UnNews:Apple sued for copyright infringement
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| Apple sued for copyright infringement | 
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1 February 2010
THE INTARWEBS -- In an unprecedented step, Apple is being sued by parody website Funcyclopedia for the use of material protected under Creative Commons licence.
Recently Apple introduced a new magic box thing called iPad which will be released to the general public for consumption in the next few months. Although it is not commercially available, criticism has been levelled against Apple for their use of a term previously coined by Funcyclopedia writers.
"It's not the first time this has happened," said Funcyclopedia administrator, Über user, "We often come up with extremely novel concepts here, being that our tendency is to think outside of the box, and that is the kind of thing marketing people seem to love."
One previous example he went on to site was the extremely popular game Dragon Warrior.
"Our writer of the year, Exaggeration, created this game within the tight confines of our system capabilities, which involved numerous players taking on the persona of warriors and magic users in order to go on mythical quests. This begins to become a popular game for us, and then, out of nowhere Blizzard Entertainment create World of Warcraft - a game where multiple players take on the persona of warriors and magic users and go on mythical quests. I mean it just isn't right!"
Another popular writer, Rosencrantzinpants also had a complaint to make.
"I came up with this idea for a fantastic game where people choose real characters and have realistic adventures. I put my heart and soul into it, and the next thing I know someone comes out with Sims. My critics say that I write the same three things over and over and over again. If you take one of those away, then I'm only left with... less then three!"
But copyright laws only protect concepts that have been patented, so until recently these forms of plagiarism have gone predominantly unchecked. Even when a major soft drink label introduced rawberry flavour to their label, directly taking their marketing from the highly popular viral video powerthirst, the paradoxical masses kept their complaints to themselves.
Über user explains: "These things are extremely hard to fight in court. It's like the ages old question - which came first, the chicken or the egg? I mean, how can you tell when an egg reaches climax?"
However it appears iPad is the proverbial straw to the dromedaries spine. By choosing to name their latest offering after the Funcyclopedia viral video.
"Here there can be no doubt in anyone's mind which was first," said the head of Funcyclopedia's legal department, Xanax Lite, "the only question is does this constitute a breach of copyright under the CC-BY-NC-SA agreement. Given that I still can't quite work out what those letter s all mean, we have a tough battle on our hands."
Apple spokesperson, Aleister Crawley, had the following to say. "We came up with the iPad concept completely in house. There was no theft of intellectual copyright here. After all, how could we have been aware that there was already an existing product known as iPad?"
When asked if they had considered doing a Google search for the name first, Crawley simply responded, "What in hell is a Google?"
Crawley went on to say, "Besides, any potential infringement of copyright is protected under anti-Parody laws. After all, people have been parodying Mickey Mouse for years, and the Disney corporation have been able to do nothing about it."
Independent sources, however, believe that this may just be an effort from the editors of Funcyclopedia to gather publicity. Online magazine www.timelord.org had the following to say. "It used to be a place of joy and wonder, with high quality humour throughout, but now even their most talented and yet modest editor has stooped to the ultimate low by using self-referential humour."
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This article features first-hand journalism by an UnNews correspondent. |