Re: Psystar's legal reply brief in response to Apple

[ZnU]

In article <87k4o2dg4o.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>, David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> 
wrote:

> Alexander Terekhov <terekhov@web.de> writes:
> 
> > ZnU wrote:
> > [...]
> >> OK, I understand your argument. But I'm not sure I buy it. Are you
> >> saying if I sign a contract with someone that says I can make as many
> >> copies of their software as I want for $5 each, and then go and make a
> >> bunch of copies and don't pay for them, I have merely breached a
> >> contract and not committed copyright violation? 
> >
> > Yep.
> 
> Quite so.  The same would hold if you signed a contract where you agree
> to keep the conditions of the GPL in using and redistributing software.

This turns out not to be the case, if you read what he actually cited. 
In the presence of an agreement creating valid copyright conditions, 
violating the terms under which you are allowed to copy something can 
indeed be copyright violation. He simply cited a case with little 
similarity to a hypothetical GPL case, in which conditions were not 
properly established.

> If, however, no act of yours supports the contention that you ever
> intended any contractual relationship governed by the conditions of the
> GPL, you certainly might be accused of copyright violation.  You might
> want to claim wanting to make use of the GPL in discovery, but you
> better submit evidence in support of that.

Yes, that's another point. Blatantly performing actions inconsistent 
with the GPL and then, when you get caught, insisting that you had 
really accepted the license after all, but were just ignoring parts of 
it, is the sort of thing that is very unlikely to amuse a judge.

-- 
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