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Copyright’s War on Time Itself!

From The Register: Chaos feared after Unix time-zone database is nuked: Developer sued for copyright infringement:

The internet’s authoritative source for time-zone data has been shut down after the volunteer programmer who maintained it was sued for copyright infringement by a maker of astrology software.

David Olson, custodian of the Time Zone and Daylight Saving Time Database, said on Thursday he was retiring the FTP server he’s long maintained. Also known as the Olson database, it’s the official reference Unix machines use to set clocks to local time and is used
by countless websites and applications to reconcile time differences across the world.

(h/t Joris De Donder)

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  • Ken November 19, 2011, 1:57 am

    It would be sweet if members of the Anonymous group, in defense of their Linux based systems, decided to pay a little attention to Astrolabe and their lawyers.