Re: ndiswrapper and GPL-only symbols redux

Adrian Bunk
2008-02-04T13:56:42Z

On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 12:42:08PM +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 14:36:19 -0500
> "Lee Revell" <rlrevell@joe-job.com> wrote:
>
> > On Jan 30, 2008 1:54 PM, Adrian Bunk <bunk@kernel.org> wrote:
> > > IANAL, and I would therefore ask a lawyer whether, and if yes under
> > > which circumstances, shipping a binary driver written for another OS
> > > dynamically linked into the Linux kernel would not be a criminal offense.
> > >
> >
> > Please stop throwing around words like "criminal". If this is in fact
> > illegal it would be a civil matter.
>
> Actually in large parts of europe multiple repeated infractions of
> copyright law are criminal matters.

"multiple repeated infractions" might not be required.

I remember one case in Germany where offering 272 songs in a P2P network
once resulted in a fine based on criminal law. [1]

Convictions under civil law seem to be easier and result in higher costs
for the copyright violators, so the music industry tends to use the
reportings of offences in Germany only for getting the names of the
people from the IP addresses they have (happened in a five digit number
of cases), don't care about whether the criminal law cases proceed, and
focus on the civil law cases.

But if you are doing more than just filesharing, or even make a profit
out of it, the maximum penalties go up to 5 years in jail...

> Alan

cu
Adrian

[1] http://www.jurpc.de/rechtspr/20040236.pdf

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