> Actually the whole notion of violating a license is a confused one. The > violation is of the copyright, the license merely gives some cases in > which copying is allowed. If you copy outside the license you have not > "violated" the license, you have simply infringed the copyright, and the > license is irrelevant.
Well, yes and no. In the current situation where the "license" usually isn't a signed agreement between the parties, that's correct. However, if two companies sign a license agreement for some software, that agreement is a contract between the companies and is enforceable as a contract. What you (correctly) point out is that the more usual enforcement is as a copyright infringement because that has statutory damages and the license violation would have actual damages. However, it's not at all hard to come up with scenarios where the license contained limitations that would not be permitted by copyright law and violation of such would produce provable damages that would exceed statutory copyright damages and such would be enforceable.
