[Arm-netbook] Allwinner's LGPL violation

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 2:44 PM, Alain Williams <addw at phcomp.co.uk> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 02:22:42PM +0000, Phil Hands wrote:
>> Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl at lkcl.net> writes:
>> ...
>> >  as it stands the early release of the binary (with the re-wrapped
>> > functions) looks remarkably similar to the illegal attempt made by
>> > some criminals in 1996 to pass off the entire samba source code as
>> > their own Copyright Work (sale price $USD 50,000).
>>
>> The wrapper approach sounds like it might not be that different from
>> VMware's attempt to insulate themselves from the GPL, for which they're
>> currently going to court in Hamburg:
>>
>>   http://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/
>
> Does that mean that we can add http://www.vmware.com/ to the list of web sites
> that are to be blocked by the major ISPs as part of the UK push to deal with
> copyright issues ?

 i don't see why not!

> Is there any reason that this cannot be done now, ie before
> the trial since, as far as I am aware, many of the sites being blocked have not
> been taken to court and 'proof' is on the assertions on the copyright holders.
>
> This is not an entirely frivolous point.  Many companies get away with GPL
> infringement because the FLOSS authors do not have the legal muscle to take them
> to court. Having their web sites 'banned' by assertion would be very
> interesting.

 oo now that's *very* interesting.  esp. if presented by the SFLC or
FSFE on behalf of clients, it's a standard "copyright theft" issue so
should be just as easy a case to make as any "music or video" theft.

l.