> On the other hand, with a willful violator, I wouldn't mind getting my
> percentage of the $500-$100,000 statutory damages per infringement (i.e.,
> per download of the violating binaries, no?)
That normally works, when the software is "sold" by the violating
company (i.e. there is a paper trail). With Free Software, there is no real
way to tell how many people downloaded it, got it from their friends, copied
it on CD at their LUG, or in the case of Bluefish Wireless, was "delivered"
the application from one of their (braindead and incredibly insecure) "pods"
at one of the local tradeshows.
In cases like this, a blanket settlement amount is usually
agreed-upon by all parties, and levied that way. Of course, this doesn't
mean that the violation just "goes away", they still have to comply, they
are simply paying a "fine" for prior damages. If downloads continue to
happen, without compliance, the process starts all over again.
In the case of Bluefish Wireless, they were, at one point, claiming
that they wrote the app themselves, to their customers. This is what the law
calls "False designation of origin", which is protected by the Lanham Act (a
separate violating in itself).
The GPL is a license, not a law or a contract. Once a company is
found to be violating it, their rights to continue to redistribute the code
under that license are revoked. Every copy they sell/distribute after that
point is a separate and independant instance of a US Copyright violation,
protected by the rights of the country that it is registered in... in our
case, the US.
The GPL _grants_ rights, it doesn't take them away.
d.
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