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

14 points by jacques_chester ↗ HN
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

10 comments

[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 22.5 ms ] thread
p_trumpet
actually it looks like more than 200 donations so far.... A VERY BIG THANK YOU, folks!!!
aaronrc
" 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...

jacques_chester
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.

p_trumpet
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
aaronrc
It's tough earning contract programming dollars in Hobart so be generous :).
p_trumpet
LOL. yep - pretty quiet here. I earn most of my cash from other states of Australia
mvip
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.