UnNews:Galactic Alliance Court of Justice invalidates JPL

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11 Yelona 40 ABY

The content of the Death by Droids Holonet segment, formerly available at hnet://deathbydroids.naboo.ga

COURTHOUSE DISTRICT, CORUSCANT — the Court of Justice, the supreme court of the Galactic Alliance, finally announced the end of the controversial Stallkin v. IPAA affair. As the plaintiff Rilloy Stallkin, having disappeared under unclear circumstances several days earlier (see related UnNews Naboo special coverage), today's trial was resolved in favor of the Intellectual Property Association of the Alliance.

To clarify: the long-lasting series of court battles started when Stallkin, 35, a Human from the infamous Naboo, filed a lawsuit against the IPAA in 35 ABY, accusing it of violating the Jedi Public License, under which the Encyclopedia Galactica operates. Previously, the IPAA had programmed its RIP-X6 information droids with a snapshot of EG content without giving attribution to its contributions; furthermore, the droids were protected with controversial technology by the Droid Rights Movement (which Stallkin had previously called Droid Restrictions Movement, although the term was not officially adopted by Galaxoft, Inc. and its Trusted Partners). This is supposedly prohibited by the license.

The IPAA retaliated with a countersuit, accusing Stallkin and his community-supported FreeDroid project of infringing Galactic Empire patent 6,253,266/2-764.1 "On Certain Restrictions for User Convenience in Commonly-Defined Holonet Space" (link to UnNews Holonet digest for 5 Selona 37 ABY). This countersuit was dismissed by the Theed High Court on the grounds that "Imperial patents are, by definition, as evil as the Empire was" (full story). However, the IPAA soon accused FreeDroid of infringing more of its intellectual property, in particular, the IPAA trademark "IPAA®" and several copyrighted phrases.

Meh Ughm, the IPAA CEO, has been known to critically acclaim the "free information" movement in general, on occasions referring to the JPL as a "bacterial license". "These people take the Jedi ideals and attempt to apply them to programs and Holonet content," he said in a previous UnNews holoconference, "and what may work for guys with green and blue lightsabers who pretend to be able to move stuff with their mindpower, simply doesn't work in real life. The JPL and other so-called 'copydown licenses' isn't just blatant, groundless Jediism taken to an extreme, it's much more sinister — for both the producers and the consumers."

Today, Judge Elbit Purroc of the Court of Justice apparently reinforced the IPAA's position. The UnNews semantic analysis droid, tasked with parsing the legal code, produced the following sentient-readable result from the Court's ruling:

...Basically, whoever wishes to shield others from copyright enforcement simply has no authority to do so. Not only do "share-alike" licenses rise against the very foundation of copyright, by leveraging copyright law in a manner it was never supposed to act, they also prevent valid intellectual property holders from receiving profit from their innovations. Furthermore, the attempt to escape Technical Userland Security Support Experience shows a clear threat to the working principles of the Holonet and, in perspective, undermines the galactic information technologies economy. Therefore, the court stands that any copyright holder must either reserve exclusive rights to copy, modify and redistribute copyrighed content, or transfer it to one of the official community-endorsed intellectual property protection authority associations.

Immediately after the ruling was announced, the IPAA sent an e-mail to FreeDroid and Encyclopedia Galactica, notifying them about the Mandatory Copyright Takeover procedure as defined by Article 87.3 of the Post-Imperial Development Intellectual Property Act. It also attempted to close the Death by Droids anti-DRM Holonet segment, also started by Stallkin and hosted on Naboo, with the help of a security force raid. Theed population answered with riots. UnNews will continue to bring light on the situation as the growing controversy emerges.

Opinions

• "Convertible content development has been, and always will, be a business of large corporations, which have the proper vision of leveraging their assets to deliver solutions the public anticipates. This is not a task for Jolee Bindo and his merry band in the Kashyyyk forest." — Baron de Muth, Public Relationships Management, Galaxoft [1]
• "[...] the [...] IPAA [...] is [...] right [...]" — Luke Skywalker, Grand Master of the Jedi Order
• "In the time of crisis, when our economy still suffers from the consequences of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, we should do our best to shield our customers from any attempts to execute the old 'fear, uncertainty and doubt' trick. So far, those copyright paranoids have been known for their disruptive behaviour, although I suppose it's too far to present any certain points of views or predictions." — Cal Omas, Chief of State
• "Will the press just leave me alone, already?!" — Boba Fett, Mandalore of the Mandalorians