[j1nx]

If you use distribute software in breach of copyright (ie not complying with the licence) then a court can ban you from distributing it. Breach the court order, it's contempt and you risk a fine or jail. At least that would be a sunmary of the procedure and remedies in common law countries (UK, USA, Canada, Australia, NZ etc. Netherlands, I am not sure, but as a country that most of the world 's commercial law stems from, I imagine it'd be pretty strong on copyright and have similar laws.)

Most open source cases have settled with an undertaking to comply in future and a donation/ contribution to costs. An undertaking to a court is enforceable in the same way as an order, contempt=fine or imprisonment.

Above is indeed valid for any "normal" copyright case as the copyright itself is 99% of the time into place to explicit forbid distribution. So yes, for all those cases the court's verdict would be to ban you from distribution.

In this case, a ban will be again a direct violation of the license itself. So banning from distribution is not possible. The only verdict could be to release the code, OR remove the binary. (Yes in a way this is a sort of ban, but not a hard one) So basically enforce the release of code or withdraw the binary release.

You will not be able to prove you had any financial damages because of it as you do not sell the software.

Yes you can. You have to prove how many lines of code they copied into their product and evaluate how much one line is worth (usually >1$/line). The licence is not important if you look from that direction.

Again, in which case does the violation caused financial damages to the foundation. Lines of code and typical >1$/line might again be suitable for commercial prooducts, but in this case; The foundation is non-profit and the code is "free". Correct me if I am wrong,. but I can not come up with any way that a GPL violation would results is things like "loss of income".

You could argue about losses because of damages to the image of the foundation it self, but the Trademark has been implemented to protect against that. And in this case with DITisTV, the trademark policy has not been violated. Without insight information nobody could know the underlying code is Kodi and/or for that matter related to the project/foundation.




Don't know about the USA laws and rules, but as DITisTV is Dutch and the sales are done within the Netherlands, so Dutch laws apply.

People talk about (or think it is about); "Criminal offenses", but a copyright violation is NOT a criminal offense! It falls under "civil rights" (civiele recht), which makes it a "tort" (onrechtmatige daad). That means it is a case between citizens and businesses. Not between citizens and the goverment, hence making the act/violation itself never subject to enprisonment. (the violation, not the contempt that might follow from it).

Because as desribed above, penelties are slim and far from the limit of EUR25k, this case would have to go to subdistrict (kantonrechter). In that case, the violator does not have to make any costs for lawyers (That is a right, not a duty)

Dragging any guy's ass into court is a rather expensive procedure. So despite it is "the right thing" todo, it is basically like Ned Scott says;

In any case possible and practical are two different things, and what is or isn't practical can be very subjective.

For a non-profit organisation that is been driven by donations and a few sponsors, legal actions would soon empty the pockets.


Don't get me wrong, I do believe in opensource, but to me it's license can only be enforced by commercial businesses, but than again, those guys are not using opensource for the exact same reasons.

(Same applies for the Trademark btw. Registering and enforcing it is a rather costly business. Problem there is that where at the GPL you still have the option to look the other way. The trademark has to be enforced by the holder otherwise they loose it again)