Law

Campaign highlights move away from traditional beliefs about software piracy as industry now focuses on the legally minded, accidental license infringement

The Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) and long-term industry member V.i. Labs, have launched a campaign aimed at educating software providers about individuals and businesses who unintentionally use software that is not licensed correctly. The campaign dispels long held beliefs that have resonated within the industry for decades – that all pirates are individuals who deliberately copy and use software with no regard to intellectual property. Not so.

Legal systems innovator Zylpha (www.zylpha.com) has added four new software integrations with systems that are frequently used by both legal practices and local authority lawyers. The new integrations, with the company’s widely acclaimed document bundling technology, are for: SharePoint, iManage (formerly Worksite/ Autonomy), local authority solutions from Civica and NetDocs. Further integrations are also being planned for LEAP and an upgrade to the Iken case management connector.

The new additions complement Zylpha’s existing range of successful electronic document bundling connectors. These include: Visualfiles/Solcase from LexisNexis, SOS Connect, TR Envision, Axxia FED, and FileStream.

In today’s digital world, many people have become more worried about the possibility of having government agencies track them. Considering the controversy surrounding the leak of NSA programs that target U.S. citizens, these worries are not without reason. With the explosion of big data technologies, it has become easier than ever for governments to keep track of what their citizens are doing. It’s all in the effort of protection, at least in most circumstances, but it does have the feeling of violating personal privacy.

Cloud computing is a revolutionary phenomenon in the business world, one that has been going on for several years now. As such, it may come as a surprise to some that the questions surrounding data ownership in the cloud remain an ongoing dilemma -- a complicated issue that’s still far from being resolved. It’s one of the biggest reasons many companies are reluctant to embrace the cloud. After all, why risk sending valuable data into the cloud without a guarantee that it will still be yours in the end? While organizations and cloud providers have been struggling to come up with a workable solution to the dilemma, progress has still been made on the issue.

Copyright Criminals, which airs its documentaries on PBS, has an upcoming show on the rise of sampling in hip-hop music. While, the documentary focuses on copyright laws covering music it's not too difficult to apply lessons learned for other content including text found on web sites.

Some of the most intense debates I've seen in the open source community have been discussions covering what is or what isn't required by the popular open source license, the GNU GPL. For example, it is common practice in the open source CMS market to distribute themes that include the templates (the code) under the GPL and the artwork (including CSS) under a different license. Under the GPL, is this practice legal or not?

Last week, I mentioned that the the Drupal SMFforum Integration module was no longer being supported by the module's project leader, "vb". Apparently, Simple Machines had not granted permission to the module developer to distribute code found in the SMF application as required by the Simple Machines License.

Development of the SMFforum Integration module for Drupal is no longer.  Amy Stephen over at OpenSourceCommunity.org pointed out on her blog that the module's project  leader, "vb", pulled the module due to licensing disagreements with SMF LLC.  Amy references vb's original post at the Drupal forum, but she has a lot more to say.  Amy's an active participant in the Joomla! community, a community which had their own issues with a bridge between Joomla! and SMF.

According to vb's post, an email sent by Michael "Oldiesmann" Eshom, Project Manager, Simple Machines LLC stated that:

The problem isn't with the smfforum.module file or the packages distributed on drupal.org. The problem is with the "smf_api_subs.php" file that you're distributing as part of the smf api package - it contains modified versions of several SMF functions, and you did not ask for permission to use this code or distribute it.

It appears that Simple Machines LLC doesn't have so much of a problem with bridging SMF and Drupal as much as they have issues with their own code being used without proper permission.  The Simple Machines License clearly states that "Any Distribution of a Modified Package or derivative requires express written consent from Simple Machines LLC."  No word on whether Simple Machines LLC would endorse the use of their code if permission is asked.

This story from InfoWorld shows that crime doesn't pay.

After a thief stole a printer for making driver's licenses, his call to the manufacturer's tech support line requesting driver software lead to his arrest.

The story then goes on to say that although the thief had stolen the computer connected to the printer, the computer "was locked with a key".  I wonder if that was a key for a physical lock on the case which prevented the computer to boot up or an authentication key card?  The latter, of course, would have been much more difficult to bypass.