices but not in this instance.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) recently released a software toolkit designed to help universities detect instances of potentially illegal file-sharing on school networks. The toolkit is based on the increasingly popular Ubuntu Linux distribution and includes the Apache web server as well as custom traffic monitoring software created by the MPAA. Although the toolkit was previously available from a web site set up by the MPAA, the software was removed last night after the organization received a request from Ubuntu technical board member Matthew Garrett to take it down due to GPL violations.
For the uninitiated, the DMCA is the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, a law passed unamiously by the senate and signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1998. From Wikipedia:
It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services that are used to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works (commonly known as DRM) and criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, even when there is no infringement of copyright itself. It also heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet.
Through the sweet irony of the MPAA getting a taste of their own medicene there is 1 disturbing point. The MPAA is having Universities do their police work for them.
December 15th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
December 15th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
What don’t you agree with?