WordPress The Latest Tech Company To Come Out Strongly Against SOPA/PIPA

from the welcome-to-the-club dept

As Lamar Smith continues to pretend there's no real opposition to SOPA and PIPA, yet another massive online player has come out forcefully against SOPA -- and urged its users to do the same. WordPress.org has taken a break from its usual "we don't take political positions" position and come out strongly against both bills.

Normally we stay away from from politics here at the official WordPress project — having users from all over the globe that span the political spectrum is evidence that we are doing our job and democratizing publishing, and we don’t want to alienate any of our users no matter how much some of us may disagree with some of them personally. Today, I’m breaking our no-politics rule, because there’s something going on in U.S. politics right now that we need to make sure you know about and understand, because it affects us all.

And if you think WordPress is just some small tech player, you haven't been paying attention. WordPress is huge:

We are not a small group. More than 60 million people use WordPress — it’s said to power about 15% of the web. We can make an impact, and you can be an agent of change. Go to Stop American Censorship for more information and a bunch of ways you can take action quickly, easily, and painlessly. The Senate votes in two weeks, and we need to help at least 41 more senators see reason before then. Please. Make your voice heard.

Yeah, but no one's really against these bills, right SOPA/PIPA supporters? As Jane Wells, who wrote the post about this, notes, she's "freaked the heck out," because this bill threatens some of the fundamental principles of the internet, the same principles that democratized publishing and the independent web.

Every time you click Publish, you are a part of that change, whether you are posting canny political insight or a cat that makes you LOL. How would you feel if the web stopped being so free and independent? I’m concerned freaked right the heck out about the bills that threaten to do this, and as a participant in one of the biggest changes in modern history, you should be, too....

[....]

Some thoughts:

• In the U.S. our legal system maintains that the burden of proof is on the accuser, and that people are innocent until proven guilty. This tenet seems to be on the chopping block when it comes to the web if these bills pass, as companies could shut down sites based on accusation alone.
• Laws are not like lines of PHP; they are not easily reverted if someone wakes up and realizes there is a better way to do things. We should not be so quick to codify something this far-reaching.
• The people writing these laws are not the people writing the independent web, and they are not out to protect it. We have to stand up for it ourselves.

Blogging is a form of activism. You can be an agent of change. Some people will tell you that taking action is useless, that online petitions, phone calls to representatives, and other actions won’t change a single mind, especially one that’s been convinced of something by lobbyist dollars. To those people, I repeat the words of Margaret Mead:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

People are speaking out in droves. Will Congress still ignore them?

Filed Under: pipa, protect ip, sopa
Companies: automattic, wordpress

WordPress Accused Of Copyright Infringement For Its Famed 'Hello Dolly' Sample Plugin

from the wtf dept

If you've ever installed or used the ultra-popular blogging platform software WordPress, you're quite familiar with the Hello Dolly plugin that is part of the default install. If it's enabled, then you get a short lyric from the song in the corner of the admin-only dashboard. It was basically just a fun simple plugin, mostly used to demonstrate the plugin functionality of WordPress. However, as Craig points out, some folks in the WordPress community are pointing out that, technically the plugin may be violating the composer's copyright. It does not appear that the composer, Jerry Herman, cares or has complained about this, but some in the WordPress community worry that every install of this WordPress plugin may technically be infringing -- and they've filed a bug asking WordPress parent corporation Automattic to indemnify users of the plugin and/or explain if the song has been licensed..

The whole thing, of course, is pretty ridiculous, but seeing as we have seen a growing number of copyright complaints over lyrics sites, you could see a potential lawsuit. Of course, it's hard to see how the use of such lyrics in the plugin -- in any way -- cause any harm to the song or the composer. In fact, chances are it has done the exact opposite. But such is the state of copyright laws today that doing something as simple and as fun as creating the Hello Dolly plugin may have made copyright infringers out of millions of bloggers. Of course, there's a pretty strong argument for fair use in this case, but tragically, due to copyright law customs, you can't know if it's really fair use until after there's an actual lawsuit. Hopefully, this is all moot and no one actually sues. But it's a rather sad statement that a plugin famous for this description:

This is not just a plugin, it symbolizes the hope and enthusiasm of an entire generation summed up in two words sung most famously by Louis Armstrong: Hello, Dolly.

might have to be killed of due to copyright fears. Thanks, copyright, for killing off a symbol of hope and enthusiasm of an entire generation.

Filed Under: copyright, hello dolly, jerry herman, lyrics, plugins, wordpress
Companies: automattic, wordpress

WordPress Trademark Transfered From For-Profit Company, To Non-Profit Foundation

from the didn't-see-that-coming dept

We recently wrote about Twitter's smart and open trademark policy, in that it readily and freely licenses its trademark to many companies, with only a few small exceptions. It looks like blog provider WordPress is doing its own interesting trademark move as well. The company recently announced that it has transferred the WordPress trademark away from the company itself and given it to the WordPress Foundation, a non-profit organization charged with promoting access to WordPress and related open source projects. In other words, even if the company's current execs lose control over the company, the trademark itself won't be abused by new owners, since the mark will remain with the foundation. Given how often we see trademark law being abused these days, both of these examples of smart, forward-looking companies taking a much more progressive approach on trademark really is quite refreshing.

Filed Under: non-profit, openness, trademark
Companies: automattic, wordpress

Lawsuit Averted As WordPress and Thesis Settle Differences Over Themes And The GPL

from the family-feud dept

Free (libre) and open source software is one of the best examples of an alternative to restrictive copyright, but even within these communities there can be heated debates about licensing. The WordPress community just witnessed such a debate between the founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, and the developer of a popular premium WordPress theme, Chris Pearson, over whether or not themes are subject to the GPL (WordPress' license). The GPL applies to derivative works of a program—requiring that they, too, must be licensed freely—but Pearson maintained quite publicly that he wasn't subject to it and could use a proprietary license for his theme. This caused tension between him and Mullenweg, until last week, when Pearson gave in and switched to a split GPL license.

Without getting too bogged down in the legal details and community politics, the dispute is of interest for a couple reasons. Although some open source developers believe the GPL is too restrictive, copyright enforcement is approached in a very different way by free software projects than proprietary software companies or the entertainment industry. Mullenweg had sought a legal opinion from the Software Freedom Law Center over a year ago, and they agreed that the PHP part of a WordPress theme (which interfaces directly with WordPress code) is subject to the GPL, while JavaScript and CSS are not. Pearson disagreed, relying on some pretty novel legal arguments, but those were countered by others in the community. Mullenweg began to put more social and business pressure on Pearson, offering to pay for people to move away from Thesis to premium WordPress themes fully available under the GPL, and speaking publicly about how he felt Thesis was hurting the community by violating the license. Things became pretty heated, and the two squared off in a joint interview, failing to reach any visible consensus. It seemed like a lawsuit from Mullenweg would be the only way to resolve things—something he'd been trying to avoid at all costs—but a week later, the legal conflict was averted as Pearson switched to a split GPL license (i.e. PHP is GPL, as required; proprietary license for the rest). It was messy, but very different from the sue-first-ask-questions-later approach of so many copyright holders, and a lot less messy than a lawsuit could have been. The business and social pressure caused some tension in the short-term, for sure, but ultimately led to a resolution without nearly as much pain or division as a lawsuit within the community might have caused.

This kind of disagreement also highlights the fact that free software licenses (like the GPL) and the free culture licenses they've inspired (like some of those offered by Creative Commons) are ultimately hacks on a restrictive copyright system; they're merely tactics to reverse the negative effects of overly restrictive copyright, but not at all the ideal scenario. For example, we've seen concerns over how Creative Commons licenses act as a contractual layer on top of copyright, and non-commercial restrictions can also be a source of tension. Sometimes these disputes help a community to better develop its position on copyright and licensing, but other times, they're a sign that these licenses are still just a hack on a less than ideal system.

It'll be interesting to see how Thesis fares in the long-run with a split licensing approach compared to other premium themes that are 100% GPL. Regardless, it's nice to have a more or less happy ending where the community was able to resolve things without getting the courts involved.

Filed Under: copyright, gpl, themes, thesis, wordpress
Companies: automattic

Lawyers Who Tried To Get Into The Mass 'Pre-Settlement' Game Threaten Wordpress

from the let-me-explain-safe-harbors dept

Lots of attention has been paid to Davenport Lyons and ACS:Law as two UK law firms that have sent out thousands of "pre-settlement" threat letters, demanding payment to avoid a lawsuit over copyright infringement. There was a third firm in the UK that briefly popped up trying to do the same thing: Tilly Bailey & Irvine (TBI). A ton of complaints were filed against TBI and even members of the House of Lords in the UK called them the "new entrants to the hall of infamy." After that, TBI "reluctantly agreed" to stop these kinds of campaigns, due to "the amount of adverse publicity" that came with it. Apparently TBI is a big law firm that's been around for nearly two centuries, and it realized that smearing its name this way probably wasn't a good idea.

However, since then, it's tried pretty much everything possible to pretend that it never did anything. Its latest move is to threaten Wordpress.com for hosting a blog that was critical of TBI. The ACSBore blog has been following the law firms involved in these types of actions and uncovering all sorts of embarrassing stuff at times.

However, in one post, the blogger behind the site put up a "wanted" poster of a TBI lawyer who had been involved in the pre-settlement letter campaign along with a blog post quite critical of the firm. Rather than go after him directly, TBI is using a bit of third party liability trickery, claiming first that using the image of one of its lawyers in a "wanted poster" is copyright infringement, and secondly, that the nature of the wanted poster was defamatory. TBI claimed that Automattic, the company behind Wordpress.com would be liable for defamation.

Of course, Automattic is a US-based company, and it almost certainly would not be liable under either issue. On the defamation claim, it's clearly protected by Section 230. On the copyright claim... well... just a year ago we wrote about an almost identical situation, with some company execs suing a guy who created "Wanted" posters out of their corporate photos. The company claimed copyright infringement, but the court noted it was fair use. Unfortunately, Automattic accepted the complaint as a DMCA takedown and removed the content to avoid liability. Perhaps the ACSBore owner will file a counternotice and get the image put back up.

TBI is also trying to find out the identity of who is behind the ACSBore blog. Wordpress is standing behind its user on that front, though, saying: "We will not, under any circumstance, disclose any contact/personal/private details of our bloggers without a U.S. Court Order, and this has not been presented to us."

For a company that was worried about its reputation, you would think it would learn that trying to intimidate critics is probably going to backfire badly and give you an even worse reputation than whatever it was you did in the first place. If TBI is really worried about bad publicity, it should ignore the critics -- not try to bully them legally into shutting up.

Filed Under: copyright, defamation, dmca, fair use, pre-settlement, safe harbors
Companies: acs:law, automattic, tbi, tilly bailey & irvine, wordpress