December 5, 2007

File sharing give University problems

When US Universities and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) formed an alliance to try and stop students from downloading files from illegal sources, it was thought of as being a sensible move, but this alliance has created some problems for the Universities.

The software toolkit provided was supposed to detect and prevent an illegal file share, but the problem that has arisen comes from Ubuntu Linux distribution and this includes the Apache web server, this is regarding copyright law.

Now Ubuntu have been in touch with the MPAA and informed them that they are in violation of the General Public Licence which cause some serious copyright problems down the line, as you would expect the software has now been removed and the Universities are back to square one.

Source [Ars Technica]