Uk Trading Standards Catch Company Selling Firefox and confescate all their coppied CDs

[qwijibow 0]

It seems that the UK tranding standards caught a company selling the free and open software Mozilla Firefox on CD.

(somthing that is completely legal provided any changes are made open source)

Then preceeded to confescate all the CD's and inform the Mozilla foundation.

After the ebarrasment of Mozilla ( a 3 person company ) having to give trading standards a lesson on the Law, trading standards official commented that its very hard to enforce anti-piracy, when Mozilla is giving firefox away for free...

Read the article, its quite humerous

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/

my fave part...

street traders taking a few moments off from shouting about the price of bananas to pop into an internet cafe, crack a router and intercept her e-mail.

[Jeigh1405241495 0]

Haha yea I was just reading that article earlier. I loved that line too B)I can sort of see their point though... if you release a free software that people can sell... it would make it insanely hard to keep track of which software is free that stores can sell, which software is free that stores cannot sell, and which software is not free that stores cannot sell without having a legit copy :|Sure it's something they should have known about beforehand, but I can see how this situation would arise.

[twitch 0]

That is hilarious. What is so confusing about allowing people to sell something that was initially free? It isn't like the people selling Firefox are putting there name on it and saying this is our work.

[Houdini 0]

Actually they are selling the CD, the labeling and the shipping, the software is free. Some people have slow and unreliable or perhaps no connection to get the browser in the first place then having the physical media (a cd in this case) is the only way and they should be willing to pay for manufacture (buring a cd) labeling, and shipping the product with a fair amout of profit. Would you make cd and offer them for free to those that want the software and you had 10,000 orders even at a cost to you of only 10 cents per cd for burning labeling and shipping it would cost you $1,000.00 dollars to give it away.

[nightfox1405241487 0]

Actually they are selling the CD, the labeling and the shipping, the software is free. Some people have slow and unreliable or perhaps no connection to get the browser in the first place then having the physical media (a cd in this case) is the only way and they should be willing to pay for manufacture (buring a cd) labeling, and shipping the product with a fair amout of profit. Would you make cd and offer them for free to those that want the software and you had 10,000 orders even at a cost to you of only 10 cents per cd for burning labeling and shipping it would cost you $1,000.00 dollars to give it away.

Yeah, it is just like Linux. Linux distros can be quite huge. DVD versions can be maybe 2 gigs or 6 CDs of 500 MB or larger per CD. If you have a slower connection, you'd really want to buy it versus waiting forever for it to download.

Mostly, paying is only for CD buring, labour and shipping costs. Not the actual software unless you can get CDs for free and label them for free.

[N]F

[twitch 0]

I think the only CDs that have Linux distro on them for free are Ubuntu. They quite happily sent me an order of 20 for nothing.Here in the UK, some discs in magazines do come with the Mozilla Firefox browser with them, for souch cases. I personally downloaded the latest FF and copied it to my memory stick, that way every computer I am allowed access to will be loaded with FF.

[nopaniers 0]

I thought this was hillarious. Some people just have difficulty understanding that not everybody is out there to make as much money as possible...

[Logan Deathbringer 0]

LOL read that artical and found it quite amusing, thanks for posting it I needed a good laugh.Although I must ask, isn't it their job to research such things and keep track of the copy right laws and such. After all, if a government agency can't keep track of what is legal and what isn't, which is their job, how can the common everyday citizen keep track of such things?