Back to Copyright. Why? Because a member of the now defunct Balanced Copyright for Canada Facebook Group, who happened to be working for EMI at the time, has asked me to take a post down that quotes him.
Continue reading “Copyright in Canada – Time to Revisit the Subject”
The largest copyright pirates are the large corporations, particularly in the content distribution business. Yes, those companies who scream the loudest that their customers are ‘pirating’ movies, songs, books, etc. In this series, we are going to look at cases where these companies have engaged in large scale copyright infringement, or in other ways have been ripping off artists.
Continue reading “Corporate Copyright Scofflaws 0012 – Sony Corporation”
On October 31, 2011, I wrote about the Hephaestus Books scam, following a blog post by award-winning writer C. J. Cherryh. Since CJ spotted the problem, a variety of things have happened.
Continue reading “Corporate Copyright Scofflaws 0011a – Hephaestus Books – Follow Up”
The largest copyright pirates are the large corporations, particularly in the content distribution business. Yes, those companies who scream the loudest that their customers are ‘pirating’ movies, songs, books, etc. In this series, we are going to look at cases where these companies have engaged in large scale copyright infringement, or in other ways have been ripping off artists.
Continue reading “Corporate Copyright Scofflaws 0011 – Hephaestus Books”
The largest copyright pirates are the large corporations, particularly in the content distribution business. Yes, those companies who scream the loudest that their customers are ‘pirating’ movies, songs, books, etc. In this series, we are going to look at cases where these companies have engaged in large scale copyright infringement, or in other ways have been ripping off artists. Continue reading “Corporate Copyright Scofflaws 0010 – Claire's Accessories”
The largest copyright pirates are the large corporations, particularly in the content distribution business. Yes, those companies who scream the loudest that their customers are ‘pirating’ movies, songs, books, etc. In this series, we are going to look at cases where these companies have engaged in large scale copyright infringement, or in other ways have been ripping off artists. Continue reading “Corporate Copyright Scofflaws 0009 – Pending List Action Settled”
The largest copyright pirates are the large corporations, particularly in the content distribution business. Yes, those companies who scream the loudest that their customers are ‘pirating’ movies, songs, books, etc. In this series, we are going to look at cases where these companies have engaged in large scale copyright infringement, or in other ways have been ripping off artists.
In all cases I will be working with published information. It is possible that this information may not be up to date, or may not accurately reflect the current status of the situation. If I am supplied documentary evidence which shows a different status, I will publish an update. In cases where a lawsuit ensued, and the settlement was sealed, I will not update the published information, unless I am provided with:
1) A copy of the settlement
2) Permission to publish the settlement
While I realize this may cause problems for one or more of the parties involved, I believe in only publishing things I can reference, so that those who read this have an evidence trail to follow.
Note that the above text will appear in every article, if you’ve read it once, feel free to skip down to the divider.
*****
It seems that it’s always the largest media companies that try to steal from the little guy. In this particular case, the little guy actually had a lawyer, and that apparently panicked the thief in question, since they’ve sued him.
Yes, that’s right. Not only did Agence France-Presse use Daniel Morel’s photographs of the devastation caused by the Haiti earthquake without his permission, it even sued him because his lawyer talked about it.
There’s no doubt that Agence France-Presse used the photographs. There’s no doubt that Daniel Morel took them. Agence France-Presse is claiming that since Daniel used Twitter and Twitpic to market them, that he gave them implicit permission to use the photographs. Gee, that kind of sounds like they’ve been taking copyright lessons from Judith Griggs over at Cooks Source.
To make this even more fun, Lisandro Suero, a resident of the Dominican Republic, claimed ownership of the pictures, and sold them to AFP, Getty Images, and several other places. As of today Newsweek is still crediting Suero incorrectly.
Why AFP won’t just pay Daniel is anyone’s guess. Copyright law states that they haven’t got a leg to stand on, possibly they are hoping to run him out of money.
Regards
Wayne Borean
Friday November 12, 2010
I received a message this morning:
Thanks for the tip. You’re right: Mary Jane Foley’s figures aren’t in the press release she cites, so I’ve removed this line from the table.Harumphy 09:13, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
So the Wikipedia entry now has the right numbers, which is exactly what I expected would happen. Because the other side of research, is passing your findings along to the people who can use them.
Of course I expect that Microsoft would rather that I didn’t…
Regards
Wayne Borean
Monday November 8, 2010
Well, the title doesn’t tell the whole story. You have to actually read the research. And that’s a place where a lot of reporters fall down. Let’s take a look at some examples.
First, the absolutely wonderful Cooks Source Scandal. When Monica Gaudio contacted Cooks Source, who identified herself as Judith Griggs about her article being plagiarized, part of the response was:
We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me… ALWAYS for free!”
Note the bold italic. This part got reported. What didn’t get reported was this written by Nick Mamatas:
Funnier to me is the implication that Griggs thought the obsolete spellings from the recipes Monica quoted were signs that the piece “was in very bad need of editing.”
So there are a lot of people out there, who think that Monica’s article was edited by Cooks Source, and well, it was in a very limited way. But it was generally reported that there had been a rewrite, and there wasn’t.
The Cooks Source saga was admittedly a hard one to track. It started off slow on Wednesday, and snowballed when @neilhimself tweeted it to his 1.5 million followers, including me. But still, if you went back to the sources you saw things like this. I did. Most didn’t.
Second, let’s look at my article Server Operating System Market Share – Lies, Lies, And More Lies. Specifically let’s look at one sentence:
In Q1 2010, Windows Server was installed on 75.3 percent of the servers sold worldwide.
The sentence is very definitive. But the 75.3 percent figure is no where in the IDC Press Release she is supposed to be quoting. In fact the word ‘Microsoft’ appears only once, and the word ‘Windows’ appears three times, in this one section:
Microsoft Windows server demand was positively impacted by the accelerating x86 server market, as hardware revenue increased 33.6% and unit shipments increased 28.3% year over year. Quarterly revenue of $5.1 billion for Windows servers represented 48.9% of overall quarterly factory revenue. This is the highest percentage of server hardware revenue that Windows servers have ever represented.
No where in the IDC Press Release did it mention that Windows was installed on 75.3 percent of servers sold worldwide. So where did Mary Jane get this number? So far, no one knows, probably because it’s the weekend. But others picked up on her numbers without confirming them.
Wikipedia quotes Mary Jane’s numbers as gospel in the OS Market Share/Servers entry. I noticed this when I was doing some research for another article, and since I have a horse in this race so to speak, I didn’t make any changes, instead I left a message on their discussion board:
Server Market Share Figures are Wrong
I did some research on the numbers that Mary Jane Foley printed, and they aren’t right, specifically her numbers do not match the IDC Press Release. I wrote it up on my site, and was looking for information here for another article, and noticed that you are still using her numbers. I’d suggest that someone look into this, since obviously, I’m an interested party, and shouldn’t make the changes myself. Link is here (http://madhatter.ca/2010/11/06/server-operating-system-market-share-lies-lies-and-more-lies/). BTW, good work on the entry, I use Wikipedia as a reference all of the time. I do contribute, but not to the areas I write about. — UrbanTerrorist (talk) 04:54, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
Conclusions? Well, you can’t trust anything you find in any media. You need to do some research yourself, because no matter how careful some of us are, others just repeat whatever they’ve heard, and all too often it’s wrong. Even those of us who try to be accurate make mistakes.
Regards
Wayne Borean
Monday November 8, 2010
PS: It appears that Cooks Source maybe now on their third FaceBook page. Or maybe it’s a fake. Who knows?
I just found out today that Adolf Hitler is the real editor of Cooks Source, and he’s furious that his plagiarism got found out. He’ll probably be even more furious when he realized that this video leaked.
Regards
Wayne Borean
Sunday November 7, 2010
Through the Looking Glass 
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