Moglen On Enforcing The GPL

jdavidb writes: "The GNU Project has a new essay today by Eben Moglen, general legal counsel for GNU, about enforcing the GPL. People ranting about the GPL not holding up in court should read this. Very interesting, but I felt that this paragraph looked bad: 'In such situations we work with organizations to establish GPL-compliance programs within their enterprises, led by senior managers who report to us, and directly to their enterprises' managing boards, regularly.' I'm all for the GPL, but this sounds suspiciously like an Software Publishers' Association audit. On the other hand, circumstances of something like this would be completely different, i.e., illegally taking copyright privileges over software you didn't write, as opposed to illegally copying software." Actually, I also think they sound alike in certain ways, but that it makes sense -- since both are about unauthorized reproduction of software. I like the FSF's terms a lot more. Update: 09/18 19:53 PM GMT by T : As Dr. Nonsense points out, davidb "probably meant the dreaded audits by the Business Software Alliance," rather than the SPA.

Comments

The first case is worse

[IP, Daily]

Illegally copying software is a run-of-the-mill copyright violation. However, Illegally asserting a copyright that isn't yours exposes the violator to liability against the alleged infringer, as well as sanctions by the court and the Copyright Office. A much more serious offense.

Some Mirror URLs

[bkuhn]

Please note that this essay is merged version of the two part essay that appears on Eben's own website. The articles also appear as Part I and Part II in Linux (sic) User UK.

I thought this information might be helpful so some load balancing can be done.