First, this is slashdot, I don't have to give a fuck what you say.
Second, whatever... I'm sick of this discussion. You know what? You've obviously done far more research on this issue than I have. I'll admit that. I've never done any research as to if the US has tried anyone for treason.
But, you did imply that there were no cases of treason. Yes, I hear your response already. "I was only speaking about giving funds to someone."
Let's take Mr. Dad who gave his son Aid and Comfort, by housing him. Now, instead of having done so, he just wrote off a big fat check to his son, knowing full well that the funds were to be used to conduct espionage against the US government.
How is this different? In one situation, there's obviously direct involvement in him assisting his son commit espionage against the US, but in the hypothetical situation, which I have presented, he's given just as much involvement by giving the son direct money knowing full well that it is being used to wage war against the US.
My point still stands. I don't give a fuck if there's been a trial for treason or not. (despite you having implied that there were not) My *point* was, that just because there hasn't been a trial over this issue, that it's bumpkis.
If you take offense to this, then fuck you, I don't give a shit. You're going to argue and bitch at me for whatever I say, regardless of if I have a point or not. You're just going to point out the flaws that I've made and say, "OOO! OOO! You're a fucking idiot because you didn't bother to go any look to see if the US has tried anyone for treason!"
You know what? I don't give a shit if the US has tried anyone for treason, it doesn't effect my daily life as I see it. That's why I've got no clue. But notice, I did right there at the top of this comment state, "you're right, we've tried someone for treason." Shit yeah, you know more than me about this issue, and I just can't beat you because you know more than me.
Still doesn't mean that I have to accept your claim that it's not treason to give money to a known enemy actively engaging in war against the US.
Just like you don't have to accept my claim that it is wrong. So, by all means Mr. I-Support-Terrorists. Donate some money to the Al-Qaeda (label it as such on your check, that'd be a nice touch) and let's actually settle this issue of if giving money to a person in active military conflict with the US is considered treason. Tell you what, I'll even testify on your behalf and say, "He knows more about treason than I do... so shit yeah, he's gotta be right about it not being treason."
You want there to be a trial and prove your point right, then by all means, you step forward and take any bullets. Meanwhile, I'm going to work off my going assumption, and not be put into any situation that might jeopordize my responsibilities as a citizen of the US.
Is taking code from a GPL product repackaging it and calling it your own without releasing the source code illegal? *yes*
Has there actually been a criminal case on the matter? *no*
Does that mean it's not illegal? *no*
It's illegal because it's a breach of contract (license), and this is covered under civil law, not criminal law, but just because something is civil law, and not criminal law, doesn't mean it's not *illegal*.
Cry all you want, but at some point for *every* law, there's been a point where there has been no case for it. Does this mean that all laws should be ruled null, because they've all at one time never had a case trial for it? *no*
As you so artfully stated, it's up to the courts to decide what Treason is, but there's a deeper issue. Since it's the only law defined by the constitution, only the Supreme Court can decide what Aid and Comfort is. (As Judicial Review of the Constitution was established by the original Supreme Court) Everyone else can say, "Yeah, that's Aid and Comfort," but then anyone could take such a ruling to the Supreme Court.
So, fully expect to see that if we ever do try someone for treason, it will end up going to the United States Supreme Court, because they'd have to rule on it being Aid and Comfort. (Unless the person were captured in actual combative war with the US)
Why haven't there been any charges of treason? Because usually, the fish isn't big enough to fry. For all the effort it will eventually take to try someone for treason, it's just not worth putting Jane Fonda, and whoever else you might wish to include on trial for treason.
See, there's this thing called Prosecutorial Review. Basically, the prosecuting party for any case can just up and decide that it's not worth the taxpayers' money to try someone. And frankly, if the US ever does put someone on trial for treason, that it will take A LOT of work and money to make it stick.
The Software Freedom Law Center will happily work to defend many projects, which are distributed under the GPL. The center is run by Eben Moglen. --- Yeah, the guy who wrote the GPL.
Their desire and mission is to go above what the FSF could do for projects, and actually provide real support and help to those people who are having their GPL rights violated.
The majority of times they can do it pro bono (and as was mentioned above, most times, they need only send a letter) but there are some cases were prohibitive costs would require the author to provide payment for some actions (such as hiring a lawyer in Hawaii, or flying a lawyer out to Hawaii, if necessary)
So, if you're having problems with some company ripping off your GPL code, shoot an email out to the SFLC, and see what they can do for you.
Oh, and by the way, the majority of offenders quickly either wise-up or apologize for their ignorance on the licensing issues almost immediately upon receiving a letter saying that they're violating the GPL. Again, most companies comply, and it were either accidental (and they comply because they want to comply) or a poor attempt at hiding it (and they comply because they don't want to get sued.) Only a small handful of companies will actually go to suit over a GPL violation (especially since they can't win, because even if they declare the GPL invalid, traditional copyright applies, and they never had rights to the code anyways)
Article III, Section 3, Clause 1 of the US Consitution: (and I copy-paste, *gentle throat clearing*)
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
Treason standards are *very* strict in the US, being as far as I'm aware the only crime that is defined by the constitution, and no less than, but having it's own section of the constitution.
But noice, that giving the Enemy Aid and Comfort? Yeah, that means, that if the US were engaged in military actions against someone, and you gave them money, that that would qualify as treason.
But remember. The excruciatingly high standards for conviction of treason. No longer is there "beyond a shadow of a doubt" it's even more than that. You need two witnesses to the same overt act. So, they could show all the evidence that they could ever find. Writen documents with your signature, bank records, photos, and pictures, heck, even a VHS cassette. But without two witnesses to the same overt act. Well, sorry. Tough luck, they get off, says right there in the constitution.
Quoted from there is basically. If you want to use hand-crafted TCP/UDP packets over a raw IP connection, you must enable the Internet Connection Firewall.
At least, this is for SP1, I don't know if you can get away with this in SP2.
Reminds me off a fellow boyscout, who at one time during a camping trip mentioned that "Spam takes like Alpo." We tried this same tactic on him to get him to shut up: "How do you know what Alpo tastes like."
But were were not expecting the exact response, although the result was the same as we wanted: "Um... I'm uh... not going into that. I'll be quite now."
You do realize that you speak of a protagonist where he was in fact our ANTAgonist.
The protagonist of the story deceitfully responded with "myself" when queried for his name, and thus as the foolish antagonist were attacking his assumed enemy, he found only to be destroying himself.
These stories show a clear allusion to the tales in the Odessy, where Odesius told the Cyclops that his name was "no one" and thus, while the Cyclops yelled in distress over his injured eye, he yelled, "No one poked my eye out!" Thus looking delightfully ignorant.
Do you not see the TRUE parallels in these stories?
I love it's stability, it's well-enough hardware support (except for idiot manufactures who think that releasing a binary driver is tons better than just leaking the specs to the public, because they know right, so their binary driver comes out with horrible stability issues, so that I'm stuck with an unstable binary driver with feature support, or a stable FOSS driver without feature support)
ANYWAYS... I just hate using iptables to configure a firewall... what's wrong with that? I mean, have you LOOKED at what pf can do? Anyone who's setup a pf firewall knows how sexy it is to use pf, and then they come back to Linux with it's iptables, and they let out a wimpered sigh, and unhappily download some pre-written script that they hope they can sculpt into a desirable firewall. While with pf, they'd have had a firewall perfectly designed to their exact wants and needs.
Not saying you can't get iptables to do the same thing... it's just that it's a PAIN IN THE ASS to do.
There are things I love about all my Operating Systems that I use (Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, and OpenBSD) some more (Mac OSX) than others (Windows, which I keep primarily and exclusively for WoW, until I get a Mac more capable of running it.)
So anyways... I'm not an OS bigot. I use Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, and OpenBSD all for what I find them best suited for. And that's the way I like it, and I love all my kids equally (except the snotty one, and maybe I like the one that behaves and is always clean the best)
FYI, I wrote a module for Linux that does this same thing (BSD Secure Levels). It will let you set the IMMUTABLE flag on files, and then when the system is in an elevated secure level, not even the root user can unset the flag. It's in kernel versions 2.6.10 and later. Here is an article about it.
Awesome, now someone tell me that they've ported pf and that I can get rid of this aweful thing called "iptables" and I'll be happy.
I once got a story posted on my personal webpage by some guy who was complaining that he was being attacked by my computer on an IRC channel. I was like "I'm running OpenBSD, that's ridiculous."
Then I started finding evidence. You know, that was the first time I'd ever heard about the system immutable flag in OpenBSD. They screwed with my/etc/pf.conf made the last rules allow everything, and then slapped on a big system immutable on it.
So, when I actually had noticed the problem with my/etc/pf.conf before even getting the story, I was like, well easy enough to fix that. Now write out to disk. Hm... write-protected... well, just override that. What do you MEAN denied? I'M FREAKING ROOT!
Now, I system immutable flag all my important files that I don't want to change if some script kiddy does happen to get into my OpenBSD box.
I'm pretty much with you. I pretty much gave up World of Warcraft to program on PearPC. I find it incredibly more interesting and satisfying to be *working* on something, rather than just not accomplishing something.
Of course, Gran Turismo 4 was my Methodone(?) for helping me get off WoW. But now I hardly even play that.
Of course, I spend most of my time coding and reading forums and that's about all of my freetime... so, I doubt that it's any better for my IQ really.
I don't know... I just know that people point to this case and say that the GPL was tested in US courts and won.
I read some of the summaries, and I don't think the SAE ever objected to the terms of the GPL, they just didn't agree on the ownership of the source code.
Were they right, they would have owned the code, and Drewtech would never had had a right to make the code GPL.
If you're distributing the binary of a derivative of a GPL work, without distributing the source code, then you're in violation of the GPL.
It's pretty simple like that.
Of course, most GPL authors don't go and sue people immediately for money before asking them to simply comply with the GPL.
Let me put this in the most generalized terms. Company B has the possibility that they complied (and since it's so hard to prove that they didn't, then they can easily dodge the blame in court) And simply including the AUTHORs and COPYRIGHT file from the project may be argued as sufficiently complying with the GPL.
Company A on the other hand is violating under all conditions: Distributing a binary GPL derivative without source. Their actions on compliance upon learning that their code is GPL determines their intent, and the actions that the author should take to reconcile the matter.
Company B complied with the GPL, by making modifications and supplying source code to those who recieve the product.
Company A is not complying, because they're releasing the code against the terms of the GPL.
Assuming Company B was in compliance of the GPL, they would have had to disclose to Company A that the code was licensed under the GPL, and then recommend that Company A read up one what the GPL means.
Functionally, it's difficult to prove that Company B didn't notify Company A of the GPL origins of the code, and Company A would admit that they were aware of the GPL origins as soon as they denied to release the source code, upon being presented with the information that they are out of compliance with the GPL.
So, when person XY contacts company A and says, "Your product violates my IP rights, under the GPL, you need to comply, and release the source code."
If Company A says, "No, it's our code." They're immediately out of compliance.
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.
Exactly, this is what's getting me about all these GPL violators.
We're not asking for money, we're asking for a simple compliance. What the hell is wrong with you that you'd rather spend money paying lawyers to defend your belief that you can take GPL code and use it how you please, than not pay a lawyer, keep your money, and just comply.
Some of these GPL violators have to be idiots, or have idiot lawyers.
No... prohibitive as in, you lose rights to the code.
Namely, if there's GPL code out there, you have access to the source code. Then someone takes your code, makes some modifications and does not release it GPL. Everyone has lost rights in this situation, as no one is now able to get the source code.
I'm not speaking of a legal prohibition against using it.
First of all, I'm the guy asking for donations to use against Maui X-Stream. And I view both GPL theft, and music theft, as such. Theft. Both are wrong. You may want to enjoy that music song, but guess what, some company owns it, and they get to say how it's used.
Now, I also believe that there's an interest in having information free. Thus, my greater concern about people stealing GPL code, than stealing music.
In the first instance, people are taking something free (as in speech) and not sharing. In kindergarten I learned that not sharing is bad.
In the second instance, people are taking something that's not supposed to be shared, and sharing it. If your mom gave you a cookie, and told you that you can't give any to your brother, would you?
If you did, then you could be punished, because your mom told you not to do it. But on the other side of the coin, there's a moral allowance for it, because come on... it's your brother, and he wants some of your cookie.
So, to clarify your points:
taking a freedom and getting rid of it == bad taking a morally justifiable action, which is prohibited, and doing it despite == good
Rosa Parks knew she was breaking the law when she didn't go to the back of the bus. She *knew* this. She still did it, because it was morally justified. This is the substance of public disobedience. You break the law (and go to jail for it) to have attention brought to the action itself.
I don't argue that the RIAA has a right to sue the filesharers... but I can except that people think they *shouldn't* have that right.
Did I ever personally claim that copying software and music were not wrong and illegal?
I entirely agree that they are wrong and illegal. I do not promote copyright theft, and I do not distribute nor obtain music or movies illegally.
My friends laugh at me because I buy DVDs, why? Because they're not paying for them, and they call me a sucker. I tell them, "Yes, well, I'm not stealing."
Slashdot Mirror
First, this is slashdot, I don't have to give a fuck what you say.
Second, whatever... I'm sick of this discussion. You know what? You've obviously done far more research on this issue than I have. I'll admit that. I've never done any research as to if the US has tried anyone for treason.
But, you did imply that there were no cases of treason. Yes, I hear your response already. "I was only speaking about giving funds to someone."
Let's take Mr. Dad who gave his son Aid and Comfort, by housing him. Now, instead of having done so, he just wrote off a big fat check to his son, knowing full well that the funds were to be used to conduct espionage against the US government.
How is this different? In one situation, there's obviously direct involvement in him assisting his son commit espionage against the US, but in the hypothetical situation, which I have presented, he's given just as much involvement by giving the son direct money knowing full well that it is being used to wage war against the US.
My point still stands. I don't give a fuck if there's been a trial for treason or not. (despite you having implied that there were not) My *point* was, that just because there hasn't been a trial over this issue, that it's bumpkis.
If you take offense to this, then fuck you, I don't give a shit. You're going to argue and bitch at me for whatever I say, regardless of if I have a point or not. You're just going to point out the flaws that I've made and say, "OOO! OOO! You're a fucking idiot because you didn't bother to go any look to see if the US has tried anyone for treason!"
You know what? I don't give a shit if the US has tried anyone for treason, it doesn't effect my daily life as I see it. That's why I've got no clue. But notice, I did right there at the top of this comment state, "you're right, we've tried someone for treason." Shit yeah, you know more than me about this issue, and I just can't beat you because you know more than me.
Still doesn't mean that I have to accept your claim that it's not treason to give money to a known enemy actively engaging in war against the US.
Just like you don't have to accept my claim that it is wrong. So, by all means Mr. I-Support-Terrorists. Donate some money to the Al-Qaeda (label it as such on your check, that'd be a nice touch) and let's actually settle this issue of if giving money to a person in active military conflict with the US is considered treason. Tell you what, I'll even testify on your behalf and say, "He knows more about treason than I do... so shit yeah, he's gotta be right about it not being treason."
You want there to be a trial and prove your point right, then by all means, you step forward and take any bullets. Meanwhile, I'm going to work off my going assumption, and not be put into any situation that might jeopordize my responsibilities as a citizen of the US.
So cite a case.
As you've so eloquently stated, THERE IS NO CASE.
But that doesn't mean that it's not treason.
Is taking code from a GPL product repackaging it and calling it your own without releasing the source code illegal? *yes*
Has there actually been a criminal case on the matter? *no*
Does that mean it's not illegal? *no*
It's illegal because it's a breach of contract (license), and this is covered under civil law, not criminal law, but just because something is civil law, and not criminal law, doesn't mean it's not *illegal*.
Cry all you want, but at some point for *every* law, there's been a point where there has been no case for it. Does this mean that all laws should be ruled null, because they've all at one time never had a case trial for it? *no*
As you so artfully stated, it's up to the courts to decide what Treason is, but there's a deeper issue. Since it's the only law defined by the constitution, only the Supreme Court can decide what Aid and Comfort is. (As Judicial Review of the Constitution was established by the original Supreme Court) Everyone else can say, "Yeah, that's Aid and Comfort," but then anyone could take such a ruling to the Supreme Court.
So, fully expect to see that if we ever do try someone for treason, it will end up going to the United States Supreme Court, because they'd have to rule on it being Aid and Comfort. (Unless the person were captured in actual combative war with the US)
Why haven't there been any charges of treason? Because usually, the fish isn't big enough to fry. For all the effort it will eventually take to try someone for treason, it's just not worth putting Jane Fonda, and whoever else you might wish to include on trial for treason.
See, there's this thing called Prosecutorial Review. Basically, the prosecuting party for any case can just up and decide that it's not worth the taxpayers' money to try someone. And frankly, if the US ever does put someone on trial for treason, that it will take A LOT of work and money to make it stick.
The Software Freedom Law Center will happily work to defend many projects, which are distributed under the GPL. The center is run by Eben Moglen. --- Yeah, the guy who wrote the GPL.
Their desire and mission is to go above what the FSF could do for projects, and actually provide real support and help to those people who are having their GPL rights violated.
The majority of times they can do it pro bono (and as was mentioned above, most times, they need only send a letter) but there are some cases were prohibitive costs would require the author to provide payment for some actions (such as hiring a lawyer in Hawaii, or flying a lawyer out to Hawaii, if necessary)
So, if you're having problems with some company ripping off your GPL code, shoot an email out to the SFLC, and see what they can do for you.
Oh, and by the way, the majority of offenders quickly either wise-up or apologize for their ignorance on the licensing issues almost immediately upon receiving a letter saying that they're violating the GPL. Again, most companies comply, and it were either accidental (and they comply because they want to comply) or a poor attempt at hiding it (and they comply because they don't want to get sued.) Only a small handful of companies will actually go to suit over a GPL violation (especially since they can't win, because even if they declare the GPL invalid, traditional copyright applies, and they never had rights to the code anyways)
Treason standards are *very* strict in the US, being as far as I'm aware the only crime that is defined by the constitution, and no less than, but having it's own section of the constitution.
But noice, that giving the Enemy Aid and Comfort? Yeah, that means, that if the US were engaged in military actions against someone, and you gave them money, that that would qualify as treason.
But remember. The excruciatingly high standards for conviction of treason. No longer is there "beyond a shadow of a doubt" it's even more than that. You need two witnesses to the same overt act. So, they could show all the evidence that they could ever find. Writen documents with your signature, bank records, photos, and pictures, heck, even a VHS cassette. But without two witnesses to the same overt act. Well, sorry. Tough luck, they get off, says right there in the constitution.
After walking throught he MS articles and stuff, I came across this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897656/
Quoted from there is basically. If you want to use hand-crafted TCP/UDP packets over a raw IP connection, you must enable the Internet Connection Firewall.
At least, this is for SP1, I don't know if you can get away with this in SP2.
I like a particular one. But you have to do it orally, or most people get it. Anyone who can read l33t would get it though.
A1R. Hey, you. Go get me some A-1-R. They have it down at the supply depot.
Reminds me off a fellow boyscout, who at one time during a camping trip mentioned that "Spam takes like Alpo." We tried this same tactic on him to get him to shut up: "How do you know what Alpo tastes like."
But were were not expecting the exact response, although the result was the same as we wanted: "Um... I'm uh... not going into that. I'll be quite now."
You do realize that you speak of a protagonist where he was in fact our ANTAgonist.
The protagonist of the story deceitfully responded with "myself" when queried for his name, and thus as the foolish antagonist were attacking his assumed enemy, he found only to be destroying himself.
These stories show a clear allusion to the tales in the Odessy, where Odesius told the Cyclops that his name was "no one" and thus, while the Cyclops yelled in distress over his injured eye, he yelled, "No one poked my eye out!" Thus looking delightfully ignorant.
Do you not see the TRUE parallels in these stories?
You do realize that I *love* Linux right?
I love it's stability, it's well-enough hardware support (except for idiot manufactures who think that releasing a binary driver is tons better than just leaking the specs to the public, because they know right, so their binary driver comes out with horrible stability issues, so that I'm stuck with an unstable binary driver with feature support, or a stable FOSS driver without feature support)
ANYWAYS... I just hate using iptables to configure a firewall... what's wrong with that? I mean, have you LOOKED at what pf can do? Anyone who's setup a pf firewall knows how sexy it is to use pf, and then they come back to Linux with it's iptables, and they let out a wimpered sigh, and unhappily download some pre-written script that they hope they can sculpt into a desirable firewall. While with pf, they'd have had a firewall perfectly designed to their exact wants and needs.
Not saying you can't get iptables to do the same thing... it's just that it's a PAIN IN THE ASS to do.
There are things I love about all my Operating Systems that I use (Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, and OpenBSD) some more (Mac OSX) than others (Windows, which I keep primarily and exclusively for WoW, until I get a Mac more capable of running it.)
So anyways... I'm not an OS bigot. I use Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, and OpenBSD all for what I find them best suited for. And that's the way I like it, and I love all my kids equally (except the snotty one, and maybe I like the one that behaves and is always clean the best)
Awesome, now someone tell me that they've ported pf and that I can get rid of this aweful thing called "iptables" and I'll be happy.
I once got a story posted on my personal webpage by some guy who was complaining that he was being attacked by my computer on an IRC channel. I was like "I'm running OpenBSD, that's ridiculous."
/etc/pf.conf made the last rules allow everything, and then slapped on a big system immutable on it.
/etc/pf.conf before even getting the story, I was like, well easy enough to fix that. Now write out to disk. Hm... write-protected... well, just override that. What do you MEAN denied? I'M FREAKING ROOT!
Then I started finding evidence. You know, that was the first time I'd ever heard about the system immutable flag in OpenBSD. They screwed with my
So, when I actually had noticed the problem with my
Now, I system immutable flag all my important files that I don't want to change if some script kiddy does happen to get into my OpenBSD box.
I'm pretty much with you. I pretty much gave up World of Warcraft to program on PearPC. I find it incredibly more interesting and satisfying to be *working* on something, rather than just not accomplishing something.
Of course, Gran Turismo 4 was my Methodone(?) for helping me get off WoW. But now I hardly even play that.
Of course, I spend most of my time coding and reading forums and that's about all of my freetime... so, I doubt that it's any better for my IQ really.
I don't know... I just know that people point to this case and say that the GPL was tested in US courts and won.
I read some of the summaries, and I don't think the SAE ever objected to the terms of the GPL, they just didn't agree on the ownership of the source code.
Were they right, they would have owned the code, and Drewtech would never had had a right to make the code GPL.
If you're distributing the binary of a derivative of a GPL work, without distributing the source code, then you're in violation of the GPL.
It's pretty simple like that.
Of course, most GPL authors don't go and sue people immediately for money before asking them to simply comply with the GPL.
Let me put this in the most generalized terms. Company B has the possibility that they complied (and since it's so hard to prove that they didn't, then they can easily dodge the blame in court) And simply including the AUTHORs and COPYRIGHT file from the project may be argued as sufficiently complying with the GPL.
Company A on the other hand is violating under all conditions: Distributing a binary GPL derivative without source. Their actions on compliance upon learning that their code is GPL determines their intent, and the actions that the author should take to reconcile the matter.
Oh, I lived there for about a month. I also have a good friend who's actually from München, and speaks dialect very well (or is that German horribly?)
Sometimes he'll post something on our guild forums, and I'll say, "Can someone translate that to German for me?"
If you knew German you'd know that ;)
Company B complied with the GPL, by making modifications and supplying source code to those who recieve the product.
Company A is not complying, because they're releasing the code against the terms of the GPL.
Assuming Company B was in compliance of the GPL, they would have had to disclose to Company A that the code was licensed under the GPL, and then recommend that Company A read up one what the GPL means.
Functionally, it's difficult to prove that Company B didn't notify Company A of the GPL origins of the code, and Company A would admit that they were aware of the GPL origins as soon as they denied to release the source code, upon being presented with the information that they are out of compliance with the GPL.
So, when person XY contacts company A and says, "Your product violates my IP rights, under the GPL, you need to comply, and release the source code."
If Company A says, "No, it's our code." They're immediately out of compliance.
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.
Exactly, this is what's getting me about all these GPL violators.
We're not asking for money, we're asking for a simple compliance. What the hell is wrong with you that you'd rather spend money paying lawyers to defend your belief that you can take GPL code and use it how you please, than not pay a lawyer, keep your money, and just comply.
Some of these GPL violators have to be idiots, or have idiot lawyers.
No... prohibitive as in, you lose rights to the code.
Namely, if there's GPL code out there, you have access to the source code. Then someone takes your code, makes some modifications and does not release it GPL. Everyone has lost rights in this situation, as no one is now able to get the source code.
I'm not speaking of a legal prohibition against using it.
I'm not arguing that one is illegal and the other isn't
I'm arguing why one is good and the other is bad.
This is a personal moral decision, not a legal statement.
The RIAA has every right in the legal world to sue these people, that doesn't make it "right".
http://jeremy.linuxquestions.org/blog/_archives/20 05/3/22/464220.html
DrewTech vs SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers)
DrewTech developed some GPL code, and SAE said that they owned it and refused to release the source, and were charging money for it.
SAE gave up on their claims of ownership and released the source.
I feel it's more of an issue of the SAE debating the origin of the code than actually contesting the GPL, though.
The RIAA suing filesharers == someone taking something prohibitive and making it free
GPL developers suing people who steal their code out of compliance == someone taking something free and making it prohibitive.
There's a fundamental difference in that those stealing GPL code are stealing from EVERYONE, not just from the author.
Be careful how you're painting your hypocrits.
First of all, I'm the guy asking for donations to use against Maui X-Stream. And I view both GPL theft, and music theft, as such. Theft. Both are wrong. You may want to enjoy that music song, but guess what, some company owns it, and they get to say how it's used.
Now, I also believe that there's an interest in having information free. Thus, my greater concern about people stealing GPL code, than stealing music.
In the first instance, people are taking something free (as in speech) and not sharing. In kindergarten I learned that not sharing is bad.
In the second instance, people are taking something that's not supposed to be shared, and sharing it. If your mom gave you a cookie, and told you that you can't give any to your brother, would you?
If you did, then you could be punished, because your mom told you not to do it. But on the other side of the coin, there's a moral allowance for it, because come on... it's your brother, and he wants some of your cookie.
So, to clarify your points:
taking a freedom and getting rid of it == bad
taking a morally justifiable action, which is prohibited, and doing it despite == good
Rosa Parks knew she was breaking the law when she didn't go to the back of the bus. She *knew* this. She still did it, because it was morally justified. This is the substance of public disobedience. You break the law (and go to jail for it) to have attention brought to the action itself.
I don't argue that the RIAA has a right to sue the filesharers... but I can except that people think they *shouldn't* have that right.
Did I ever personally claim that copying software and music were not wrong and illegal?
I entirely agree that they are wrong and illegal. I do not promote copyright theft, and I do not distribute nor obtain music or movies illegally.
My friends laugh at me because I buy DVDs, why? Because they're not paying for them, and they call me a sucker. I tell them, "Yes, well, I'm not stealing."