On Mon, 31 Mar 2003, Res wrote: >> How can it be stupid,ifyou also see it as valid? You're >> contradicting yourself. I don't see anything stupid about Red > >No, not really Mike, I see your points as valid as a point of law, but >that doesn't mean I agree with it when the software is freely available >at any ftp server, if they want to get at someone they would be better off >getting at the developers of the software, not a distributor or end user.
How would they be "better off"? Do the developers of that software have large sums of money? No. Do the developers of that software even make any money from it? Not likely. Thomson et al. aparently don't mind the software existing and being free, such as xmms, etc. Thomson doesn't care if the license on that software is valid or not, or if there even is a license. The software license only matters to the author of the software and the users of that software. So your claim that they'd be better off by suing someone with no money doesn't make any sense. If you own intellectual property, and someone is abusing your IP, you would be best off suing the people and/or companies who have a bucketload of money for you to dip into, and not by suing the people who wrote the software to begin with, who aren't making any money off doing so, and of whom you don't actually mind them making such software. If you think about it, people making GPL MP3 software are actually providing fuel for *potential* future patent lawsuits of companies that use the free code. The author of the programs are more or less not likely to ever come in the gun scope. IP owners sue where there is money to be had. >Lets face it, if they go after RH they should be going after Red Hat doesn't ship MP3 decoder software. >EVERY ISP/OSP/ASP, or Pvt company that has a public FTP server >with MP3 players on it, I don't know in the USA, as your laws They very well *could*. That doesn't mean that they would. If *you* were a patent owner in such a situation, would you sue 10000000 individual people, none of whom you'd likely make 10 cents off of, and of which you'd have 30 years worth of lawsuits to attend in court, or would you sue a few major companies of which it would be profitable to you to do so assuming you won your IP claim lawsuits? >> I'm surprised by how many people think it is ok to break the law, > >Breaking the law depends on what country your in, whats law in US is not >neccesarily law in AU/NZ/UK/RU/ZA and so on.... Absolutely. >I'm not being fecitious here (I've got alot of Amercian friends) >but I'm amazed at the number of Americans who think that someone >in a far flung country is accountable to your laws, even with >international cross agreements there are still differences that >mean I can do something here that I might very well be arrested >for in say Boston, where as I'm certain there are some things in >Boston I could get away with that I could not do here. And I'm amazed by how many people assume I'm American. I'm Canadian, and in Canada. I also don't assume the laws are the same around the world - they're not. Needless to say, the laws in Canada, and in the US are very similar, and I am specifically commenting on Canada and the US. If you're not in either country, then I'm sure your attourney can inform you of local laws. In fact, even if you are in Canada or the US, you should contact an attourney if it really is a concern to you. IANAL. -- Mike A. Harris ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat -- Phoebe-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/phoebe-list
