Microsoft got distracted
This is old now, but I didn't register it here, so
a) Someone might actually find it here. Yeah, I think you (the readers) are all in my head, but ok;
b) Personal archive.
So... Story at linuxfountadion.org
The details are that Microsoft assembled a package of patents “relating to open source” and put them up for sale to patent trolls. Microsoft thought they were selling them to AST, a group that buys patents, offers licenses to its members, and then resells the patents. AST calls this their “catch and release” policy. Microsoft would certainly have known that the likely buyer when AST resold their patents in a few months would be a patent troll that would use the patents to attack non-member Linux companies. Thus, by selling patents that target Linux, Microsoft could help generate fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Linux, without needing to attack the Linux community directly in their own name.
Microsoft has "changed". That one never gets old...
Red Hat had this to say, emphasis mine:
The Open Invention Network (OIN) learned recently that Microsoft was planning to auction off some of its software patents, which we understand it marketed to trolls and some other non-practicing entities. It also used marketing materials that highlighted offensive uses of the patents against open source software, including a number of the most popular open source packages.
This looked to us like a classic FUD effort. To unleash FUD, you assemble a lot of patents of uncertain value, annotate them with a roadmap for the companies and products to be targeted with the patents, put the lot in the hands of trolls schooled in patent aggression, and then stand back and wait for the FUD to spread with its chilling effect.
[...]
ISO is worth nothing
I don't know why I've waited to post this. For several months, it has been known that Microsoft has bribed several companies, country officials of several nations in order to push their idea of standard through the whole world.
There is an actual open standard on office-type documents (no royalties needed, full specs) that is implemented by at least one program and being implement by several others, which stops everyone from having to use the same software for eternity to access those documents. The moment this started becoming a reality, several countries were going to demand the use of programs that implemented a standard for office documents.
Microsoft got scared. Very scared. Office was treatened, and with it also a lot of the necessity of using Window. So they started lobying and bribing (legally, except as concerns to undue influence of the market, which is a subjective matter even to courts). ISO saw a lot of millions and disregarded their own process, and also got invaded by a ton of countries that stagnate it because they don't care to vote on anything else.
Is Microsoft Hijacking Open Source?
Well, yes, I hate MS. So, here we go again...
From a great article on the Linux Journal:
Following this up, the FFII pointed me to a question in the EU's FAQ on the agreement:
Can open source software developers implement patented interoperability information?
Open source software developers use various “open source” licences to distribute their software. Some of these licences are incompatible with the patent licence offered by Microsoft. It is up to the commercial open source distributors to ensure that their software products do not infringe upon Microsoft’s patents. If they consider that one or more of Microsoft’s patents would apply to their software product, they can either design around these patents, challenge their validity or take a patent licence from Microsoft.
This, of course, was rather different from what Kroes had said. about giving “legal security to programmers who help to develop open source software and confine its patent disputes to commercial software distributors.”
So what is going on?
One issue seems to hinge on the phrase “Open source software developers use various “open source” licences to distribute their software. Some of these licences are incompatible with the patent licence offered by Microsoft.” Perhaps the EU assumed that this is not a problem: provided some open source licences work, so the thinking went, it will always be possible to offer an open source alternative. Of course, what this overlooks are the details: the fact that one of those licences that are “incompatible” with Microsoft's licence is the GNU GPLv3 – which also just happens to be the licence used by Samba, the only project that really cares about Microsoft's protocols.
And it's only real competition... Read up for more.
Jeremy Alison in 2005 about EU vs MS
This is old, so I'm just writing this to document this.
What the EU means by this is they want to see real competitors to Active Directory. Currently if you want to put your Windows clients and server into a "single-sign-on" environment (and let's face it, who wouldn't), your only real choice is Microsoft Active Directory. Why is this ? Well, the main obstacle is that Windows client won't log on in "Domain" mode without it, and Windows servers use information held in Active Directory to make authorization decisions for Windows clients. Enough of the protocols that the Windows clients and servers use to do this are not documented by Microsoft to make creating an inter-operable server a risky business for any commercial entity. Few have tried; Sun, with their "PC-Netlink" product was cut off from access to the Windows 2000 source code when their supplier AT&T abruptly had their contract to port the Windows source code terminated by Microsoft (thus instigating the EU case). Samba, as Free Software, is one of the few successes in this area. Sometimes not depending on a revenue stream is a distinct advantage !
The EU decision was designed to force Microsoft to unravel its undocumented web of protocol interdependence and allow third parties to create true alternative to Active Directory. On paper it looks perfect – all Server-to-server protocols must be documented, even down to the Active Directory replication methods. But Microsoft has learned much from the US Dept. of Justice settlement about sullen compliance with the letter of a court order, whilst subverting the spirit of it. Firstly, how to lock out Free Software ? This is easy to do; just require per-copy royalties on any product created from the specifications. In one simple stroke this eliminates their major competition. Now, how to make this as unattractive as possible to prohibit any commercial entities from making use of this ? Simple, limit the time allowed to use the information released to something rather less than the commercial life of a product, say five years and force any licensee to agree to acknowledge any existing Microsoft patents on the specifications. This has been so successful in the USA that a grand total of fourteen companies have signed up to the Microsoft Communication Protocol Licensing Program (MCPP); a grand success ! For Microsoft that is, not the US Dept. of Justice. None of these licensees dares to take on Active Directory. Few even have any competing products at all.
The one fading hope is that any licensing terms for the released information must be agreed to by the EU legal team. The Samba Team, via the Free Software Foundation Europe, is making our concerns known to them. However afore-mentioned devil is that the judge took the example of the USA MCPP licensing as his model for how Microsoft might be able to structure the European agreement. This is a hole big enough to drive Governor Schwarzenegger's personal fleet of Humvees through, and I fully expect Microsoft to take advantage of it.
It's been a grand ride, and I've learned much about courtroom drama, but in the long run it doesn't look like the EU case will have much effect on the Microsoft monopoly. No, it's still down to "we the people" to create our own Free Software alternatives; but then again, it always was.
I didn't blog about the end result at the time. What was it? A slap in the wrist (600 million $ is nothing to them) and having to supply documentation in a completly closed way that's unusable to their real competition, Samba. Big business wins again. Not even a fine for delaying.
The Dangers Of Microsoft “Standards”
In this new century of information exchange, some people have realized that it would be a nice idea to have a standard format for office documents, which should of course be completely implementable in any program without restrictions. Such is not the opinion of Microsoft. And, again, they claim that it is, but their actions speak otherwise. Let me highlight a few problems that come from a recent story and it's comments.
The New Zealand Open Source Society (NZOSS) has grave concerns about the draft Office Open XML (OOXML) standard currently being 'fast tracked' through the ISO.
"If OOXML goes through as an ISO standard, the IT industry, government and business will encumbered with a 6000-page specification peppered with potential patent liabilities" said NZOSS President Don Christie.
"Patent threats have already been used to spread doubt amongst organisations keen to take advantage of the benefits of open source. No one knows whether such claims have any merit, but it is calculated to deter the development and use of open and alternative toolsets."
"Having your entire organisation's records locked into OOXML documents - with all your eggs in one basket - is not a prospect I would want to face, especially in the public sector, where long-term record retrieval is essential."
Alarm bells are going off in many parts of the world over OOXML. Normally ISO draft standards would be drawn up by a number of stakeholder organisations, involving an often slow process of consensus building and knowledge sharing. Since many aspects of the office document format remain proprietary, OOXML has not taken this
development track.Many people have identified technical flaws and gaps, which are inevitable when a standard of this magnitude is developed in isolation. No standard is perfect, but the more robust process followed to create and maintain the Open Document Format (ODF) - which is already an ISO standard - is likely to deliver a better outcome for all in the long term. The ODF standard went through three years of public standardization before submission to ISO, the same cannot be said of OOXML which has been rushed out at an unprecedented pace.
As for patents, WebMink summarizes the issue:
Despite the claims of Microsoft's representatives, their patent covenant is not the same as Sun's. There are several important differences, as I pointed out at the time:
- Microsoft make their promise contingent on the patents being "essential", at their sole judgement, to the implementation involved. There may be several ways to implement each feature; if you happen to pick the one covered by the patent, you are using one that's not "essential" since you could be implementing one of the alternative ways. You can't know this without extensive research and legal advice.
- They also make it contingent on "conformance", again at their sole discretion. Partial implementations may be at risk, and since open source development is done in public, so may in-progress full implementations.
- Thirdly, despite placing these limitations on their outward grant, they expect all recipients of the grants to refrain from all litigation, not just that bounded by either conformance or essential claims.
Items 1 and 2 are especially important. By reserving unaccountable judgement over what is and is not covered, they prevent implementors having certainty they will not face patent issues. This is exactly the way to chill the enthusiasm of open source developers, for whom certainty over their freedoms is the cornerstone of community. It's exactly the reason I made sure Sun's covenant was not crippled in the same way.
I have now had several reports of Microsoft's representatives claiming their covenant is the same as Sun's; it is not, please make sure anyone who says so is challenged.
There's one more issue of note, which the NZ paper makes clear. Microsoft explicitly uses proprietary formats within their MS-OOXML specification (DrawingML for example). If they want to provide comfort to open source developers, they need to go further and cover all referenced formats with their "promise" as well.
And here's an example of the technical flaws:
See OOXML part 4 par. 3.17.4.1 , p. 2522.
For legacy reasons, an implementation using the 1900 date base system shall treat 1900 as though it was a leap year.
Legacy reasons?? In a new document format standard? Basically they are saying that although the Gregorian calendar says 1900 is NOT a leap year, from now on it should be, otherwise a certain program's spreadsheet data wouldn't be correct anymore because one programmer screwed up getting the dates right in said legacy program, many years ago.
Never mind that the world didn't start in 1900 (dates before either 1900 or 1904 are NOT IMPLEMENTED)
Never mind bothering to implement other calendars (Islamic, Chinese etc.) which might be of interest in large parts of the world.
WHY didn't they just use ISO 8601, like ODF did?
Speaking of ODF, this is what they put in par. 14.7.11 (p. 523) if you don't believe me:
The attribute may have the values gregorian, gengou, ROC, hanja_yoil, hanja, hijri, jewish, buddhist or an arbitrary string value. If this attribute is not specified, the default calendar system is used.
So basically, my gripe with OOXML is not that it's legally unclear, or not open enough, it's that it's clearly not written to be A STANDARD. Think with me pls:
If the OASIS people overlooked an important calendar/date problem, and there is consensus, it can be added in the next version of the standard. All existing ODF documents are safe.
vs.
If the ECMA/Microsoft people decide one day to correct this bogus "1900 should from now on be a leap year" feature, all OOXML text documents that contain dates will have to be checked, and the ones that turn out to have dates from 1900 have to be corrected.
See the difference?
As for other problems, well... I'll just say that the "standard" has such things as "this tag means that spacing will be like in word95" or "this function has the same errors as in excel97" without specifying what the hell the means.
A standard it is not.
Swedish Police says Piratebay should be blocked
The copyright cartel keeps on going... If having a site where people link to whatever they want is legal, just say it's child porn and there goes the protection... By decision of whom? Let's see...
1. Thomas Bodström, who was minister of justice until the election in september 2006, was accused of putting pressure on police and attorneys to act against The Pirate Bay (which is illegal under the Swedish Constitution) after high-ranking employees at his Ministry of Justice had met with representatives for MPAA and the US Department of State. Bodström is now, among other things, the chairman of ECPAT Sweden who together with the IT crime section of the Swedish police compile the list of websites to put in the DNS blacklist discussed in this article. Thomas Bodström is not a fan of The Pirate Bay.
http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=3969&date=20 060602 [thelocal.se]2.An anti-copyright website run by some of the same people as the ones who run The Pirate Bay was placed on this list a few weeks ago because the front page had an animation of a naked kid doing the "Copy Me" dance. There was absolutely nothing pornographic about this animation (see for yourself: http://kopimi.se/ [kopimi.se] ), which the attorney told Stefan Kronqvist, head of the IT crime section of the Swedish police, while they told him to remove the website from the blacklist after the people behind the website had made a formal complaint. They also sent a mail to Kronqvist requesting financial compensation for the time their website had been blocked but received no reply. Rumours say that Stefan Kronqvist is not a fan of The Pirate Bay.
http://swartz.typepad.com/texplorer/2007/07/polise ns-hmnd-m.html [typepad.com]3. The US Chamber of Commerce recently arranged a seminar for pro-copyright lobbyists in Sweden with the title "Sweden - a safe haven for pirates?". In this seminar a guy from a Danish anti-piracy organisation explained how great it was to use child pornography as an argument to establish the principle that information carriers like websites and ISPs must be responsible for the information they distribute. Once that principle was established it could easily be extended to cover things like copyright infringement as well. He higly recommended lobbyists in other countries to use the same technique.
http://forum.piratpartiet.se/Topic79221-15-5.aspx# bm79282 [piratpartiet.se]Most of the links are in Swedish, sorry about that.
When Open Source is Not Open Source
Damn, it's been a while...
Anyway... For those of you who do not know what Open Source is, the basic idea is that you can't be locked out of using a PC, or of your data. Semanticaly, it means that you can look at the code, but the words don't say themselves what the importance of it is. The important bit is that you can change it or ask someone to change it for you in case you need it, but only if who produces that software is following the OSI definition. This is a source of confusion, which is why I much prefer the term Free Software. Obviously, the term free is ambigous: it's not about the price, but about the freedom. But it's harder for a company to lie about it because if they're not giving it away than the other use becomes evident.
Anyway... SugarCRM is "Open Source". SugarCRM is an aplication to manage costumer relationships, just in case you don't know what CRM is. So, you can see the source, but you can't do much to it, though. Here are to posts about it from Slashdot.
Their original SPL was basically a search and replace of "Mozilla" in the MPL, replacing "Mozilla" with "Sugar"
After another group *gasp* dared exercise their rights provided for in the SPL(MPL), they threatened to sue, pissed and moaned, complained because trademarks were removed (Uh, They HAD to remove trademarks for redistribution of a modifief variant to be compliant with your license!)
Since then SugarCRM has NOT been open source; it has been shared source. Here's why:
You cannot derive a new product from SugarCRM; for all practical purposes, the "license" forbids it.
The license allows you to view and modify the source, and extend to it
If you contribute code to the core project, you give all ownership and credits to SugarCRM. OK, fine, I can buy that you give ownership to them, but you should be able to be credited in your code contribution.If you ever subscribe to the Pro/Enterprise version of Sugar, you agree to waive your rights to use the "Open Source" edition ever again, and are "forbidden" to take your Pro/Enterprise database and import the data into the "Open Source" edition.
I hardly consider that to be open source, or to be in the spirit of open source.
If you need a CRM, I highly recommend vTiger over SugarCRM.
I have an installation of SugarCRM "Open Source" on my laptop that I am using for evaluation purposes. I attempted to install a plugin created by a developer, and somehow it modified the code that displays the SugarCRM logo image on every page. All of a sudden, I was completely locked out of the system. I could no longer log in, even to disable the plugin that I had installed. The error message "Please replace the SugarCRM logos" kept popping up every time. So I Googled around a bit and found this article about "Badgeware":
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=867
Apparently this "feature" was added into the code to try and prevent companies like vTiger from doing exactly what the parent poster said - exercise their rights under the "Sugar Public License". You can't even post the word "vTiger" on their forums without it being censored:
http://sugarcrm.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20207
There are lots of companies trying to jump on the open source bandwagon, but not many that actually stick with a "real" open source license like the GPL.
Allofmp3.com
Allofmp3.com was a russian site that sold cheap music. The RIAA insist they were illegal, however...
if the RIAA companies never ceded the right to contract their copyrights to this orginization, will U.S. courts respect the establishment of a foreign orginization given that power by law?
They damn well better!
AllOfMP3.com operates under a statutory license in Russian law.
Pandora.com operates under a statutory license in American law.Russian law says that AllOfMP3.com is licensed to send music by any artist (including American artists) even if the copyright holder explicitly wants to forbid it.
American law says that Pandora.com is licensed to send music by any artist (including Russian artists) even if the copyright holder explicitly wants to forbid it.Russian law says that AllOfMP3.com may send that music in any format they wish, obviously including MP3 format.
American law says that Pandora.com is may send music in any format they wish, obviously including MP3 format. (Note: You can find these MP3 files in your TEMP folder with no file extension.)Russian law says that AllOfMP3.com must pay a government-set royalty rate to ROMS, a collection body that then distributes those payments to copyright holders.
American law says that Pandora.com must pay a government-set royalty rate to CARP, a collection body that then distributes those payments to copyright holders.This Russian law is operating under the exact same legal principals as US law. The RIAA is lying out their ass when they bitch and scream that there is something wrong with sending stuff without permission from the copyright holder.... virtually every country on earth has statutory licensing in their law. RIAA is lying out their ass when they bitch and scream that there is something fundamentally wrong with Russian law.
Oh, by the way.... the statutory licensing fees imposed on AllOfMP3.com by Russian law are about 20 TIMES HIGHER than the licensing fees imposed on Pandora.com by US law.
But here's the really obnoxious part... the RIAA bullshit about AllOfMP3.com being evil Pirates Pirates Pirates because RIAA artists are "not getting paid a dime". It's true that American artists signed with the RIAA are not getting a singe dime out of AllOfMP3.com sales. AllOfMP3.com is paying the royalty fees to ROMS... so why aren't US RIAA signed artists getting paid? Because the RIAA refuses to accept the payments from ROMS. And the RIAA contracts require artists to sign over the copyrights to the RIAA member companies. The RIAA contracts say that only the RIAA companies can accept royalty payments for the work, and that the RIAA companies then pass on the artists share of teh payments to them. The RIAA contracts FORBID the artists to directly go and collect any payments themselves.
So teh RIAA is deliberately screwing over their own artists and is refusing to accept these payments and pass them on to their artists.... because that way they can manufacture this bullshit argument that AllOfMP3.com is evil and illegitimate and illegal and Pirates Pirates Pirates because RIAA-signed artists are not getting paid.
The RIAA's primary tactic is to simply chant the word "Pirate" over and over and over again until they get what they want... even if they have to LIE OUT THEIR ASS and SCREW OVER THEIR OWN ARTISTS in the process.
(Note that I am not yelling at you, I am yelling about the RIAA and at the RIAA.)
A US judge might rule on some of the complicated cross-national issues involved here, but I seriously doubt that any US judge would be stupid enough to rule that AllOfMP3.com was itself illegitmate or that Russian law was itself illegitmate. To do so would be a direct blow against US law operating on the exact same principals and a calamity for US radio stations and thousands of other US businesses operating under US law statutory licenses.
Copyright is bigger than life
I am not against copyright. I'm just for a sensible copyright. The reason we have it is to encourage people to produce and publish art, and all rights supposed to expire in a reasonable amount of time. Someone's estate getting royalties doesn't promote the original author to create more work, I think.
But, what do dead authors think? Lessig (FT is probably Financial Times):
For almost 10 years now, I’ve been waging a war against retrospective term extension. My simple argument has been that copyright is about creative incentives, and you can’t create incentives retrospectively.
I now see I am apparently wrong.
As reported yesterday, there was an ad in the FT listing 4,000 musicians who supported retrospective term extension. If you read the list, you’ll see that at least some of these artists are apparently dead (e.g. Lonnie Donegan, died 4th November 2002; Freddie Garrity, died 20th May 2006). I take it the ability of these dead authors to sign a petition asking for their copyright terms to be extended can only mean that even after death, term extension continues to inspire.
I’m not yet sure how. But I guess I should be a good sport about it, and just confess I was wrong. For if artists can sign petitions after they’ve died, then why can’t they produce new recordings fifty years ago?
The linked post's relevant bit was:
So the day after the Gowers Review issued perhaps the most sensible document about IP produced by a government related entity in the 20th or 21st century — the report, remember, that after a careful review of the evidence, concluded that as a matter of principle, the copyright term of existing works should never be extended — 4,000 artists signed an advertisement in the FT calling for “fair play for musicians” by extending the copyright term for recordings from 50 to 95 years. As CNN reports,
«Without a change in the law, the catalogue of McCartney’s Beatles could be up for grabs from 2012 and 2013, including early hits like “Love Me Do” and “I Want To Hold Your Hand”.»
Oh jeez. Poor Paul, you may think. Robbed in his old age. Except of course, as popculture maven Jon Zittrain reports, and popstar-blinded CNN omits, McCartney doesn’t own his “catalogue” and anyway, the only right at issue is the recording. The underlying composition right will be “McCartney’s” for at least 70 years more.
I'll have to read the report at a later date, though. There's no time!
EDIT: Damn Wordpress doesn't support dual-backquotes 
On Child Porn and Copyright
I love reading KFG on slashdot. Here's a comment on the last story.
Now, as for suing end-users who unknowingly bought a pirated design, well, that's like suing teenagers for buying what they thought were real music CDs from their neighborhood music store or pawn shop.
Traditionally this would not be allowed. Copyrights do not address possession, they are copyrights.
But the law creeps, and one of the more pernicious ways it has found to creep of late is the redefinition of words with well understood legal meaning for the purposes of a single bill:
"For the purposes of this bill when we say "cat" we mean dog and when we say "dog" we mean your sister."
Thus it is now sometimes necesssary to build a glossary just for a single law to be able to read it and understand what it means. Black's is a useless anachronism for these bills.
And you can blame one of the granddaddies of the modern slippery slopes; the "war" on child pornography.
You see, the justification of anti-child pornography laws is the direct harm to children. The harm comes in the production, not in the possession. In the production illegal abusive acts are actually perpetrated against actual children. The mere images actually had an umbra of Constitutional rights about them.
So to arrest and convict a child pornographer you had to actually catch them in the production phase committing an actual illegal act. Doing something proscribed to a child.
But criminals have this nasty habit of hiding their crimes. The bastards. Catching them was difficult. It required investigative police work. We hate doing that, especially in this case where it often required cooperation across international legal frontiers.
So a new law was created to get at them without having to actually get at them directly. Promotion of child pornography was made a crime. This stretched the law a considerable bit, but didn't go so far as to actually break it. Now the word "promotion" has specific legal meaning. Distribution, sales and directly related activities. Ya know, "promotion."
The idea being that by making the business too risky and breaking the profit chain production would be curtailed and we could now go after a broader range of activities much easier to see, since promotion is harder to hide than production, since, well, to promote you have to promote. Become visible to your customers somehow.
Funny thing is, the law didn't work. Oh, sure, a lot of porn store owners were arrested and convicted of promoting child pornography, but production, i.e. actual abusive crimes against actual children, didn't diminish, at least in part because the increased strictures increased the profitabilty (see the war on drugs we're morally opposed to for some reason), thus justifying the increased risks involved. Go figure that strengthing contraban strictures only serves to strengthen the black market. We never saw that coming.
Something "had to be done," and here's what that something was:
They passed an anti child pornography bill that, for the purposes of that bill only, redefined "promotion" to include purchase, because if something is shown to be ineffective the obvious cure is to do it more and harder. This didn't merely break the law, it literally twisted it into unrecongnizability.
But here's the really pernicious step:
Possession was then held to be defacto evidence of "promotion" as defined in the bill. To have it, you must first have recieved it (this is not only a fracture of law, but of logic, but, weeeeeeell, they're just scum, right?)
So now some poor schmuck with a picture of some kid that gives a judge a hard on is "guilty" of the crime of possession, even though possession is not a crime (and with the side effect that often there is no actual primary crime even involved in the matter, an actual criminal act against an actual child. We now simply need to make a moral judgement against an image to convict).
And they got away with it; and a funny thing about law is that if you can do it in one place you can do it anyplace; and any fracture of the law that is used to go after "scum" will, at some later date, define you to be among the "scum" for doing something that has always been considered not only legal, but perhaps completely innocuous.
So along come Disney's lawyers who notice what is going on here (Snow White is a hot, underage chick. So is Pocahontas, notice they changed her age; and cup size? Disney pays attention to child porn laws very carefully) and commission new copyright law that defines both "promotion" and "profit" to include recieving; and thus, as per above, it can be argued that even possession is criminal promotion and/or profitable (if you saved money on the purchase, you profited, see?).
But there's another funny side effect of these laws. Go over the newspaper reports for the last year or three. Pick out all the child porn busts. Please note that virtually all of the busts involve these new, fractured laws. They're busting the "traders" in droves, but the producers have all but disappeared from the prosecutorial framework. It's still just as hard to investigate, arrest and convict them, but some poor schlub living at the Y who downloads a picture is easy to bust, isn't likely to shoot at you when you pick him up, can't afford a lawyer; and your headlines are just as big.
The law now looks at the issue through the wrong end of the telescope, as it is wont to do.
Once upon a time Sam Goody was busted for running a pirate vinyl pressing plant. People who bought pirate copies of LP's from Sam Goody were not considered criminals, they were considered the victims of fraud.
Your granny is still a victim of fraud for simply buying an infringing copy of a program (God forbid she should lend that infringing copy to a friend though, that would be promotion with a profit motive), but times and laws change. Oh boy do they change.
Watch the child pornography/drugs laws very, very carefully. Whatever they are doing there to arrest and convict people who were formerly unprosecutable, will, sooner or later, be used to come after you for tying your shoelaces in a manner that some religious whackjob thinks is a mortal sin.
Think I'm stretching there? Look at what has happened cultureally after 50 years of the war on child pornography. It used to be illegal to fuck a child. In Britain there has recently been an arrest for kissing a child on the cheek and you may be suspected of criminal activity for simply looking at a child. Many places now ban all taking of photographs where children are present, because such photos of children as they appear in public might be child porn.
Get ready for a future where simply listening to an infringing sound recording may well place you under suspicion of crime.
KFG