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Chilean anti-piracy law drafted on pirated software

.doc shocker in the houze!

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Chilean lawyer Guillermo Frêne is having a bit of a bad hair day after it was revealed that draft legislation aimed at cutting the internet connections of illegal downloading ne'er-do-wells was presented in .doc format written on pirated software.

The full outrage was exposed here, which shows that the firm of attorneys responsible for the document goes by the rather unusual name of "The houze":

Document properties showing the organisation as The houze!

According to the exposé, "many modified (and illegal) copies of Microsoft Office are identified as belonging to 'The houze!'", and that the program forms part of a "Windows Unattended Edition".

Frêne, meanwhile, has responded (in Spanish, natch) that he was "never involved in drafting the said legislation".

He admits he doesn't know how his name came to be on the document, but explains he worked as a parliamenary adviser between 2007-8 and suspects it was based on some file from the personal computer he used at that time. ®

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Latest Comments

Word authors

Nobody here seems to understand how a .doc properties work. The author name will be that decided when Word was first used for that profile unless that is particularly changed. However, it is very common for people to make a document, not from a blank template, but from a pre-existing document. This pre-existing document may well have been made from another pre-existing document, which of course could have been written on another machine. Unless you actually access the properties to edit them, the properties of the very first document will continue to show.

A litttle known fact is that if you click 'send to email recipient' the title that shows in the subject of the email is not the title you have given the document but that written in properties. A colleague of mine decided to send a report to the Managing Director, that had been written modifying a document that had been written modifiying a document that had been written modifying a birthday message. The title of the report showed in the email subject line as 'I love you darling!'.

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or...

But this ignores the fact that you can be using a pirated version of some software but still have a license to cover it, making them fully compliant with the law.

Maybe the pirate install was tailored in just the right way and they thought it would save them time instead of recreating it using their legit copy, but their volume licensing scheme has a valid CAL to cover that copy?

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History repeating?

Remember when the BSA's details were found in the draft Software Patents Directive?

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