Pot and Kettle
May. 11th, 2005 04:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lovingbothMicrosoft - who have never ever stolen anyone else's ideas honest, no really - are sponsoring a film competition on the subject of intellectual property theft.
Films should be 30-45 seconds long, which is useful, because "You must not use any existing copyright works in your film including music, songs or existing film clips. You must not use any third party trademarks or other third party intellectual property rights in your film."
The entry form includes the absolutely classic clause:
Or.. "you can do what they like with it, even if I object, and/or not give me any credit."
OK, draft one:
Pot and Kettle. Scene One.
Int Office. 1980.
Bill: Oh, if only we had an operating system... We could licence it to I've Been Mismanaged and then to every one else. We'd make billions!
Minion: I know, your Billness, why don't we buy this Quick and Dirty OS which rips off the current most successful microcomputer OS so completely that the quote author unquote doesn't know why all strings to be printed are terminated with a dollar character.
Bill: Dollars, dollars, why do they tempt me so?
Minion: He'd accept just 50,000 of them for all rights.
Bill: It would be wrong in so many ways. We'd probably end up doing all sorts of illegal things to crush the company whose intellectual property we were ripping off to keep our consumer and business-harming monopoly...
... Let's do it!!!
Fade.
Scene two. Int Office. A few years later.
Bill: Oh, if only we had a graphical user interface...
Films should be 30-45 seconds long, which is useful, because "You must not use any existing copyright works in your film including music, songs or existing film clips. You must not use any third party trademarks or other third party intellectual property rights in your film."
The entry form includes the absolutely classic clause:
"I will formally licence on terms acceptable to Microsoft, all intellectual property rights in my film and agree to waive all moral rights in relation to my film if requested to do so."
Or.. "you can do what they like with it, even if I object, and/or not give me any credit."
OK, draft one:
Int Office. 1980.
Bill: Oh, if only we had an operating system... We could licence it to I've Been Mismanaged and then to every one else. We'd make billions!
Minion: I know, your Billness, why don't we buy this Quick and Dirty OS which rips off the current most successful microcomputer OS so completely that the quote author unquote doesn't know why all strings to be printed are terminated with a dollar character.
Bill: Dollars, dollars, why do they tempt me so?
Minion: He'd accept just 50,000 of them for all rights.
Bill: It would be wrong in so many ways. We'd probably end up doing all sorts of illegal things to crush the company whose intellectual property we were ripping off to keep our consumer and business-harming monopoly...
... Let's do it!!!
Fade.
Scene two. Int Office. A few years later.
Bill: Oh, if only we had a graphical user interface...
