Yeah, I know. What’s new about that?
MS lawyers jumped all over the administrators of digital.forest demanding that they immediately shut down the MacSlash site because someone posted what appeared to be a valid Longhorn serial number in a comment to a post there. (Story here.) From the logs, the MacSlash guys figured that that comment was accessed exactly once in the eight months it was there. By MSN’s own search bot.
Chuck Goolsbee, head geek at digital.forest, responded to the hounds:
A short lesson in human nature… Try asking nicely. I realize that owners of intellectual property feel the need to enter into discussions with lawyers blazing, but I know from long experience that attack begets defence, whereas courtesy begets respect. If you look at this situation objectively, I’m sure you will realize that the site owners have not acted in any malicious way. The content in question was posted to the bulletin board by some anonymous user. So, rather than using terms like “Demand for Immediate Take-Down” why don’t you try something like “Please remove copyright infringing content”.
You will likely be amazed at how much better it works.
(I’ve always liked that Chuck!)
Of course, Ben from MacSlash edited the serial number out of the comment as soon as he realized it was there. The funny thing is that now that it’s gone from MacSlash, it can still be seen in Google’s cache of the page. I wonder how many people have seen it now.
Even funnier, copy the "super secret" code and search for it in Google.
That is hilarious, dz! And I suppose the hounds are after the ISPs for every one of the 3,560 websites where that serial number is listed.
