Slashdot Mirror
German Court Convicts Skype For Breaching GPL
terber writes "A German court has once again upheld the GPLv2 and convicted Skype (based in Luxembourg) of violating the GPL by selling the Linux-based VoIP phone 'SMCWSKP 100' without proper source code access. (Original is in German, link is a Google translation.) Skype later added a flyer to the phones' packaging giving a URL where the sources could be obtained; but the court found this insufficient and in breach of GPL section 3. The plaintiff was once again Netfilter developer Harald Welte, who runs gpl-violations.org. The decision is available in German at www.ifross.de (Google translation here)."
What a bunch of GPL Nazis.
Noone would be convicted of "breaching the GPL". The GPL is not an EULA. If you violate the terms of the GPL, you are (re)distributing without a license permitting you to do so (since the GPL, which you violated, is the only thing that gives you permission to do so), which is a copyright violation, not a GPL violation. I wish articles would get the specifics right.
Now we will see the same people who oppose RIAA/MPAA copyrights cheering the copyright action that enforces open source. Don't you see that you can't have it both ways?
In case like me you weren't sure: The plaintiff initiates a lawsuit, Harald Welte was the accuser.
Skype is good, GPL is good, copyright bad...
Who are with on this one guys?
Court upholding GPL - Good!
Conviction for copyright violation - Bad!
What's a loyal drone to believe anymore??
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I much prefer the "you can abuse copyright holders anyway you please and they'll still produce the good stuff". Let's see if something similar applies to OSS programmers.
The actual problem is that they did not include the text of the GPL with the phone. The summary here in Slashdot didn't mention that, and had me wondering what the problem with the provided URL was.
War Criminals.
The soooner, the better.
Pax,
Kilgore Trout
This is not inconsistent with fighting for public access to information.
We don't like RIAA suing College students, because it is a misuse of the legal system to protect an already overly protected monopoly.
We like protection of the GPL, as with an extinct public domain, open-source/creative commons is all that remains.
"nevertheless this are sufficient the court in the available case, not."
sorry, i could not stop giggling when i read this...reminded me of Borat... "this is suit is black not"
but on a serious note, this more aptly translates to "however, this was not sufficient to the court for the case in question"
This sig contains repetition and redundancy.
The hardcore would question the validity of copyright entirely. If there were no copyright and patent laws, GPL wouldn't be so necessary as code would be leaked/distributed/re-used all the time, open source or not. Though would people make less innovative software if this happend? Or would all the code-reuse allow for innovation to flourish as it made more permutations of existing software technologies possible?
If this catches on, support for open source will pretty much vanish. No one is going to risk having to give out the the proprietary code that makes their business profitable. The open source license will be far more of a financial liability than the cost of buying a license for a commercial product.
This morning I wrote on my garbage "If you collect this garbage, you must pay me $1 million dollars." and my garbage was collected!! They agreed to my license! I'm a millionaire!
This is how the GPL works.
Are you talking about American courts or German Courts. Because each country interprets the GPL, and copyrights, in very different fashion. Heck, in china, they ignore you until for some minor reason, you piss them off. Then you are shot. I think that is one of the VERY few countries that do that (for that reason).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"In other words, usually when people violate copyright it's through an act that increases the spread of the information, and prosecuting them for it would restict that spread."
But by not rewarding people, you don't have any information to spread.
"In contrast, when people violate copyright by failing to abide by the GPL, they themselves are restricting the spread of the information and prosecuting them restores it."
Well that certainly turns the BSD vs GPL argument on it's head.
The story's link to the translated version of the decision doesn't work - probably because Google is only translating the <frameset> document, not the inner frames.
This link should work, though
Can also check out this link for more info here
This is opposed to items (say a CD) which says that you may not copy them, which is a lie since it is LEGAL to copy things for personal use. What you may not do, is to distribute them for your gains.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Please refrain from posting meaningless google-translated rubbish. If you want to contribute and know German, write a decent translation or summary. Otherwise, shut up and let someone else do it. We don't need your help and can go to the stupid robot on our own, if we feel like it.
My German is a bit rusty, but I'm pretty sure that "Server Error" is not a very good translation.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It's a wonder why Microsoft hates the GPL, Balmer is afraid of GRUB(s)
load "$",8,1
I imagine the legal penalties are small compared to the cost the advertising they would have had to pay in order to get this type of publicity for the Skype phone. To the Skype marketing team: Great work! LOL...
After a previous conviction, a sheet was included
... ...
with the phone that contained URLs to the GPL-
license and to the source code . The articles do
not make any statement on whether the source code
contained all modifications, but they do not claim
otherwise.
The court decided that providing only an URL to the
license was not enough and that the whole license
should have been included in printed form.
So far, so good. Now the interesting part is that
according to the judge, providing a link to the
source code is only acceptable for software that
is provided on the internet. For software that comes
preinstalled, the source must also be delivered with
the device.
This decision seems extremely strange to me. It is
not what I read in the GPL v2. Here is the relevant
part:
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the
following:
a)
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost
of physically performing source distribution, a complete
machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange; or,
c)
There's a minority opinion in US circles that suggests that copying an executable, in order to use it, constitutes fair use. So that, if I had a GPL "thing", and sought to use it, then, I could.
This is my sig.
Zwar wurde dem Gerät später ein Beiblatt beigelegt, das auf die verwendete GPL-Software verwies und eine URL enthielt, wo die Quelltexte abrufbar sind - doch dies genügte dem Gericht im vorliegenden Fall nicht. Diese Möglichkeit sehe die GPL nur für Software vor, die über das Internet geliefert wird.
Rough translation (but better than google):
"Later a note was included with the device, which said it used GPL software and a URL where the source code is available - but this was not enough for the court. The GPL only permits this for software that is delivered over the Internet."
Doesn't that get covered by 6 b) 2):
"6. Conveying Non-Source Forms.
You may convey a covered work in object code form under the terms of sections 4 and 5, provided that you also convey the machine-readable Corresponding Source under the terms of this License, in one of these ways:
(...)
b) Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product (including a physical distribution medium), accompanied by a written offer, valid for at least three years and valid for as long as you offer spare parts or customer support for that product model, to give anyone who possesses the object code either (...) or (2) access to copy the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge."
Or maybe it didn't come as a permanent offer, in which case they might be talking about 6 d):
"d) Convey the object code by offering access from a designated place (gratis or for a charge), and offer equivalent access to the Corresponding Source in the same way through the same place at no further charge. (...)"
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Skype is a closed network with a secret protocol. And Skype is scary. Who knows how many more security holes lurk under their many layers of obfuscation? You're taking quite a risk if you let Skype onto your network.
I'm not saying this in order to troll, I'm just trying to correct widespread misperceptions about Skype, characterised by the belief that it's in some way better than yet another phone company. If you can, use a SIP-based IP phone instead. There are lots of SIP programs to choose from, they interoperate, if you want to dial out onto the PSTN there is a choice of providers, and you can get GPLv2 source code for the client. Far better than Skype's closed network and closed source monoculture.
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
If you didn't read the license (I hope to God you're not distributing under it) and you use the software.. well that's at your own risk. You need to know your own obligations.
My Babylon
If Microsoft will applaud the GPL developers for exercising their intellectual property rights...
When you think about it, if Skype had misappropriated WinCE, they'd be looking at a lot more damage than just releasing their source code...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Okay, it is Germany, and I'm going to use the definitions based under American law, but I'm 99% sure the same holds true in Germany.
A conviction is for criminal court. Copywrite law falls under civil law. No one from Skype is going to jail and no one is going to pay a huge fine to the government. However, the organization that won this case could potentially get a tidy sum.
Let's just pile onto the inaccuracies of the summary for this article. Let's hear it for inflamatory, add-pumping summaries!
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
This guy is waging a one-man show against GPL violators. Oh, the EFF is involved to some extent, but their effort is not Harald's. Harald, by the way, is the lead on the ipfilters project, something many /.'ers have probably heard of.
He is swamped with submissions from folks claiming this company or that is in violation of the GPL. I submitted one myself about a year and a half ago. Nothing ever came of it. Not because the company is innocent, but because Harald has very few resources to go after the perpetrators of GPL license abuse. When a company gets reported he has to physically buy the item - most violators seem to be in the embedded Linux area - and verify the GPL violations before putting the lawyer(s) on them. He has scored some notable successes.
But he is basically pissing into the wind. For every successful case he pursues there are 10 more that go unpunished. The real people who should be up in arms against commercial violators of the GPL are the authors who hold the copyright on the code being misused.
Sadly, most of them can't be bothered and the violations go on. This will be the end of the GPL: developers who do not care to enforce their rights. Not v3 or v4, or Linus or Stallman or tiny paragraphs in section 1. At some point there will be a case where an evildoer will use the defense that since the copyright holder didn't pursue company X 5 years ago they should be prevented from trying to do it now. And poof! The copyright will vanish or be declared null and void and with it the GPL distribution license that goes along with it.
Hooray for Harald! Watch out for the backspray, Harald.
I think it is a *little* pedantic to say something like "I wish articles would get the specifics right" in this case as the poster is quite probably not a native English speaker.
Given the amount of spyware that comes along with Skype, I'm guessing they require secret proprietary code for their business (which is also a service).
Hrm. I just had an interesting thought which applies here but I'm sure folks have covered already. Somewhere.
So, you can copyright source code, no problem. I know there is a bit of confusion about the meaning of the term "derivative work" and here's an example.
Let's say I have a trivial program, say, "Hello World" or something like that. What exactly is the copyrighted bit here? Is it the source - that is, the exact language representation used - say, C++ or Pascal or Assembly? Or is it the instructions generated by that source? How many different source code versions of "hello world" can compile into the same executable? Does that mean they are all the same source code or not?
The reason I'm not sure it's the "instructions generated by that source" is because that means that the copyright can extend to things that do not yet exist. Let's say I have a copyrighted bit of code. Then let's say that some guy comes along 3 years later and writes, for a brand-new architecture that didn't exist when I obtained my copyright, in a different language, some library that performs the functionality of my code and compiles it. Now let's say someone compiles my code on the new machine and the compiled version of my library is the same as the "independently developed" code (which is possible in certain cases).
So here's the question - did the guy developing for the new architecture violate my original copyright or not?
I honestly don't know how to answer that question.
It's quite important, because if you can only copyright source code and not the binaries - then that is an interesting situation. If the copyright really applies to the compiled binaries that's another interesting situation. It seems, however, that the current take is that it applies to both things simultaneously.
Another odd situation - what happens if I reverse-compile a copyrighted program and then distribute the reverse compilation. I generated a new, different work than the original source code and a different "work" than the compiled binary. Or did I? Is that different than me going to a museum and sketching The Scream? So did I violate a copyright there? Another tough question.
The only conclusion I can make at this point is that the artificial constructs of copyright need some work. I wish I had an answer that would make everyone happy though (the only one I can come up with is a semi-popular one: that intellectual property, not being an economically scarce good, should not enjoy the status of "property" at all. For those curious, I think the things that are economically scarce are the ability to generate new information, the ability to transfer information, and the abilities to interpret and use information. I think those are the things on which our economy should be based, not the information itself.)
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Seriously, looking at http://gpl-violations.org/support.html everyone can see that Harald is asking for help in maintaining the site - and the site badly needs it.
/. why not help running gpl-violations.org?
So, instead of talking about the GPL on
That's basically what I said. As for your original comment, I see nothing hypocritical or contradictory about opposing the MAFIAA's use of copyrights while supporting legal action that enforces the GPL - the two are worlds apart. What's irrelevant is the fact that they fall under the same legal rubric. The MAFIAA's extortion and blatant abuse of the legal system vs. enforcing the GPL with a properly filed suit against a party who is selling the product for commercial gain = apples and oranges.
Besides, the principles for which each party is using copyright law are completely different. The MAFIAA want to exercise perfect control over their product to the great detriment of society at large, whereas the GPL attempts to benefit society at large by making the source code available, among other things. It's as if they're both using guns - supporting the use of a gun in one case doesn't mean you have to support its use in every case.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
When can I buy a Wifi phone without an OS? And then put whatever is out there on it? Perhaps... a linux distro with hardware support? THEN it would be a heck of a lot more interesting. Because whether or not they breach the license or not won't change anyone but the lawyers lives. I hardly think that anything in that skype phone is worth getting back to be honest.
:)
I want an open piece of hardware, because I quite frankly don't care about 1G, 2G, 3G, 4G, nor any-freakin'-G. I want Wifi, only, and sensible sync and everything else.
Or they can just throw GSM/whatever-G out of the iPhone and fill it up with WiFi software instead of what you get from GSM (Call, SMS). That would work outside of the US, without the need to crack it, and make me happy
"Not everyone has access to the internet."
Are you certain? I could swear everyone's "new and improved business model that you should adopt or die" assumed everyone had high-speed internet?
"Besides, old music remains valuable to society. For the most part, old code doesn't."
The people running mainframes wouldn't agree with you.
"For both of those reasons, it is unnecessary for Free Software to have long copyright, and thus most Free Software advocates oppose copyright extensions."
So all that means is that under Queen Anne terms GCC would have been public domain in 2001, and Skype came out in 2003, just in time. Good thing there were no copyright extensions to spoil that GPL "spirit".
I started reading the threats but stopped after the first few *5* rated articles ;D
...
... like: by using this software you also a accept that the nazis did not committed a holocaust. In germany claiming in public that "the nazis did not commit the holocaust" is a legal offense. So having a license including legal offenses you had a license that would be void or tangible. But still you could not distribute the code of the copyright holder ... because your act of distribution has nothing to do with the license but only with copyright.
What me rely wonders is this wording A German court has once again upheld the GPLv2 .
No! A german court did not upheld the GPL. No court is interested in the GPL. the court honoured copyright law. The authors of the code in question are the copyright owners. The company distributing the code is not a copyright owner. The license is completely irrelevant.
Notpicking mode on:
A license could be void if it contained illegal terms, like: you agree to hand over your first born son, and his first born son and also his up to the 17th generation to follow to (insert your name here)
In this case the license would be void. Not copyright! You still had no right whatsoever to distribute the code / IP of the legal owners.
The court did not uphold the GPL. It only decided that Skype violated the GPL and in doing so violated copyright law If you violate a BSD or MIT license you violate copyright law as well.
To uphold a license you would need to challenge the legal-ness of the license. So instead of suing Skype for breaking copyright law you would need to sue the author over using an illegal license. However there is no real applicable law here. You could construct a case probably by having a license that also encourages murder and rape
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"But of course, those only apply to software, and only for copies that you own; not for any old thing that could be loaded into RAM."
You left out the exception for web pages loaded into browsers.
Nokia N800 - about $350
Nokia 770 (a little older, slower, cheaper) - about $150
Both run Linux. OK, there are some binary-only driver modules.
Of course, if money is no object, you can always get yourself an $800 Zaurus, too.
Was it over when the Germans bombed Perl Harbor?
HELL NO! When the going gets tough, the tough get going!
WHO'S WITH ME?!!1!
RTFM
They convicted SMC, who makes a Skype phone, of the GPL violation because they didn't include the source code with the phone. NOT skype
how can every slashdot mod and user be completely wrong?
Yes, lots of companies have policies against using free software. The first word that comes to mind for them is "retarded." The second was "paranoid." But really, these people are just seriously confused. They may have assumed their whole lives that you can't get something for nothing. It's tough to fight deeply held beliefs like that, even using logic and reality.
I've observed that these people, and companies are gradually phasing out. It's natural selection. The companies that learn how to cut costs, and the managers who implement good cost cutting polices, stay, while the companies who refuse, will die from lower margins, and the managers who never get a clue, will be fired.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
Good job Harold!
The rest of you GPL coders who chest thump about how 'you are protected' - you lack the 'nads of Harold.
You had a chance to stand up for your rights - back when Virgin was violating the GPL with the Virgin Webplayer.
Sounds like a plan to me. Maybe Harold and a bunch of volunteers will have better luck controlling bits than the entire entertainment industry.
This argument is as old as the GPL itself, and while I know so many people hate it, I'm finding the analogy between the GPL and communism more apt all the time. The GPL is in the same boat as proprietary licenses in precisely the way that communism is in the same boat as merchantilism: both employ illiberal restrictions on people's freedom. The only thing that makes the GPL (or communism) any nobler than a proprietary license (or merchantilism) is the egalitarian nature of the ends it has in mind, but it hardly seems like sacrificing liberty for equality is any better than the converse.
Nobody is entitled to see another's source code, any more than they are entitled to the products of another's labor; nor are they entitled to have others propagate their code for them. However, in a world without any "intellectual property" at all, there'd be little reason for anyone to ever withhold their code from someone who wanted it. So if you truly want freedom, of both people and code, you should want a world without copyright; and you can participate in (and help to create) such a world right now, by putting your code in the public domain.
(For completeness' sake with the economic analogy, though it's getting a bit off topic here, I also believe that a [significantly modified] libertarian economy can create a situation free from any coercion or forced redistribution wherein people have little to no incentive to own more than they can make use of and so become inclined to sell it off instead, creating a buyer's market [high supply, ergo low prices] wherever you have many people with much more than they need, naturally redistributing wealth with no force or coercion. And I believe that this can be accomplished in the same way that truly free [not Stallman's "Free"] software can be: by having the government do *less*. Whereas for software freedom we need to abolish the validity of copyright, I believe that for true economic freedom, we need to abolish the validity of rent [and consequently interest] contracts. Either lend [not loan] something to someone gratis, or sell it to them [and maybe buy it back later]; but you can't give someone something, charge them money for it, and then expect to get it back later *and* still keep the money. Yes, I know all about the time value of money and how debtors and lessors are being compensated for their inability to use it while it's lent out, but if you can't afford to be without whatever you're loaning/renting out, then hang on to it, or sell it for enough to compensate you for your loss of it; and if you can afford to be without it, either let others use it if you feel like being nice, or sell it off for whatever the market will bear. Just having excess wealth already should not afford you a special ability to extract more wealth from those who have less).
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Their HR20 receiver appears to use linux, yet nothing that even looks like it complies with the GPL...
Does GPL copyright expires and becames real public domain, as happens with the other copyrights?
So much for the usual "the GPL has never been tested in court" argument.
Since this is the 2nd time, I assume it now rests 12 feet under?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It's like the creationists. Whatever proof you have of court validation (or "missing link" fossil), it's never the RIGHT sort of test (or there's another gap). For one, it was that it wasn't tested in the US. Later they also mentioned that it didn't test the GPL but copyright.
"The court did not uphold the GPL. It only decided that Skype violated the GPL and .."
... like: by using this software you also a accept that the nazis did not committed a holocaust"
"You could construct a case probably by having a license that also encourages murder and rape
was: Re:Hm, no a german court did _not_ "upheld" the GP
davecb5620@gmail.com
GPL is the very reason I will continue to stay away from open source. Stupidity at it's finest.
It's always great to see the greedy bastard "PHB" types get blasted by the same "IP Protection" scheme they are trying to use against everybody else. There's a lot of these types out there who try to steal anyone else's work while attempting to protect and lock down their own. GPL code is absolutely NOT public domain. It's licensed, with the fee being to "play nice" with the developers and end users by releasing source. Anyone who doesn't like those terms is free to use a commercial offering instead. Just ignoring the terms is illegal, and it's great to see these copyright criminals getting busted for it. Either we have protection or we have open. What we can't have is open for corporations to use and protection for their works. One standard please. I have to admit a real admiration for Moglen and the rest of the guys who figured out this hack of the protectionist copyright laws. It's absolutely brilliant, and so far impenetrable.
I Am Soooooooooooooo No a Lawyer.
Reading all the legal mumbo jumbo above cast my mind back a number of years ago when I way trying to figure out if and how a project i was working was being distributed legally given that I wanted to make it GPL. I made the software Free for all in the end because I read thru the gnu.org site that tries to explain the gpl and left feeling that I knew less then when I started.
There was even a little quiz at the end to "test" your knowledge of the GPL and regrettably i cant find it now but I do remember I failed miserably.
- Accompany it with the source code
- Accompany it with a written offer (valid for at least three years) to distribute the source code for no more than the cost of physically performing the source distribution
If they were only distributing their object code on internet however, they could have just made the source code available in the same place. That counts as distribution even if the user doesn't download the source code at the time. They could have downloaded the source code before the object code if they wished. If you do this, you can take the object code and source code off-line at any time and not be obligated to do anything further.But you are not copying or distributing the Program. Either the doctrine of first sale or fair use would be in effect. In addition, Fred would have no standing to sue unless he was an author of some of the code. It's not the people receiving the phones that can sue, but the authors of the code that is being copied without adhering to the GPL.
Yeah, China and the USA. Except that in USA they don't shoot the people there.. They rather bomb the shit out of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi/Afghanistani/Vietnamese etc civilians. Boohoo.