copyright is never lost by non-enforcement

What about estoppel? If a copyright holder knows about some (possibly) infringing activity and does nothing for a while, doesn't that stop the copyright holder from taking this to court at a later date?

BoingBoing is to be thanked for bringing this issue back to public attention. But it isn't a new matter. A December 29, 1997 article in Fortune, "Stop Copying that Mickey or We'll Shoot" (v. 136,#12,page 38) discusses some major rightsholders' cake-strategies.

From the article:

"Some years ago...United Media retained Baker & Hostetler, the giant Cleveland law firm, to launch an undercover operation to crack down on rogue cake decorators. Agents posing as moms and dads visited bakeries and ordered up various delights decorated with United's characters, which include Marmaduke and Charlie Brown. When the illicitly decorated goods were ready, the undercover buyers paid and took them outside, where they snapped photos for evidence, then returned to slap the offending bakery with legal papers. (Whether they then ate the evidence is a question that has been lost to history.)"

Well, really there should be a clear distinction between some poor baker making a Marmaduke likeness and some counterfeiter sitting in Shanghai copying Marmaduke DVD's. The lawyers who sued the poor baker are probably out of work clowns.

I'm reminded of an old story about Microsoft. It appears that Microsoft deliberately made its software easy to copy and distribute illegally.

The technology to protect software and CD's from copying has been available since the early 90's and indeed was and is used by IBM/Sun/Oracle etc. Their products are tough to replicate/copy and therefore totally pointless and useless software. For everyone except the corporates because only they could afford their high prices.

In fact its well known that Oracle and Siebel make pretty crappy products. The only reason they sell is due to their marketing efforts and the general incestuous tendency amongst corporates to buy products from big companies.

Microsoft though thought otherwise and made it easy to reuse/reinstall/copy their products and that is the only reason Windows has became such a "popular" operating system.

now there is the internet. and i really appreciate people like you who take their chance in such an excellent way to give an impression on certain topics. thanks for having me here.

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