Jimmy's weblog

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) appear to be having a battle to see is capable of generating the worst reputation. Up until now, the RIAA had lead the race by claiming billions in lost revenue due to piracy while at the same time having member associations settling price fixing charges by refunding money or sending useless CDs to libraries. Not to mention suing thousands of potential customers.

Watch out RIAA because the MPAA is trying to get back in the game by sending takedown notices to Linux Australia for illegally hosting copyrighted movies. Only one problem for the MPAA - it seems that the alleged infringements are completely false. The files in question are open source software, not movies, and Linux Australia has every right to be offering them for download.

Linux Australia President Pia Smith told Builder AU that the MPAA had issued the organization a notice of claimed infringement, demanding that the group cease providing access to two copyrighted movies–one called “Grind” and the other “Twisted”–and ordering it to “take appropriate action against the account holder.”

However, the files in question had nothing to do with those movies. The file labeled Twisted is a download of the popular framework written in Python, and Grind refers to a download of Valgrind, a tool for developers to locate memory management.

Linux Australia is investigating whether the notice breaches Section 102 of the Australian Copyright Act. (I’m not a lawyer but I can’t see how this relates to “Infringement by importation for sale or hire” - section 202, “Groundless threats of legal proceedings“, looks much more promising)

While not as malicious as the RIAA’s legal campaign, sending out takedown notices without manually checking the material appears to be either incompetent or just plain reckless.