This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License (or at your option a greater version of it). The CC-Attribution is almost Public Domain except for a requirement to make an attribution to the original author.
It was written by Shlomi Fish who also holds the copyrights.
Shlomi Fish was born in Israel in 1977, and has lived there most of his life. He is a user, developer, advocate and activist of Open Source Software. His greatest contribution so far in this regard has been Freecell Solver, a Public Domain Library for solving games of Freecell and other types of Solitaire. However, he also initiated several other projects and made important contributions to projects he did not initiate some of them very large scale.
Otherwise, Fish has written several humorous novellas, stories and aphorisms, which he has released online, under the CC-by or CC-by-sa licenses. He also wrote many essays and articles as well as material for presentations which (unless specified otherwise) were released under the CC-by license.
To conclude, if you think that “this guy attacks Intellectual Property so he obviously doesn’t have any significant IP of his own”, then this myth, in his case, cannot be farther from the fact.
Shlomi Fish is a Jew and an Israeli by nationality, an atheist by faith (or lack of it) and a Neo-Tech Objectivist by ideology. As such he is a firm believer in both individual rights and freedoms, and freedom from oppression, as well as a free economy (Laissez-Faire Capitalism) that is free of government intervention. He also does his best efforts to live by the values of honesty, integrity, individualism, independent thought, passion, and rational self-growth.
“Acting against anti-File-Swapping Lawsuits in Israel” was an early attempt to convey this message written by me. It sparked a discussion at the Linux-IL mailing list and a discussion at the Hamakor Discussions mailing list.
Glyn Moody maintains a blog titled opendotdotdot where he talks about Open Source, Open Content, Open Access, and various other Internet paradigms. It is well worth reading and following.
Finally, Wil Wheaton has some interesting insights in a Slashdot interview with him:
I’m no expert, but it seems like the MPAA would get a much bigger return on their investment if they stopped going after college students and went after the factories that turn out legitimate movies by day, and switch over to pirated material at night.
Thanks to the members of the Linux-IL and Hamakor Discussions mailing list for discussing an early incarnation of this article.
Thanks to Talash for referencing the local Israeli file-swapping protection activity.
Thanks to Lawrence Lessig for an excellent related presentation called “Free Culture” and for the Wilco anecdote.