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There was one direct attack at the GPL that might've had teeth had it not occurred in the fetid imagination of a certain Daniel Wallace.

Dan Wallace tried to get the GPL considered invalid because it amounted to price fixing and a Sherman Act violation. He claimed the harm was that the Free and free properties of Linux operating systems locked him out of the market, even though he didn't actually have a product to market.

He was duly struck down hard by a de novo appellate court decision.

That was probably the only "legitimate" attack on the GPL. Any others are, like you said, shooting the plaintiff in his own foot.

http://www.internetcases.com/l...

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BMO

There are no ads in either the Google Apps for Education service or the Nonprofit service.

From the Google Apps for Education - Common Questions:

"For all EDU domains ads are turned off in Google Apps for Education services and K-12 Google Apps for Education users will not see ads when they use Google Search signed in to their Apps for Education accounts."

As far as "student records privacy" goes, there is tons of case law siding with schools and email providers - there is no expectation of privacy when you are using someone else's email system:

Reichert v. Elizabethtown College, 2011 WL 3438318 (E.D.Pa. August 5, 2011)

http://blog.internetcases.com/...

We provide computer networks for school work related use. Any other use is unacceptable as defined in our acceptable use policy. If students want privacy, they should use their own systems on their own time.

Except Virgin got off in that case, the court basically rejected all her arguments, especially jurisdiction.

That's not to say a better case might not succeed, but that one only served to prove you can be sued by someone without standing. Even at first glance it was pretty obvious that she was suing the wrong parties, as it was Virgin Australia who had used the picture, not Virgin Mobile US. Hell, she even named the Creative Commons in her original lawsuit!

Ahem

http://blog.internetcases.com/2006/03/03/defendant-bails-nail-and-mail-fails-so-e-mail-of-summons-prevails/

That's the point I was trying to make. I posted this somewhere else:

http://blog.internetcases.com/2010/01/05/browsewrap-website-terms-and-conditions-enforceable/

So now you can turn around and sue them for crawling your site if you specifically disallow it in the terms and robots.txt.

The results should be interesting to watch.

Ok, here's an argument.

http://blog.internetcases.com/2010/01/05/browsewrap-website-terms-and-conditions-enforceable/

So, the terms of use of a website are binding, at least according to this court. If the terms spell out mandatory following of robots.txt, is robots.txt now binding?

Sometimes we are blessed with the opportunity to provide real world examples.

In the case of FaceBook, the user grants certain content usage rights to FaceBook (presumably to advertise FaceBook itself).
In the linked example above, the user granted Creative Commons licensing to everyone.
Technically different, but it seems similar enough to properly illustrate your point.

By the way, this seems to be a follow up on that example.
The lesson: you give your privacy away, others will take it.

No intervention? There have been decades of intervention. Check out one list of IBM Antitrust Suit Records which claims a printed length of 41 linear feet - and that list ends in 1980. You might also want to read up on the most famous case with Telex v. IBM. It's kind of interesting. The last linked article was written in 1974 before all the appeals started.

Synopsis: The Government mopped the courtroom floor with IBM for a dozen years ending in 1982 with the slowest, most expensive bureaucratic paper chase ever undertaken by the DOJ. The DOJ ultimately dropped the suit. IBM started slipping in the marketplace at the hands of Silicon Valley startups, automatically disproving a monopoly condition. They lost two-thirds of their worth over the next several years.

Although IBM posessed huge market power at one time, they were also subject to market forces and competition in spite of what the Government was unsuccessfully trying to prove against them. The DOJ had no case after that. Many say Microsoft is on the leading edge of their downward slide right now.

IBM is still the constant subject of numerous Antitrust actions triggered by competitors, the latest being Wallace vs. IBM over bundling Linux on their machines at an unbeatable price (free).

Examples of sanctioned monopolies would be utilities like power companies, the phone company, gas companies, cable television companies etc. The Government moves very slowly but is always examining accusations of monopoly in the free enterprise system, usually in response to competitors complaining.

Authors who distribute their works under this license, devised by the Free Software Foundation, Inc., authorize not only copying but also the creation of derivative works--and the license prohibits charging for the derivative work.

The Geek never quite seems to grasp the basic distinctions between civil and criminal law.

Civil actions are all about the balance of probabilites, what is more likely than not. There is no burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Damages under the DMCA are assessed according to a statutory formula:

"At any time before final judgment is entered, a complaining party may elect to recover an award of statutory damages for each violation of [17 U.S.C. 1201] in the sum of not less than $200 or more than $2,500 per act of circumvention, device, product, component, offer, or performance of service, as the court considers just." Hefty award to Sony in action against seller of PlayStation 2 "mod chips"

"The amount of damages was calculated by awarding $800 per mod chip sold before June 12, 2004, and the full amount of $2,500 per mod chip sold after June 12, 2004. On that date, Filipiak had signed a stipulated injunction in which he agreed to discontinue sales of the chips and related software. The court concluded that the sales made after Filipiak signed the agreement constituted a willful violation of the DMCA, thus justifying a higher amount of statutory damages."