Update on Trumpet Winsock / Peter Tattam donation drive. Amnesty, 200+ donors.

14 pointsby jacques_chester15 anni fa10 comments

Last week I posted here[1] and at reddit, asking people to donate to Peter Tattam in recognition of his pioneering role in the development of the web. Later I set up a site at thanksfortrumpetwinsock.com.

Peter and I have been sending emails back and forth. I have some news for HN.

1. Peter estimates that more than 100 (correction: 200) donations have been made to his Paypal account.

2. In view of the donations, Peter has decided to issue an amnesty[2] on copyright infringement by individual users, up until the end of 2012.

3. While I contacted two Australian ISPs, on my own initiative, asking them to donate, Peter has asked me to stop doing so as it may complicate existing and future legal matters, or alternatively annoy those ISPs who did pay.

4. However Peter is OK with receiving donations from non-ISPs and non-publishers. If you are working at a web company of any size, from Google right down to a brand-new YC startup, consider getting your company to donate as a thankyou for the economy Peter's work made possible. Such donations are very welcome and I will write it up on the site. My favourite former employer, The Frontier Group, have been first to do so.

You can get in touch with me by email (see my profile) or by visiting the thanksfortrumpetwinsock.com website and leaving a comment.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2282875 [2] http://tattsoft.com/index.php/news/3-latest-news/17-mar-2011.html

5 comments

sagacity15 anni fa

Clickables:

http://thanksfortrumpetwinsock.com/

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2282875

[2] http://tattsoft.com/index.php/news/3-latest-news/17-mar-2011...

jacques_chester15 anni fa

The site is currently getting more visits from Slashdot than HN. I guess nobody likes updates! :D

mvip15 anni fa

While a great cause, I don't think Peter will receive these donations. I'm sure PayPal will find a way to classify Peter as a terrorist/threat/<insert absurd reason> and suspend his account, like they've done with many before him.

p_trumpet15 anni fa

actually it looks like more than 200 donations so far.... A VERY BIG THANK YOU, folks!!!

jacques_chester15 anni fa

Thanks for the generous amnesty.

aaronrc15 anni fa

It's tough earning contract programming dollars in Hobart so be generous :).

p_trumpet15 anni fa

LOL. yep - pretty quiet here. I earn most of my cash from other states of Australia

aaronrc15 anni fa

" it may complicate existing and future legal matters"

Hope that's not going to be one of those "I invented the CD" type legal cases...

p_trumpet15 anni fa

of course not! There is nothing pending or even on the boil. Copyright law is just very tricky to manage. If you don't explicitly state which rights you wish to relinquish you can end up losing rights by default. The complication I was referring to was that I have very few (if any) records of organizations and distributors who correctly licensed the product. Peter T

jacques_chester15 anni fa

Some ISPs owe Peter for distributing full copies without paying him, some do not because they paid at the time.

Those who owe money would not donate because of legal considerations (might look like an admission). Those who paid might be annoyed at being hit up for more money.

My fault entirely, Peter had nothing to do with it.