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And Finally Business News Legal
RIAA and BPI website code breaks copyright rule
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 4 November 2013
Well, it’s always fun when a pro-copyright body inadvertently infringes someone else’s copyright, and the latest red-faced trade organisations in this regard are record industry groups the RIAA in the US and BPI in the UK.
Last week TorrentFreak noted that the websites of both trade bodies used open source scripts issued under the so called MIT licence, which allows any person or organisation to use, modify or distribute the code, but on the condition that the original copyright notice remains. Both the RIAA and BPI’s web developers had deleted said notice.
In the wider scheme of things it’s a small error, though when you spend half your time chasing infringers and calling for tougher anti-piracy laws you don’t really want to fall foul of the rules. TorrentFreak says that it approached both organisations for comment and, while neither have so far responded with a statement, both quickly rectified the errors on their respective sites.
Which, the trade bodies would probably point out, is quicker than the average website responds to takedown notices when issued by the labels. And the code slip has nothing on the best ‘copyright body infringes copyright’ story of all time.
