Tim Smith wrote:
In article <i4nml3-e26.ln1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, The Ghost In The
Machine wrote:
AFAICT, criminal prosecution is possible if the value of the works is over
$1,000 (retail). Civil suits have the option of recovering damages
(including court costs and attorney's fees for *both* sides) and lost
profits.
There's also the notion of "statutory damages". The basic idea is that it
is very hard to compute actual damages in many copyright cases, so the law
provides an alternative of letting you ask the judge to pick the damages for
each infringement, from a range given in the statute.
The big cost in this case is not monetary, but the loss of the moral high
ground. It's hard to do a creditable job of bitching about Microsoft's
stealing of other people's works when one does it themselves on their web
site.
Easy to bitch about Microsoft's theft of your code, when Microsoft has
LOST over 359 lawsuits for PIRACY, and, that included a large amount of
Open Source code works, invented by universities, under
agreements/licenses that any commercial use was to incur a minor royalty.
The royalties payments for the TCP/IP of BSD exceeded $80 million, in
the Microsoft case adjudicated in 2005 with two Universities! Every bit
worth the 'bitching' because those dollars were marked to aid in the
extension of educational opportunities...
Also, easy to bitch when you use, run, generate, all code in the Open
Source arena. Companies, lawyers, and associations, who sue the
customers are counterproductive to invention.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39273865,00.htm
http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci1189848,00.html?track=NL-301&ad=552217USCA
http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/columnItem/0,294698,sid39_gci1156919,00.html?track=NL-301&ad=541977
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