[wilhelmtux-discussion] TR : BSA (Microsoft) screws up, targets OpenOffice distribution

[Claude Almansi]

>From the Politech newsletter....
-----Message d'origine-----
De : owner-politech at politechbot.com
[mailto:owner-politech at politechbot.com] De la part de Declan McCullagh
Envoye : vendredi 28 fevrier 2003 19:19
A : politech at politechbot.com
Cc : copyright-europe at bsa.org
Objet : FC: BSA (Microsoft) screws up, targets OpenOffice distribution


The actual thread:
http://distribution.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?msgId=581265&listNam
e=dev

-Declan

---

Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 09:25:28 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Story on Slashdot regarding the BSA using incorrectly targeted 
blanket threats
From: "Barclay McInnes" <barc at netdud.com>
To: <declan at well.com>

Hi Declan;
      You might find this story of interest:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/28/1317244&mode=thread&tid=
109

Long story short:  The BSA uses an FTP spider that goes around looking
for files with certain keywords in them, and if the site contains files
that make a hit, the file is noted, and a form nastygram gets sent out
to the site's operator(s).  In this case, many of the OpenOffice.org
mirrors are getting the notices because, horror of horrors, they matched
the "office" keyword.  Example from one of their notices:

Filename: /mandrake_current/SRPMS/OpenOffice.org-1.0.1-9mdk. src.rpm The
above computer program(s) is/are being made available for copying,
through downloading, at the above location without authorization from
the copyright owner(s)

Isn't this some kind of actionable harrassment?  They're wasting
everyone's time and money with this type of "enforcement".




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