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MPAA caught violating GPL
In a bit of hilarious and slightly ironic news, it seems the MPAA has run afoul of their own morals and has been caught violating GPL copyrights. As a result, the MPAA was forced to take down their “University Toolkit”. A developer for the Ubuntu distro, Matthew Garrett, tipped off the MPAA to the violations, but apparently he was largely ignored. Then it got interesting.
From there, the ISP hosting the content was contacted, and they concurred with the violations and removed the software. No response has been heard yet from the MPAA on why they felt justified in violating copyrights when they themselves are in a bloody campaign to end just such practices. The violations were much the same that Asustek was accused of – failure to include source code, without an offer to deliver the code upon request. A rather simple task to achieve, one would think, for an organization of their caliber.
This is not the first time the “University Toolkit” has been a source of controversy. Shortly after it was released, many privacy concerns were heard.
From there, the ISP hosting the content was contacted, and they concurred with the violations and removed the software. No response has been heard yet from the MPAA on why they felt justified in violating copyrights when they themselves are in a bloody campaign to end just such practices. The violations were much the same that Asustek was accused of – failure to include source code, without an offer to deliver the code upon request. A rather simple task to achieve, one would think, for an organization of their caliber.
This is not the first time the “University Toolkit” has been a source of controversy. Shortly after it was released, many privacy concerns were heard.
