From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,365c587e3030d8f6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner) Subject: Re: Win32Ada Date: 1998/11/23 Message-ID: <73clg8$91g$1@news.nyu.edu>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 414957361 References: <734eo8$41v$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <73633i$aqs$1@news.nyu.edu> <73c3so$rsi$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.nyu.edu X-Trace: news.nyu.edu 911857992 9264 (None) 128.122.140.194 Organization: New York University Ultracomputer Research Lab Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-11-23T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <73c3so$rsi$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> dennison@telepath.com writes: >In article <73633i$aqs$1@news.nyu.edu>, > kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner) wrote: >> I'd agree the GPL doesn't make illegal, but I'd be very concerned >> about a criminal charge of "possession of stolen property" against >> anybody who knowingly accepted such material since it *was* stolen and >> is a licenced and copyrighted work. > >I don't think that would be a problem. BDU was deprived of no physical >resource, and CJ was meerly copying the software from their hard-drives in >accordance with the software license. By the terms of the license, copying it >from their hard-drives is no different from copying it from their web server. Most jurisdiction have the concept of stealing data, so it doesn't have to be a physical object to be "stolen property". And the fact that a legitimate possessor of the data is permitted to copy it isn't relevant to CJ. >Perhaps the electrons on CJ's floppy were stolen from BDU's hard drives, but >it would be awfully tough to prove anyone further down the line recieved >those same stolen electrons from the BDU hard-drive. Well, proof is indeed a possible problem, but could be gotten around in various ways. For example, CJ might testify against all those he sold copies to in exchange for a reduced sentence.