In which case the proper response would have been "Oh SHIT!", not "Deal with it".
This is definitely EMI showing it's true colors regarding copyright - it's not about the law, it's not about the integrity of the business, and it's certainly not about the artists, it is all about how much money they can stuff in their pockets. Did the music get included in a license by accident, possibly. I can certainly understand how the music got on the list, what I can't understand is how it stayed on the list when it was vetted by the EMI lawyers. Someone should have seen that there was no download agreement in the contract, and EMI certainly should have yanked the music the day the contract expired - regardless of anything else.
EMI is in deep shit here - or more accurately they should be. The statutory is $750 - $15K / song. Probably larger is actual & putative damages - every penny EMI collected for those songs + 3X in penalty. The problem is it's not going to be handled any differently that SONY & their rootkit - kill the individual, but ignore the corporation.
I think that Bittorrent.com & Blizzard could persue a lanham act complaint against Comcast for this one. Comcast is deliberately interfering with Bittorrents legitimate business - distributing rental movies over bittorrent, and WOW updates. The point being that lanham reparations can be percentages of the offending companies gross profits... doesn't take a big percentage of Comcast to make a big payoff for Bittorrent or Blizzard.
If Comcast were doing what they say they are doing, then they would actually be OK. It's the deliberate forging of headers on the terminate packets that's going to get them in trouble.
this is not a subset - mod_rewrite (or however they wish to implement it) is being applied to something very specific that no one else did/thought-of before - web search engines.
OK, what do you use as a definition of 'subset'? In my world, when something general (casting path info as an argument to a script) is applied to something specific (casting path_info as an argument to a search engine script) we call that applying the tech to a subset of it's possible uses.
As someone pointed out above, I was wrong when I said it breaks the HTML spec. The use of '/' following the script name is acceptable usage for single argument transfer in CGI, the '?' is used to denote multiple arguments which are to be automagically parsed. So it's even worse, they patented part of an existing standard.
Thanks - you've just shown another reason why this is non-obvious - it does something with the technology that was not intended for, not common practice, etc...
OK, I'm a geek, I've used 8oz propane tanks and an M80 to remove tree stumps. It meets all your criteria, but it's still obvious.
If you believe it to be a "stupid patent" then you may wish to re-read it again, I see the use of it and some technological advancement (sure perhaps minor but almost all of civilization has been from minor inventions along the way).
I have read it, it's still stupid - yes it has uses, but it's certainly not a technological advancement. It's something that's been around since mod_rewrite as a codified structure & available earlier than that as customized 404 pages. Slapping 'for search engines' on it doesn't make it innovative. It makes it a waste of everyones time.
For the record we now have:
mod_rewrite
perlhandler
customized 404 error pages
.htaccess
javaServelets
webserver hacks
<insert other here>
all of which will accomplish this 'innovation'. All of which were around prior to 2004 - some of which are explicitly designed to do this type of thing. So please do go on to explain how exactly applying existing webserver controls to the subset of webservers dedicated to search engines is innovative & non-obvious. The only thing here that's innovative is telling people to type in spaces in the URL line - which your browser then converts to %20 anyway.
Most seem to be missing that this patent is focused/limited towards search engines:
The present invention relates to user interfaces and methods for submitting search queries to web-based search engines.
Um, limiting an existing technology to a subset of usable situations is not an innovation.
I can use mod_rewrite to perform this function, I can register a Perl handler & do the same thing, I could also tweak Apache to always run the same script & pass everything but the hostname in as an argument, I could redirect 404 to a script. The fact that multiple technologies exist to allow this to occur now (and did in 2004), is a clear indication that this fails the obviousness test.
Just because people aren't currently doing this (as shown by your 4 tests) doesn't mean that the idea of doing it is non-obvious or innovative. To be honest, it's a stupid patent because it deliberately breaks the HTML specification (which is why people don't do it now).
Umm...no offense, but this isn't exactly a problem the average user is going to encounter.
That sort of depends if you are talking average home user or average work user. The average home user may actually have this kind of problem - since downloads to the tmp directory are then copied to the correct folder once downloads are complete. Update EQII, WOW & FFXI & you've gone a long ways towards 16K files. Add in patch Tuesday, and your average user is probably going to hit real close to 16K files if they try to keep the PC up for a month.
I probably come reasonably close to 16K files copied in a week on my work PC, so a crash like that would hit me every other week or so - not something I would consider 'Enterprise Ready'.
MS has a habit of programming for the home environment & pushing it into the Business environment.
This isn't a fine. This is an award for her infringing on somebody's copyright. Unfortunately that part of the constitution wouldn't apply (IANAL).
It most certainly would because the law defines the statutory penalty. It's the vast disparity between the value & the penalty which makes it unconstitutional. If you don't want to go about unreasonable fines, then you have cruel and unusual punishment you could fall back on. The punishment for someone 'stealing' 24 songs via copyright infringement needs to be laid up against the penalty for physically stealing those same 24 songs. Hmm, $250 court fine (first time) & restitution ($25) vs $220K - in accordance with our legal system, that's not equitable & therefor cruel & unusual.
The point of Internet gambling being 'morally offensive' is most likely how the U.S. will continue to argue this complaint
The US will never win this on the morally offensive argument. The rules to claim that require that what is being banned on an inter-country level also be banned on an intra-country level. The US will never do that, and so will never meet the requirements. They stood a much better chance arguing accountability/levels of fraud than 'morally offensive', but they chose not to use those arguments.
You want to see this resolved? Watch how fast things come around if you block the US from filing any new complaints and any hearings on existing ones until the US/Canada wood & the US/Antigua gambling issues are resolved. That might work even better than suspending IP protection for US drug company patents.
What can or can't be done within the borders of a particular jurisdiction is up to that jurisdiction to decide.
The US did decide, they decided to agree to an arrangement of mutual understanding & behaviors (the WTO treaty) - the principle one here is that what is legal to do inside the country is legal to do cross border. That means that if it's legal to do online gambling inside the US (which it is, online lottery sales are one example) then the US cannot bar foreign entities from engaging in the same business.
Note that the WTO does allow countries to bar practices which they find morally offensive, the sale of alcohol in Muslim countries is a good example. Places like Saudi Arabia bar all production & sales of alcohol for imbibing. Because they bar it internally, they are permitted to bar importing & sales of alcohol to SA companies & individuals.
The US does not bar online gambling - lottery & OTB being the 2 prime examples - and yet wants to bar international companies from participating in the business. That is in direct violation to the priciples of the WTO. So, if the US wants to bar foreign companies from participating in online gambling with US citizens, they can. They can either drop out of the WTO, or they can ban all internet gambling. What they can't do is continue to claim that the WTO treaties only apply to other countries.
The WTO has NO PLACE WHATSOEVER in this issue.
The World Trade Organization does have a rather large place at this table. This is about international trade relations & the WTO treaties are the groundrules that the countries in question have already agreed to play by. If the US doesn't want to play by the rules that's fine. They don't have to. They can withdraw from the WTO at any time. But as long as they are members, they need to play by the rules of the game - that means upholding their end of the bargain not just using the treaties to get what they want & saying 'Fuck off' whenever anyone has a complaint.
This is just confirmation that the WTO is a meaningless cabal of mindless USA bashers with an axe to grind.
Funny, the US loves to use the WTO treaties to extort concessions out of other countries. I guess your complaint is that sometimes the US looses & that makes the WTO anti-US. Get a life & perhaps actually look into the subject you're going to bitch about. The US pulled a bunch of dodgy stunts & got called on it. Rather than own up, they started blustering & complaining. The WTO called bullshit & this is the result. This isn't about bashing anyone, this is about holding people to their agreements. You say you'll paint my house if I fix your car, great, once your car is fixed you damned well better paint my house. If you don't, you should expect to see me in court.
Nobody forced the US to sign WTO treaties, but they did. Now that they have, they need to live up to them, or face the consequences. That's not bashing, that's accountability, something the US used to be adamant about.
Onboard video still uses the same bus structure as available for expansion (believe I saw 1 board with all PCI slots & an ISA onboard video but it was fucked from the get go). Most of the chipsets will simply load the data on the bus & be done with it - the BIOS cuts out the onboard at POST when another video card is detected. A few of the boards seem to route through the onboard in a serial rather than true bus fashion(greatly reduced framerates on boards with the same video card & similar chipsets w/ & w/out the onboard video).
The copyright for the school pictures usually lies with the person who paid for them. They are considered 'works for hire'. The group shots probably belong to the school, but it would depend on the contract they signed.
The music however is an issue, the performance is legal under the mandatory licensing laws (you did pay ASCAP didn't you?), however the permanent copy is an issue - subject to a 3K minimum penalty.
The statutory damages are actually quite reasonable when applied to the cases the law was designed for - for-profit pirates who are churning out thousands of titles & selling them on the street. The law was never written to be used to target an individual who was not turning a profit. Given the volume of profit pirates can & do actually make, the statutory penalties are actually less than most of the actual damages - given that it's per-title not per copy.
The problem lies not in the penalties, but in the targeting. This law wasn't written to target individuals, using it as such is akin to using a flame thrower to make creme-broule - overkill of the highest order.
Sanctions for failing to fulfill discovery requests can result in contempt charges, if the documents can be shown to have been "lost" rather than refused, the judge may - at their discretion - deny the party failing to provide the document the right to contest anything said about the contents of the document.
If MS refuses to turn over a document dated around whenever it was that Balmy made his first statement defining 235 patents, whether they claim it never existed (very bad lanham act issues), or was 'lost' then the judge can rule that whoever they are in court with can claim any patent in force at the time he made his statement was listed on the document & MS can't argue that it wasn't. Note that the judge does have to find some form of problem - 'bad faith' or mishandling - rather than just the lack of a document. Documents destroyed prior to the start of litigation as part of an ongoing documented document handling procedure are not subject to this type of ruling.
In this case, it's unlikely that all copies of the initial study and the summaries would be destroyed.
The list would be discoverable. IE. if it were requested, MS would have to produce the original list of 235 patents. So it's not a matter of having to wait for it to be 'discovered' in a safe, MS would have to hand it over. Failure to hand it over could result in a 'sanctioned response' from the judge - whoever was suing/being sued by would be allowed to intimate as trial that the document held whatever was most damming to MS's case.
Thus, if MS tried to claim that patent 666-666 was not part of the initial 235 they claimed, but withheld the actual list of 235, then their advisary could state in court that it was & MS would be unable to challenge that argument.
Under the concept of Laches & Equitiability, MS can sue, but they can't get any money. IE.
they claimed they were being harmed
they were asked to provide specifics so that the harm could be stopped
they ignored the request
By ignoring the request, they have contributed to their own damages & are therefor supposed to be unable to collect any damages up until they specify the patents - continued infringement past that point is subject to damages.
These wires have to be fished somewhere inside the house, but the fiber goes under the ground then up the outside of the house and never really enters the house. And, that fiber can't be "fished" through the ground...it needs to be trenched in.
A lot of that underground copper is in conduit - which is perfect to yank the copper out & pull the fiber through at the same time. It also works if the copper goes through a dense treetop - tape the fiber to the end of the copper & just pull - no tree climbing or trimming needed.
Interesting tidbit from one Verizon tech perspective (why would we want to do more work etc.) On the other hand, I wonder how many situations arise where its just so much easier to yank the copper instead of spending time / man hours / $$$ to "fish" through the fiber.
Actually, that's from the perspective of one of the managers who deals directly with install tech problems. As for how often, FWIU, copper is being yanked when it's underground installs and feeds that have to go through thick treetops. It's easier to tape the fiber to one end of the copper & yank it through than to run a new line separately. And it's the techs on site who make the call.
What I want to know is why Covad can't run their own lines to your home themselves.
Contracts and space. There is only so much space on the public utility right of way, and between the cable, telco, and power services, it's pretty much used. Right now, there are places in MA where the FIOS lines are being attached to extensions over the pole, and techs getting electricuted because of it.
As for the contracts, the only way to be profitable is to play a numbers game - it takes an average of 3-6 months to break even for a given customer - so you need LOTS of customers to cover your churn, and that means lots of municipalities. Trying to make an individual contract with each municipality is a nightmare for both the physical plant people & the legal department.
Fiber is getting to play by new rules. Old rules say that if you are going to use the public right-of-way, you have to share the lines. The new rules say - gimmey-da-money-and-shut-up.
The old Telco laws were expressly written to handle the copper POTS lines since there was no other service. Now that fiber is being run in, the telco's are saying that since the law says POTS, it's POTS & POTS only - and spending billions squashing attempts at updating the law while they're at it.
As a side note, I have a friend who works for Verizon & per the techs, they only yank the copper if it makes fishing the fiber easier - otherwise it's too much work & trouble.
I really have a hard time with the judges not seeing how "1 click" is anything other than obvious.
Amazon: We store a customers CC # & other information. We used to go to a page where customers had to confirm that they actually want to buy the thing they clicked on & review the amount of S&H etc, but we now provide this little button that skips that page.
check the dirt in any farmyard that's had cattle in the last 75 years. It's not really all that hard to cultivate - isolation is a bit trickier. The bitch is weaponizing it. It's pretty much the same with almost all of the bacterial agents - they're little nasties that we live with every day - just concentrated enough to overwhelm your immune system.
If the GPL is a contract, then you can't sue under copyright violations - all proceedings have to happen through contract law. GPL code has a 0 cost that means your actual damages for the breach of contract are minimal - many districts restrict putative damages to some multiple of the actual damages. Unlike copyright law with it's statutory $750/copy, you could win & walk away with nothing more than your legal fees paid.
Slashdot Mirror
In which case the proper response would have been "Oh SHIT!", not "Deal with it".
This is definitely EMI showing it's true colors regarding copyright - it's not about the law, it's not about the integrity of the business, and it's certainly not about the artists, it is all about how much money they can stuff in their pockets. Did the music get included in a license by accident, possibly. I can certainly understand how the music got on the list, what I can't understand is how it stayed on the list when it was vetted by the EMI lawyers. Someone should have seen that there was no download agreement in the contract, and EMI certainly should have yanked the music the day the contract expired - regardless of anything else.
EMI is in deep shit here - or more accurately they should be. The statutory is $750 - $15K / song. Probably larger is actual & putative damages - every penny EMI collected for those songs + 3X in penalty. The problem is it's not going to be handled any differently that SONY & their rootkit - kill the individual, but ignore the corporation.
I think that Bittorrent.com & Blizzard could persue a lanham act complaint against Comcast for this one. Comcast is deliberately interfering with Bittorrents legitimate business - distributing rental movies over bittorrent, and WOW updates. The point being that lanham reparations can be percentages of the offending companies gross profits ... doesn't take a big percentage of Comcast to make a big payoff for Bittorrent or Blizzard.
If Comcast were doing what they say they are doing, then they would actually be OK. It's the deliberate forging of headers on the terminate packets that's going to get them in trouble.
Um, like php.net/isset?
OK, what do you use as a definition of 'subset'? In my world, when something general (casting path info as an argument to a script) is applied to something specific (casting path_info as an argument to a search engine script) we call that applying the tech to a subset of it's possible uses.
As someone pointed out above, I was wrong when I said it breaks the HTML spec. The use of '/' following the script name is acceptable usage for single argument transfer in CGI, the '?' is used to denote multiple arguments which are to be automagically parsed. So it's even worse, they patented part of an existing standard.
OK, I'm a geek, I've used 8oz propane tanks and an M80 to remove tree stumps. It meets all your criteria, but it's still obvious.
I have read it, it's still stupid - yes it has uses, but it's certainly not a technological advancement. It's something that's been around since mod_rewrite as a codified structure & available earlier than that as customized 404 pages. Slapping 'for search engines' on it doesn't make it innovative. It makes it a waste of everyones time.
For the record we now have:
- mod_rewrite
- perlhandler
- customized 404 error pages
- .htaccess
- javaServelets
- webserver hacks
- <insert other here>
all of which will accomplish this 'innovation'. All of which were around prior to 2004 - some of which are explicitly designed to do this type of thing. So please do go on to explain how exactly applying existing webserver controls to the subset of webservers dedicated to search engines is innovative & non-obvious. The only thing here that's innovative is telling people to type in spaces in the URL line - which your browser then converts to %20 anyway.Um, limiting an existing technology to a subset of usable situations is not an innovation.
I can use mod_rewrite to perform this function, I can register a Perl handler & do the same thing, I could also tweak Apache to always run the same script & pass everything but the hostname in as an argument, I could redirect 404 to a script. The fact that multiple technologies exist to allow this to occur now (and did in 2004), is a clear indication that this fails the obviousness test.
Just because people aren't currently doing this (as shown by your 4 tests) doesn't mean that the idea of doing it is non-obvious or innovative. To be honest, it's a stupid patent because it deliberately breaks the HTML specification (which is why people don't do it now).
If you launch an exe file, you launch the file - it's a pebkac defect not a programming one. It's independent of both the software & the OS.
That sort of depends if you are talking average home user or average work user. The average home user may actually have this kind of problem - since downloads to the tmp directory are then copied to the correct folder once downloads are complete. Update EQII, WOW & FFXI & you've gone a long ways towards 16K files. Add in patch Tuesday, and your average user is probably going to hit real close to 16K files if they try to keep the PC up for a month.
I probably come reasonably close to 16K files copied in a week on my work PC, so a crash like that would hit me every other week or so - not something I would consider 'Enterprise Ready'.
MS has a habit of programming for the home environment & pushing it into the Business environment.
Most courts hold putative damages to 3X actual damages - 100X damages is generally held to be unconstitutionally excessive.
It most certainly would because the law defines the statutory penalty. It's the vast disparity between the value & the penalty which makes it unconstitutional. If you don't want to go about unreasonable fines, then you have cruel and unusual punishment you could fall back on. The punishment for someone 'stealing' 24 songs via copyright infringement needs to be laid up against the penalty for physically stealing those same 24 songs. Hmm, $250 court fine (first time) & restitution ($25) vs $220K - in accordance with our legal system, that's not equitable & therefor cruel & unusual.
The US will never win this on the morally offensive argument. The rules to claim that require that what is being banned on an inter-country level also be banned on an intra-country level. The US will never do that, and so will never meet the requirements. They stood a much better chance arguing accountability/levels of fraud than 'morally offensive', but they chose not to use those arguments.
You want to see this resolved? Watch how fast things come around if you block the US from filing any new complaints and any hearings on existing ones until the US/Canada wood & the US/Antigua gambling issues are resolved. That might work even better than suspending IP protection for US drug company patents.
The US did decide, they decided to agree to an arrangement of mutual understanding & behaviors (the WTO treaty) - the principle one here is that what is legal to do inside the country is legal to do cross border. That means that if it's legal to do online gambling inside the US (which it is, online lottery sales are one example) then the US cannot bar foreign entities from engaging in the same business.
Note that the WTO does allow countries to bar practices which they find morally offensive, the sale of alcohol in Muslim countries is a good example. Places like Saudi Arabia bar all production & sales of alcohol for imbibing. Because they bar it internally, they are permitted to bar importing & sales of alcohol to SA companies & individuals.
The US does not bar online gambling - lottery & OTB being the 2 prime examples - and yet wants to bar international companies from participating in the business. That is in direct violation to the priciples of the WTO. So, if the US wants to bar foreign companies from participating in online gambling with US citizens, they can. They can either drop out of the WTO, or they can ban all internet gambling. What they can't do is continue to claim that the WTO treaties only apply to other countries.
The World Trade Organization does have a rather large place at this table. This is about international trade relations & the WTO treaties are the groundrules that the countries in question have already agreed to play by. If the US doesn't want to play by the rules that's fine. They don't have to. They can withdraw from the WTO at any time. But as long as they are members, they need to play by the rules of the game - that means upholding their end of the bargain not just using the treaties to get what they want & saying 'Fuck off' whenever anyone has a complaint.
Funny, the US loves to use the WTO treaties to extort concessions out of other countries. I guess your complaint is that sometimes the US looses & that makes the WTO anti-US. Get a life & perhaps actually look into the subject you're going to bitch about. The US pulled a bunch of dodgy stunts & got called on it. Rather than own up, they started blustering & complaining. The WTO called bullshit & this is the result. This isn't about bashing anyone, this is about holding people to their agreements. You say you'll paint my house if I fix your car, great, once your car is fixed you damned well better paint my house. If you don't, you should expect to see me in court.
Nobody forced the US to sign WTO treaties, but they did. Now that they have, they need to live up to them, or face the consequences. That's not bashing, that's accountability, something the US used to be adamant about.
Hmm, you must use awfully thin waffles, even crappy frozen waffles are too thick to let the door close ... PB&J in the VCR on the other hand...
Onboard video still uses the same bus structure as available for expansion (believe I saw 1 board with all PCI slots & an ISA onboard video but it was fucked from the get go). Most of the chipsets will simply load the data on the bus & be done with it - the BIOS cuts out the onboard at POST when another video card is detected. A few of the boards seem to route through the onboard in a serial rather than true bus fashion(greatly reduced framerates on boards with the same video card & similar chipsets w/ & w/out the onboard video).
The copyright for the school pictures usually lies with the person who paid for them. They are considered 'works for hire'. The group shots probably belong to the school, but it would depend on the contract they signed.
The music however is an issue, the performance is legal under the mandatory licensing laws (you did pay ASCAP didn't you?), however the permanent copy is an issue - subject to a 3K minimum penalty.
The statutory damages are actually quite reasonable when applied to the cases the law was designed for - for-profit pirates who are churning out thousands of titles & selling them on the street. The law was never written to be used to target an individual who was not turning a profit. Given the volume of profit pirates can & do actually make, the statutory penalties are actually less than most of the actual damages - given that it's per-title not per copy.
The problem lies not in the penalties, but in the targeting. This law wasn't written to target individuals, using it as such is akin to using a flame thrower to make creme-broule - overkill of the highest order.
Sanctions for failing to fulfill discovery requests can result in contempt charges, if the documents can be shown to have been "lost" rather than refused, the judge may - at their discretion - deny the party failing to provide the document the right to contest anything said about the contents of the document.
If MS refuses to turn over a document dated around whenever it was that Balmy made his first statement defining 235 patents, whether they claim it never existed (very bad lanham act issues), or was 'lost' then the judge can rule that whoever they are in court with can claim any patent in force at the time he made his statement was listed on the document & MS can't argue that it wasn't. Note that the judge does have to find some form of problem - 'bad faith' or mishandling - rather than just the lack of a document. Documents destroyed prior to the start of litigation as part of an ongoing documented document handling procedure are not subject to this type of ruling.
In this case, it's unlikely that all copies of the initial study and the summaries would be destroyed.
Ahh, everyone will become Zen masters overnight.... I always thought the whole journey to enlightenment was too slow.
The list would be discoverable. IE. if it were requested, MS would have to produce the original list of 235 patents. So it's not a matter of having to wait for it to be 'discovered' in a safe, MS would have to hand it over. Failure to hand it over could result in a 'sanctioned response' from the judge - whoever was suing/being sued by would be allowed to intimate as trial that the document held whatever was most damming to MS's case.
Thus, if MS tried to claim that patent 666-666 was not part of the initial 235 they claimed, but withheld the actual list of 235, then their advisary could state in court that it was & MS would be unable to challenge that argument.
Under the concept of Laches & Equitiability, MS can sue, but they can't get any money. IE.
- they claimed they were being harmed
- they were asked to provide specifics so that the harm could be stopped
- they ignored the request
By ignoring the request, they have contributed to their own damages & are therefor supposed to be unable to collect any damages up until they specify the patents - continued infringement past that point is subject to damages.Contracts and space. There is only so much space on the public utility right of way, and between the cable, telco, and power services, it's pretty much used. Right now, there are places in MA where the FIOS lines are being attached to extensions over the pole, and techs getting electricuted because of it.
As for the contracts, the only way to be profitable is to play a numbers game - it takes an average of 3-6 months to break even for a given customer - so you need LOTS of customers to cover your churn, and that means lots of municipalities. Trying to make an individual contract with each municipality is a nightmare for both the physical plant people & the legal department.
Fiber is getting to play by new rules. Old rules say that if you are going to use the public right-of-way, you have to share the lines. The new rules say - gimmey-da-money-and-shut-up.
The old Telco laws were expressly written to handle the copper POTS lines since there was no other service. Now that fiber is being run in, the telco's are saying that since the law says POTS, it's POTS & POTS only - and spending billions squashing attempts at updating the law while they're at it.
As a side note, I have a friend who works for Verizon & per the techs, they only yank the copper if it makes fishing the fiber easier - otherwise it's too much work & trouble.
I really have a hard time with the judges not seeing how "1 click" is anything other than obvious.
Amazon: We store a customers CC # & other information. We used to go to a page where customers had to confirm that they actually want to buy the thing they clicked on & review the amount of S&H etc, but we now provide this little button that skips that page.
Judge: Brilliant!
check the dirt in any farmyard that's had cattle in the last 75 years. It's not really all that hard to cultivate - isolation is a bit trickier. The bitch is weaponizing it. It's pretty much the same with almost all of the bacterial agents - they're little nasties that we live with every day - just concentrated enough to overwhelm your immune system.
If the GPL is a contract, then you can't sue under copyright violations - all proceedings have to happen through contract law. GPL code has a 0 cost that means your actual damages for the breach of contract are minimal - many districts restrict putative damages to some multiple of the actual damages. Unlike copyright law with it's statutory $750/copy, you could win & walk away with nothing more than your legal fees paid.