On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 12:42:08PM +0000, Alan Cox wrote: > On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 14:36:19 -0500 > "Lee Revell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Jan 30, 2008 1:54 PM, Adrian Bunk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > IANAL, and I would therefore ask a lawyer whether, and if yes under > > > which circumstances, shipping a binary driver written for another OS > > > dynamically linked into the Linux kernel would not be a criminal offense. > > > > > > > Please stop throwing around words like "criminal". If this is in fact > > illegal it would be a civil matter. > > Actually in large parts of europe multiple repeated infractions of > copyright law are criminal matters.
"multiple repeated infractions" might not be required. I remember one case in Germany where offering 272 songs in a P2P network once resulted in a fine based on criminal law. [1] Convictions under civil law seem to be easier and result in higher costs for the copyright violators, so the music industry tends to use the reportings of offences in Germany only for getting the names of the people from the IP addresses they have (happened in a five digit number of cases), don't care about whether the criminal law cases proceed, and focus on the civil law cases. But if you are doing more than just filesharing, or even make a profit out of it, the maximum penalties go up to 5 years in jail... > Alan cu Adrian [1] http://www.jurpc.de/rechtspr/20040236.pdf -- "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days. "Only a promise," Lao Er said. Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
