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GitHub is my copilot

GitHub is my copilot

Posted Jul 19, 2021 2:08 UTC (Mon) by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
In reply to: GitHub is my copilot by NYKevin
Parent article: GitHub is my copilot

> If you suffer no economic harm from someone's "infringement," then you should not have a claim against them, plain and simple.

There is usually zero economic harm from GPL violations (at least easily demonstrable to the copyright holder), so I think I'm going to have to disagree with you here.

> Or at most, you should have a claim to nominal damages and equitable enforcement of the license (i.e. an injunction), not statutory damages of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

An injunction against GPL violations seems good but I don't think nominal damages are appropriate based on what I read on WikiPedia, instead it should be restitutionary/disgorgement damages (where they pay back their ill-gotten gains), or possibly punitive damages or both, or something like paying for consultancy to help them come back into GPL compliance, or paying legal costs for bringing a suit against whoever they received the violating software from.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damages#Nominal_damages


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GitHub is my copilot

Posted Jul 19, 2021 14:55 UTC (Mon) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link]

The thing you have to bear in mind is that courts tend to focus on money damages as the default means of making someone whole. Injunctions are dispreferred unless they are the only way to protect the plaintiff from some "irreparable harm." So under the current system, it's easy to sue for statutory damages, but hard to sue for GPL compliance. The most straightforward way to force GPL compliance is to essentially threaten the defendant with money damages and demand that they comply in a settlement agreement. But plenty of defendants will just blow you off and assume that you won't actually litigate.

OTOH, money damages are perfect for the proprietary software crowd because they become the profit that the company was trying to make in the first place.

Side note:

> WikiPedia

They stopped using CamelCase links in 2002. Why do people still write their name like this?


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