3 Count: Song of the Count
This is daily column on Plagiarism Today where the site brings you three of the days biggest, most important copyright and plagiarism news links. If you want to offer your feedback on the column, use the contact form or just follow me on Twitter at @plagiarismtoday.
1: Redundant staff blow whistle on bosses for pirate software
First off today, it appears that the economic downturn is having a strange side effect as laid off workers are taking the opportunity to report their former employers to the Business Software Alliance both in a bid to exact a little revenge and, perhaps, collect a big reward.
The BSA has reported a sharp rise in the number of tips they have received since the economic downturn, now up 8% over this time last year with about 100 leads per week.
Make that a warning to companies going through layoffs, you’ll want to be up to date on your licenses before you pass out the pink slips.
2: Stealing Music: Is It Wrong Or Isn’t It?
Next up today Michael Arrington offers some commentary about whether or not downloading music is ethically wrong. In the end, Arrington concludes that, since you can stream music for free on some sites and even download it for free in China legally, that downloading over P2P is not ethically wrong.
Whether you agree with his logic or not, it is an interesting look into the mindset of someone who does file share.
3: Authors have lost the plot in Kindle battle
Finally today, Cory Doctorow offers some more thoughts on the Amazon Kindle and the text-to-speech controversy that came with it. Specifically, he sets aside the entire fair use/copyright issue and frames the dispute, quite correctly, as a contract matter between Amazon and the Author’s Guild.
But the point that is really interesting is that, obviously, either the Amazon Kindle came with the ability to disable the text-to-speech feature, which raises some false advertising issues, or users will be forced to downgrade the Kindle. An interesting problem that really seems to have been overlooked.
Suggestions
That’s it for the three count today, we’ll be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.
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Happy April Fools
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