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Munich Court Again Enforces GPL
BrianWCarver writes "Despite earlier concerns reported on Slashdot that the GPL might be particularly difficult to enforce in Germany, that country's courts now hold the distinction of having enforced it twice. The first enforcement came in 2004 when Harald Welte of the netfilter/iptables core team sought to enjoin Sitecom from distributing its WL-122 router, which used netfilter's GPL'd code, without also providing the source code and a copy of the GPL, as that license requires. The Munich Court granted Welte a preliminary injunction and then upheld that injunction (Court's decision in English pdf) and now Sitecom provides the source code from their website. Welte, who also now runs gpl-violations.org to track GPL violations, and who personally handed over warning letters at Cebit to companies not in compliance with the GPL, reported on his blog today that he has obtained a new preliminary injunction enforcing the GPL, this time against Fortinet for distributing their firewall products (FortiGate and FortiWiFi) that include GPL'd code while Fortinet refuses to release the source. Congratulations again to Welte and his attorneys!"
First of all RIAA are pimps going around bullying people and collecting money. That being said the intellectual property is not that of RIAA but actual artists most of whom don't even hold rights to their own creation
On the other hand GPL software is a creation of group of hard working individuals with profit being the last intent. In my books its completely differet.
Personally, I see commercial music as not at all different from Microsoft software. Both are focused entirely on selling the largest volume through advertising and marketing. Neither are of much interest to me.
I wish the RIAA the greatest successes in stopping the music pirates - because this will create the opportunity for a Creative Commons licensed music industry in the exact same way Microsoft's absurd prices for commodities creates the Linux/MySQL opportunity..
Naw, I'd not say that myself. Although, I guess I did imply it.
Some people have the opinion that there should be no intellectual property law. That "information wants to be free". These people would happily feel morally justified for trading music, and complying with the GPL.
On the other hand, some people think everything they do should be kept a secret, or someone else will make money off of it also. So, they want to sue anyone who breaks their IP rights, and happily feel morally justified for using GPL code outside of compliance.
Both don't care for IP laws, it's obvious. Just the two have a different modivation. Here at slashdot, we're far closer to the first group than the second.
Of course, I can always break this down to speed laws, and marijuana use, too. People do it, despite it being against the law, they know it's against the law, and they still break it. But they don't personally *feel* like it should be against the law. So they fight that they shouldn't have to respect the law, because they don't agree with it.
Not how the world works. Personally, I respect IP law, I don't listen to music that I don't have a right to listen to, and neither do I share movies in the same way. My friends laugh at me for buying DVDs, and I laugh at them for sharing them.
Both of us feel good. I because I'm following the law, and them because they're not paying anything.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Please note, amoral (without morals), not immoral (with bad morals).
In other words, they'll defend the worst torturing serial killer with the same aplomb and indifference as they'll defend the most innocent child. It's in the nature of the profession, to do their utmost for their clients with total clarity and detachment.
It sounds good, but unfortunately, this is also why they prosecute 11-year olds and grannies on behalf of the RIAA.
If you're looking for morals and socially beneficial conduct, attorneys and their related legal brethren would not be the best place to start looking. An attorney with a personal agenda to do good (or bad) would be a corrupt attorney, unable to perform his legal duties fairly.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Thank you for your integrity. It is rarer these days to find people that make corrections like you did and alert enough to answer on Slashdot.
It is refreshing to see this, even if it is unfortunate that the first headline was put in place and it may point to a need to review editorial workflow so that it doesn't happen in the future.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software