MPAA cannot tell a movie from free software

Update:
You can read the original takedown notice to Linux Australia here.

Linux Australia has been threatened by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) telling them to take down the copyrighted movies Grind and Twisted from the Linux Australia website according to this report from Builder AU and another report at Ars Technica.

The only problem is, there are no films on the website, just some free software!

Twisted is a Python programming language framework for writing networked applications and Valgrind is a most excellent memory debugging tool.

It looks like the MPAA may have just been doing keyword searching and hit the site with a spam take down notice based simply on this, possibly further misled by the mention of the Linux.Conf.Au 2004 conference DVD of videos of presentations made freely available by Linux Australia.

Linux Australia’s president Pia Smith is quoted as saying

“This seems to be a huge misuse of resources, an infringement upon various global spam laws, an infringement upon our own Copyright Act under Section 102 and needless stress and cost upon small Australian organizations and companies”
and have asked their legal counsel to contact the MPAA with regards to this matter.

Of course, now I’ve mentioned all this here I wonder if I’ll get similarly spammed ?

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