On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 2:44 PM, Alain Williams addw@phcomp.co.uk wrote:
On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 02:22:42PM +0000, Phil Hands wrote:
Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton lkcl@lkcl.net writes: ...
as it stands the early release of the binary (with the re-wrapped functions) looks remarkably similar to the illegal attempt made by some criminals in 1996 to pass off the entire samba source code as their own Copyright Work (sale price $USD 50,000).
The wrapper approach sounds like it might not be that different from VMware's attempt to insulate themselves from the GPL, for which they're currently going to court in Hamburg:
Does that mean that we can add http://www.vmware.com/ to the list of web sites that are to be blocked by the major ISPs as part of the UK push to deal with copyright issues ?
i don't see why not!
Is there any reason that this cannot be done now, ie before the trial since, as far as I am aware, many of the sites being blocked have not been taken to court and 'proof' is on the assertions on the copyright holders.
This is not an entirely frivolous point. Many companies get away with GPL infringement because the FLOSS authors do not have the legal muscle to take them to court. Having their web sites 'banned' by assertion would be very interesting.
oo now that's *very* interesting. esp. if presented by the SFLC or FSFE on behalf of clients, it's a standard "copyright theft" issue so should be just as easy a case to make as any "music or video" theft.
l.