Linux Devicemaker Sued In First US Test of GPL

An anonymous reader writes "For the first time in the U.S., a company is being taken to court for a GPL violation. The Software Freedom Law Center has sued Monsoon Multimedia over alleged GPL violations in the Hava, a place- and time-shifting TV recorder similar to the SlingBox. Interestingly, Monsoon Multimedia is run by a highly experienced international lawyer named Graham Radstone. According to his corporate biography, Radstone has an MA in Law from the University of Cambridge, England, and held the top legal spot at an unnamed "$1 billion private multinational company." He also reportedly held top management positions with Philip Morris, Pfizer, and DHL. Sounds like the makings of a good old legal Donnybrook ahead."

Comments

What's the big deal?

[dedazo]

I'm not sure what the big test is here. The GPL isn't some sort of special magical construct that exists on a different plane of reality. It relies on established copyright and contract law to enforce its distribution restrictions. Laws that have a crapload of precedents, usually in favor of the plaintiffs.

A court would be hard pressed not to uphold a copyright claim from the SFLC. That would mean that everyone else's copyright claims on everything else are also null and void. If Viacom and Disney can do it, so can the FSF. That's how it works.

Maybe they're just clumsy

[Anonymous Coward]

DaveJakeman over on Groklaw said:

I'd say insufficient attempts to notify and communicate with the offender have been made. The smart way to litigate is to avoid it if at all possible:

        15. Upon information and belief, on August 28, 2007, Defendants were notified by third parties of Plaintiffs' copyright in BusyBox and of Defendant's infringement thereof. This notification was provided via a public forum on Defendant's website. Upon information and belief, on September 5, 2007, via the same forum, Defendant's employee or agent, identified as "Gary-MM" of "MyHAVA Support", confirmed that Defendant was redistributing BusyBox, but not providing source code as per the requirements of the License.

        16. On September 11, 2007, through their counsel, Plaintiffs notified Defendant of its unlawful conduct based upon its failure to comply with the License. Defendant has not responded to Plaintiffs' notice and continues to distribute the Infringing Products and Firmware in violation of Plaintiffs' exclusive rights under the Copyright Act.

So, plaintiffs posted an entry in the defendant's web forum, acknowledged by a support droid on 5th September and here we are on the 19th, with a lawsuit filed. Have these guys got money to burn? Has the "notification" even got past the support droids to the parts of the company that matter? Whatever happened to communication?

I have to say that I agree. In all such things I ask myself: "What would Eban Moglen do?" Until recently he was the legal genius behind the GPL. (maybe he still is, I'm a bit confused) His approach was always to resolve the problem without needing to sue. It really does seem to me that these guys went off half cocked. If you want to see what happens when you do that, check out SCO.

The reason we should care about this is that it could produce a precedent that we don't like.

Re:Maybe they're just clumsy

[ZachPruckowski]

There is no obligation at all to inform the company that they're violating. The second someone downloads a copy of the binary or buys a piece of the hardware without the GPL included (and the source available), the company broke the law. The record labels and other groups who sue for copyright infringement generally provide no warnings whatsoever. It's definitely polite to give the company several weeks and several chances to respond, but it's not necessary.

The company made a conscious choice to bundle Linux and Busybox with their product. This was a choice made even before the product was on the market. They demoed the product 4 months ago, and have been selling it commercially for 2 months. There's no way that the company wasn't aware of the fact that they were distributing Linux. And if the company (which presumably includes programmers and engineers) honestly want to claim that they had no idea what the GPL was, they're nuts.

When they were confronted about the fact that they were in violation of the law (about 3 weeks ago), they brushed it off, "jokingly" accusing the guy who discovered it of reverse-engineering and violating the EULA, then saying that the forums were for paying customers only. They also ignored phone calls. When they admitted to it (2 weeks ago), they said they'd put it on a timetable, and not make legal compliance a top priority. When someone says "you're doing something illegal and could get sued for it", the right answer isn't "I'll have to contact the engineering team and see what the expected scope (level of effort) is and then balance it against our other development tasks". You don't balance legal compliance against "other development tasks". Especially since the relevant modules are in their SVN or whatever. IMHO, they've sort of brought it upon themselves.

(IANAL)