GPL Successfully Defended in German Court 210
Philip Bailey writes "The GPL Violations Project, based in Germany, have won (subject to appeal) a court case against D-Link, who had allegedly distributed parts of the Linux kernel in a product in a way which contravened the GPL. D-Link had claimed that the GPL was not 'legally binding' but have now agreed to cease and desist, and refrain from distributing the infringing product, a network attached storage device. Expenses, including legal expenses, were received by the plaintiffs; they did not request any damages, consistent with their policy. They have previously won a number of out of court settlements against other companies. Slashdot has previously mentioned the GPL Violations Project."
Re:Legally binding? (Score:5, Insightful)
GPL vs EULA (Score:3, Insightful)
How arrogant (Score:3, Insightful)
How hypocritical!
reperations (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Legally binding? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is basically just a relief for people who had doubts in the past.
Re:How arrogant (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No distribution of the source? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is the viral nature of GPL. I suspect from now on, D-Link will move over to one of the BSD's, probably FreeBSD. The viral aspect of GPL is what I suspect keeps many companies from going full Linux. At least when you make a deal with the Devil, i.e. Microsoft, and MS allows you to modify one of their Windoze kernels for a hardware device, you have the comfort of knowing that your competitors will not use the GPL to try and get their grubby little fingers on the code that you paid huge sums of money to your developers for free.
Re:How arrogant (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No distribution of the source? (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact the same is valid for the BSD licence. The original copyright holder has to be mentioned in all derived works, and also in the derivations of the derivations. In this case the virality is attached to another aspect, but it is still viral.
Did it ever occur to either you... (Score:5, Insightful)
I myself have a very low opinion of those who think they have a right to copy whatever they want because "information wants to be free". I see such people as manufacturing reasons to justify their own shoddy behavior. OTOH, I have a very high opinion of the GPL(and other open source licenses) and those who defend them.
Just keep that in mind.
Re:Strange.... (Score:4, Insightful)
In this situation, there is absolutely no way for the clueless company to legally sell the executable. Under the GPL, it must supply the source code for everything needed to build the executable. The only options are: 1) violate the GPL and try to get away with it; 2) release the complete source and get sued by the other closed source licensors for violation of the NDA; 3) no longer sell the executable. I wonder which options most companies would go for?
I bet you this happens all the time. Perhaps even in some of our favorite closed source Linux kernel modules. NDAs are the primary reason given by NVidia and ATI for not open sourcing their graphics card drivers. Perhaps there are even several layers of this happening, with companies trying to sell licenses to closed-source modules that include GPLed software.
Re:reperations (Score:2, Insightful)
Damages are about financial loss.
Copyright is about copying; monopoly. What you do with a monopoply is largely up to you; within the limits of law. You may choose to exploit it for financial gain or not. If you do not that does not infringe on the enforcability of your legal monopoly.
The GPL requires a sharing of code. Code is what you can demand in court. Those are the only teeth that the GPL is designed to have. It's about the code, not money.
If you want money for your code, just use another license, but don't use the GPL and expect to hold the code close. The license has been shown to have teeth.
KFG
Re:How arrogant (Score:4, Insightful)
Your "counterpoint" is stupid. Here's the bottom line: anything that increases the user's freedom is good. If copyright infringment (or better yet, DRM circumvention) does that, it's good. If the GPL does that, it's good. Legality is irrelevant.
Re:Legally binding? (Score:4, Insightful)
It should say absolutely nothing, because the GPL only covers distribution (which you don't automatically have a right to do) while most proprietary software licenses try to cover mere use (which you do automatically have a right to do, under the Doctrine of First Sale). Unlike the GPL, EULAs have no real meaning.
Of course, I'm not German so I have no idea if they do things differently than we do in the US.
Re:How arrogant (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Legally binding? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup, it looks like the GPL is now (officially) legally binding in Germany.
No, the GPL is not legal binding in germany. In germany only 2 things are legal binding: laws, and contracts. And this is more or less true also for the rest of the world, except that in some countries court rules "become law" or are similar to law unless in later times other courts do no longer agree in certain situations.
What after all does legal binding in your eyes mean anyway?
This says nothing about the EULAs that come with proprietary software. Those are different licenses with different terms, and would have to be tested individually.
What is an EULA? Something you agree on before you buy a product, that is before you aquire ownership? If so the EULA is completely valid as long as it does not contradict any law.
If you have aquired ownership of the product before the EULA is presented to you, e.g. there is a EULA on a sheet of paper inside of the box, or after opening the box and using the software a EULA dialog pops up, the EULA is completly irrelevant and void.
Back to the topic: as far as I understand the ompany D-Link claimed they simply used the GPLed software and had no contract with the author so the "GPL note" on the software would be not legal binding. Thats of course a bullshit idea of D-Link, especially as this is not the first GPL law suit in germany and in all cases the copyright owners won
angel'o'sphere
Re:GPL vs EULA (Score:3, Insightful)
Here are a few examples:
(1) Who gets to enforce the GPL? I don't know much about the GPL-Violations group, but if they didn't write any of the code then (at least in the US), they wouldn't have standing to enforce the GPL.
(2) While we're at it, what is the ownership status of a work with one original author that has been modified by a half dozen more? What happens when you're only copying the work added and not the original work?
(3) What methods can you use to fence off GPL'd code from your own code? Is it sufficient to make it into a daemon with a socket interface? Are there other methods that also work?
Re:No distribution of the source? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Did it ever occur to either you... (Score:2, Insightful)
Where's the conflict between wanting people to be able to copy, modify, and redistribute what they receive, and supporting the GPL which manages to achieve the trick of achieving that for software in a world of strong copyright? The stronger copyright is made, the stronger the GPL becomes, and the more it can be enforced; conversely, weakening copyright weakens GPL enforcement but equally makes it less necessary. Given the circumstances we find ourselves in, with perpetual copyright and looming digital restrictions, the GPL is very necessary, including version 3 (though it needs to be carefully drafted).
Failing that, abolishing copyright entirely would, IMHO, be better than what we have now. Although I also believe that some relatively simple and sane reforms (described in another post in this thread) would be less disruptive; but if established interests and copyright holders won't allow that then maybe it will have to happen by revolution, with changing technology and easy social networking and filesharing making copyright unenforceable in practice anyway. That would be more disruptive, but maybe it's unavoidable, as organisations often don't react sanely to their business models being swept away by disruptive technological change.
Re:How arrogant (Score:3, Insightful)
Some differences;
- accusations of GPL breaches are usually well-researched and levied at the correct legal entity, where the *AAs have been known to send C+D letters based on similarity of filenames to people who don't even have computers.
- the GPL is aimed at preventing the formation of monopolies; as such, enforcing it doesn't entail monopoly abuses, whereas the *AAs are regularly accused of price gouging, etc.
- the *AAs tend to ask for huge dollar amounts of damages, in the hundreds of dollars per song or film copied. In this case no damages were sought at all, even though Germany does know statutory damages
- it's often argued that people who download content illegaly usually end up buying the stuff they like, or at least that they would never in the first place have bought the content. D-Link on the other hand used GPL'ed software to profit from it, and then didn't abide by its licensing terms.
- the burden for D-Link for 'staying honest' is much lower than the (monetary) burden for some teen who downloaded 1000 tracks. Even if you disagree with copyright fundamentally, you'd be less upset about D-Link having to do no more than include a written offer or a download URL with its kit than with some kid having to pay thousands of dollars of compensation.
- the *AAs even sue you if the stuff you downloaded is NOT available from them anymore; by contrast, once a piece of code is GPL'ed, it stays GPL'ed; there's no orfan-ware problem.
People get proportionately more upset if piracy is carried out by professional gangs who profit from it (selling illegal copies of windows to your mom, for example); if it concerns software from small (non-monopoly) companies or music from independent labels; if people who can easily afford it still pirate stuff just because they're cheapskates (e.g. fortune-500 corporations using illegal copies of winzip, which is $6 per copy in volume) etc. etc. etc.
So there are philosophical, moral, legal and practical differences between the two -- whether you agree with those is another thing, but there is no need for someone that supports enforcing the GPL and pirating Windows to be a hypocrite. And that's not even taking into account anti-corporate or communist themes.
Maybe some people aren't hypocrites, but just don't see the world as exclusively black and white. Just maybe they agree with some (application of) laws, and not others. "You're a hypocrite, because you depend on the law" is not much of an argument against people who want the law changed so they can depend on it better.
Selfish, perhaps you could levy that accusation. But hypocrites? Hardly.
Not a test of the GPL (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as I'd like to see a legal test of the GPL (not because I think it's invalid, but because coporations will become much more willing to deal with it, once it's been proven in court), this is simply a very, very basic test of copyright law. It's amazingly basic, but apparently some people still don't get it: D-Link doesn't think the GPL is a valid contract? Fine, then they're not licensed to distribute the code at all!
Re:Did it ever occur to either you... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:GPL vs EULA (Score:5, Insightful)
The untransferable right of the author in German law is called "Urheberrecht", roughly translated as "creator's right". If I write software, then I am the creator, and according to German law nobody else is allowed to claim to be the creator. I cannot even sell you the right to call yourself the creator. That is the right protected by Urheberrecht: The right to claim that I am the author. There seems to be no such right explicitely mentioned in US law; on the other hand, if US citizen A writes some software, and US citizen B claims he wrote it, then B is a liar.
However, the US copyright _is_ the right to commercial exploitation. So your mapping US copyright = German Urheberrecht, ??? = german right to commercial exploitation is wrong. The correct mapping is German Urheberrecht = nothing corresponding in US law, German right to commercial exploitation = US copyright law.
Re:Legally binding? (Score:1, Insightful)
Ergo, the EULA is used to limit the license, for without the EULA, your 'end user' act of purchasing the software would give you a broader 'license' to do what you want with the software.
Re:No distribution of the source? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Strange.... (Score:1, Insightful)
They are shooting themselves in the foot, really, and I am so fucking sick of this secrecy for secrecy's sake
Re:Strange.... (Score:1, Insightful)