Hacker News Reader

Comment by SwellJoe | Hacker News Reader

Jail for copyright violation? I guess people who've distributed pirated goods, like movies or music, have gone to jail, but I've never heard of it happening to a software developer. Fines are plausible, but I'm having a hard time imagining a scenario that leads to jail time.

View on HN

The plausible situation is no criminal case, just a civil case, and probably settling for what amounts to a fine / delayed purchase, e.g. the "$10k donation" alluded to. But the worst case possibility, even if very unlikely, should include jail time (somehow -- I too don't know exactly how that would work out or who exactly would go to jail, manager or dev).

Just curious here... It's a license violation, then, not a copyright (law) violation. So isn't it more like breach of contract, i.e. a civil matter between parties, rather than a criminal case? And one does not go to jail for civil cases, do they?

GPL is a license to use copyrighted code, not a contract. If you violate the terms, your license is revoked. If you then continue to distribute the code in question without a license, then you may be liable for copyright infringement.

The first consequence of this is that only the copyright holder has standing to sue you, not anyone else who thinks they have a right to your code because you violated the GPL terms. They’re just wrong.

The second consequence is that the only remedies for copyright infringement are an injunction and damages related to the copyrighted code. So a court could force you to stop distributing the copyrighted code, requiring you to either (1) remove the GPL code from your product and use a substitute, or (2) pay for a commercial license from the owner. But you would not be forced to release your proprietary code under a GPL license.

Regarding jail for civil cases, no. In the US, we eliminated debtors’ prisons many years ago.

Developers have gone to jail for stealing code from financial companies.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov

Most GPL projects however don't have expensive, hateful, blood seeking lawyers behind them.

That is completely different. You don't go to jail for a license violation.

I remember in some situations that copyright infringement is cheaper than license violation. The former you can argue ignorance and pay a a fine the later you've knowing acknowledge what you've done is a violation of another person license but continued your behavior.

Honest question:

Is a license violation not equivalent to unlicensed use of code?

I mean, if you don't meet the terms of a license, you're not eligible to use the code under that license. That means you have no license to the code, and therefore are in breach of copyright, no?

How is that different from just using someone else's code outright - you're breaching copyright and you're not licensed, no?

Well, the difference in that case is that it isn't license violation at all. This case is a trade secret violation. Since Goldman Sachs never released the source code, it is by definition a trade secret which Sergey Aleynikov was not allowed to release or utilize outside of his job at Goldman Sachs.

If Goldman Sachs ever officially released the software it could be a copyright or license violation but this isn't the case.

Aleynikov was charged with stealing trade secrets, which does not apply to GPL software.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com