First person...

...to hack into Peter Mandelson's home internet connection and download an illegal torrent of Transformers 2 using his account, wins a date with Megan Fox.

Get to it, geek squadron.

Disgraceful

Read this: The FootyTweets “Cease and Desist” Story

Now read this: Wikipedia: Football DataCo

Especially this:

The company has been racked by controversy in the UK media, after a 2004 European Court of Justice ruling that the Premier League and Football League cannot use the European Database Directive to demand payment from media and pools companies for the publication of fixture lists.

Football DataCo refute the ruling, arguing that a legal precedent was set in the UK back in 1959, when the Football League won a landmark copyright victory against Littlewoods, claiming income from the pools company for their use of the fixtures list.

Staunch opponents of Football DataCo argue that the ruling is long out of date, and needs to be brought more inline with the advances in information collection and delivery that we are seeing with the world wide web.

Small, independently owned football fan sites have been the worst hit by Football DataCo, who charge even non-profit making enterprises the standard fee for use of single club fixture data. Many fanzines have been threatened with removal of the fixtures by Football DataCo. The company has also challenged many not-for-profit websites over their use of football club badges on their websites.

Legal precedent from 1959? For internet-based distribution? What a set of tiny-brained idiots.

There have always been genuine football fans who want to support their club through fanzines and websites - it has even been proven that traffic to the clubs' official sites has increased as a direct result of the service from FootyTweets. It would appear that the self-centered mindless fools at Football DataCo (and how that awful US-style company name sticks in the craw) care not a jot for the average fan; blinkered protectionism is their default - and apparently only - setting.

So, in the interests of my fellow Gooners, I am now going to list the remaining 2008/09 Arsenal fixtures, right here, right now:

Saturday, 11 April 2009: Wigan v Arsenal, 15:00
Tuesday, 21 April 2009: Liverpool v Arsenal, 20:00
Sunday, 26 April 2009: Arsenal v Middlesbrough, 13:30
Saturday, 02 May 2009: Portsmouth v Arsenal, 15:00
Saturday, 09 May 2009: Arsenal v Chelsea, 15:00
Saturday, 16 May 2009: Man Utd v Arsenal, 15:00
Sunday, 24 May 2009: Arsenal v Stoke, 16:00

Bring it on...

Smelly Bears Seen Exiting Woods

Following on from this and this, come the (renegade) masters of the bleedin' obvious with this:

Girl Talk Flouts Copyright Law (NYTimes.com)

You. Don't. Say.

However, this line from the wonderfully titled Barry Slotnick (happy days at school, Barry?) I think tilts it inadvertently more towards Greg Gillis (but then again I never did finish that law degree):

“What you can’t do is substitute someone else’s creativity for your own.”

No, that would be stealing. But there is a long history of putting bits and pieces and sounds together and calling it musique concrete, no? So who decides how much is a substantial part and how much is just a relatively insignificant bit of a larger work - that has to be the courts. This could get interesting, if someone really wants to challenge him. It's not just one (highly recognisable) sample looped over and over whilst MC Thingummy does his schtick over the top - this is possibly a new genre.

Of course, if they have any brains left up their noses, they will simply do the sensible thing and clamour like mad to be part of his next compilation - think of the publicity, dudes...

Thoughts?

Movies By Fax

Nice take on the MPAA et al and their pursuit of alleged copyright infringers:

Cory Doctorow: Getting tough on copyright enforcers