September 2006

And this is how Robert Levin (lilo) of freenode passes. I'm totally speechless, shocked and worrisome. Read it for yourself.

http://freenode.net/news.shtml

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/16/2152243&from=rss

http://www.chatmag.com/news/091606_rob_levin.html

We'll always miss his global notices and brilliant thoughts.

Rest In Peace Rob.

Some few days ago I saw another persian cyber community just like other stuffs we currently have like "cloob", with the name of Sogmad which intends to attract people with it's new features. Read it's Terms & Conditions part, then don't subscribe to it at all. Not subscribing to Sogmad will at least make them change their way of behavior against people.

http://www.sogmad.com/rules.php#register

As you can see in subscription terms section, part VII will obviously lead to ambiguity and accepting such a thing as well as part VIII means you accepted another funny Islamic Republic like rule. (reminds George Orwell's Animals Farm in which The Leader was able to change the main statute)

Now we have to look through another interesting part of this irony-documented Terms & Conditions which is against basic Internet privacy rights and even Copyright laws. It's prohibited to use documents, articles and/or any other materials without licenses and every free material must be licensed under FDL or other similar licenses. Besides, we all know that talking about copyright laws outside of cyber-space of Internet in a country like Iran is a funny joke, so accepting this term implies that you do not believe in licenses and they can use your self-cooked articles, documents and other materials without your permission. (It's important to note that by subscribing to Sogmad you implicitly accepted their Terms & Conditions)

In the end, I have to mention that other parts are ridiculous too, though it's not that strange to see these kind of "TandCs" in a country in which nothing is in it's exact position.

Cheers

Every solution breeds new problems.