3 Count: Kindle Bricks

Jonathan BaileyApril 15, 2009

2 minutes read

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: Wikipedia community vote on migration to CC BY-SA begins now

First off today, in a move that could change the future of both the free culture movement and Wikipedia, there is a vote underway regarding converting the online encyclopedia from the Free Documentation License, a license that was aimed at instructional documents, to a Creative Commons BY-SA license, its rough equivalent of the CC licenses.

Though the two licenses are founded on most of the same principles, differences in the specific requirements prevent them from being completely compatible. As such, Wikipedia is holding a vote, in which anyone with over 25 edits can participate, The Creative Commons Organization, obviously, supports this initiative.

The move is motivated by two main factors. The first that the CC licenses have become the de facto standard for copyleft licensing by authors on the Web, making full compatibility an issue, and that the Free Documentation License comes with several restrictions, including the the need to distribute the copy of the license with every use.

2: Busted for taking camera to Hannah Montana movie

Next up, a Chicago-area couple was arrested this week for attempting to record the new Hannah Montana movie, apparently as part of a larger-scale DVD piracy operation. Police arrested the couple for balancing a video camera during a showing of the movie and, after a search of their home, found 44,000 CDs and DVDs containing pirated movies.

The couple, however, denies that they were involved with any piracy scheme, saying that the DVDs belonged to the mother of the husband.

Both the husband and the wife have been charged with criminal misuse of a motion-picture facility and the husband also faces charges of unlawful use of a sound-recording device, computer fraud and online sale of stolen property.

3: Returning Product To Amazon Could Brick Your Kindle

Finally today, if you are an Amazon customer and have a Kindle, you may want to be aware that returning too many items to Amazon could result in your account being banned and, if that happens, your Kindle, which is attached to your account, may become a nice paperweight.

The problem stems from the fact that the Kindle is tied to an Amazon account, where all of the purchased books are stored. If the account is banned for returning too many physical goods, it loses access to its electronic data as well.

Though one customer who had this happen to them won on an appeal and had their account and their Kindle restored, it is unnerving to say the least that Amazon could turn the Kindle into a brick.

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.