Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!hub.toronto.edu!thomson Newsgroups: alt.sources.d From: thomson@hub.toronto.edu (Brian Thomson) Subject: Re: Charging the net.... Message-ID: <1991Apr24.102055.8340@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> Organization: University of Toronto References: <1566@tronsbox.xei.com> <1991Apr22.081417@mccall.com> <1991Apr22.192306.29134@looking.on.ca> Date: 24 Apr 91 14:20:55 GMT Lines: 38 In article peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes: >In article sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes: >> Traditionally, anything one >> picked up from Usenet could be used without fear of litigation. > >Under the current version of the GPL, there are tools that have been >distributed over Usenet that can not be freely used without fear of >litigation. The difference between these programs and shareware has >nothing to do with lawsuits and everything to do with money. But have any competent legal opinions been expressed over the effective enforceability of the GPL? By this I mean the following: * please bear in mind here that I am not a lawyer and mine is not one of the competent legal opinions I talked about * A legal remedy for copyright violation is the payment of damages, and the usual legal principle (as I understand it) for assessment of damages is that the injured party should be put in the same financial position it would have been in had the appropriate per-copy fees been paid. But, since Gnu stuff is distributed for free anyway, the copyright holders do not suffer financially from violations, so the result of such a suit might well be a finding for the complainant in the amount of $0. Although, I suppose that individual might seek an injunction instead, or in addition; I have no feeling for how this would fare, or whether or not costs might be awarded. Whenever the subjects of licensing, restrictions, or copyright surface on the net (and they do so with remarkable frequency), there are those who brandish the courts, and flail away in all directions with rumours and threats of Litigation-with-a-capital-L. I have often wondered whether there is anything substantive to it. I tend to feel that its a bogey, and that the Gnu authors (and perhaps the shareware-on-Usenet authors, too) realistically just have to hope that their audience is made up of decent folks. -- Brian Thomson, CSRI Univ. of Toronto utcsri!uthub!thomson, thomson@hub.toronto.edu