Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2000 12:15:47 -0500 (CDT) From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: cvs commit: ports/audio/opennap - Imported sources Message-ID: <14724.25283.195876.310110@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <bulk.64968.20000729232427@hub.freebsd.org> References: <bulk.64968.20000729232427@hub.freebsd.org>
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> From: Peter Wemm <peter@netplex.com.au> > Exactly. But there is a big "but!". Suppose Metalica (for want of a > better example) sues you for contributory copyright infringement. Suppose > it is going to cost you over $100K to practically get past the first base > to say in court "I have done nothing wrong". It doesn't matter if you are > right or not, once you're out of pocket on those sort of amounts it starts > killing you. The lawyers know this damn well, and will abuse that to make > sure you cannot afford to contest it and that they win by default. Why should this go to court? The RIAA contacted napster "a number of times, including in writing" <URL: http://www.mp3.com/news/471.html > to try and get them to stop the copyright violations. Napster couldn't do that without closing up shop. On the other hand, marking the various napster client ports RESTRICTED and deleting the packages - or even deleting the ports - wouldn't do any serious harm to FreeBSD. There's no real reason to take either of those actions before getting a "cease and desist" letter from someone, though. That doesn't mean there's no possibility of lawsuit, but that's always true. After all, there are a couple of gnutella clients, which are also file distribution utilities like napster. Come to think of it, the core includes file distribution utilities which can be used that way. All those are possible lawsuit targets, but all are unlikely. Napster is currently high profile (which is probably why this port drew that reaction, but the earlier ones didn't) and maybe slightly more risky, but the ability to just say "Ok, we won't distribute that anymore" makes the cost associated with that risk very low. <mike To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message
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