Serious breach of copyright -- First post

[David Hoffman]

On 6/19/06, John Baldwin <jhb at freebsd.org> wrote:
>
> On Sunday 18 June 2006 19:49, David Hoffman wrote:
> > * *It appears the page at
> > http://www.houfug.org/help/install_freebsd.htmconstitutes a serious
> > breach of copyright.  The article, which was
> > originally written and posted to the Internet by the owner of the
> account
> > soup at arbornet.org, is falsely attributed to the Houston FUG, whose
> members
> > maliciously removed all reference to its original creator.  On a related
> > note, the FUG seems to be part of an organized group to convince all
> States
> > to adopt English as an official language, a bigoted and misguided
> policy.
> >
> > Plagiarism should not be tolerated.
> >
> > Thanks.
>
> 1) Please go outdoors and ride a bike or something.  You are apparently
>    way, way overstressed.
>
> 2) Using terms like "malicious" without proof (and it appears the claim
>    was completely false based on follow-ups since the user group in
> question
>    added an attribute once they were notified) reduces your credibility
>    immensely.  If anything, if the HouFUG were anywhere as litiguous as
> you
>    they could probably bring a civil suit of libel against you. :)  In
>    general it works better if one calmly works to resolve disputes instead
>    of yelling and screaming and whipping out DMCA notices as the first
>    action.
>
> 3) FreeBSD is not a political association and has no political ties.  This
>    should be rather obvious.  On a general note, if you want to discuss
>    issues, it is generally far more credible and useful to include some
>    content in your argument besides elementary-school style name-calling.
>    You seem to have done this twice in this e-mail for both issues.
>
> 4) You also violated FreeBSD mailing list etiquette by cross-posting to
>    four mailing lists.  FreeBSD-standards@' charter has to do with
>    conformance to computer standards such as POSIX, etc.  Please have the
>    courtesy to make sure the lists you are mailing actually discuss what
>    you think they discuss before posting in the future as most list
> readers
>    have enough relevant e-mail to wade through as it is.
>
> --
> John Baldwin <jhb at FreeBSD.org> <>< http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
> "Power Users Use the Power to Serve" = http://www.FreeBSD.org
>

2) What do you call removing all reference to the author of a copyrighted
work, and then republishing it claiming it as your own?  If not malicious,
that's certainly an act of bad faith.  Moreover, the fact that they added
the notice only AFTER being caught red handed does not suggest they weren't
being malicious when they stole the article in question.

Also, why are you suggesting I'm litigious?  I didn't once make reference to
any lawsuit.

3) While you might want to refer to me as a name-caller, litigious, and
puerile, it's far from clear that FreeBSD doesn't have political ties when
the leaders of FreeBSD groups actively campaign for partially restricting
people's ability to communicate in any language but English.  Even if you
ignored these extracuricular activities, though, you'd still be faced with
the fact that FreeBSD is de jure politicized in favor of many things,
including free software.

4) Discussions of copyright seem appropriate for freebsd-standard, since any
reputable organization that publishes material with computers today makes a
good faith effort to ensure they do not violate any copyright.  It is
therefore a de facto standard.