[HN Gopher] Court Orders U.S. Navy to Pay $154,400 in Software P...
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Court Orders U.S. Navy to Pay $154,400 in Software Piracy Damages
Author : gslin
Score : 32 points
Date : 2022-11-26 20:41 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
| egberts1 wrote:
| Gee whiz, after all these years of ensigns, lieutenants, and lt.
| commanders contributing to early Linux high speed, low-latency
| ATM drivers toward the Linux kernel, ya think there can be an
| offset or something?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It's cool that a German SW company can sue the US Navy and win.
| Take a moment for that to sink in.
| searealist wrote:
| Poor choice of words.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _This figure is lower than the $370 per install that was
| negotiated earlier. However, the expert witness believes that
| this is warranted due to the large volume of the deal and the
| fact that the software company's cash position was rather low at
| the time._
|
| Interesting how the court is using the business' past financials
| to reconstruct what would have been negotiated if the
| infringement hadn't happened.
| madsbuch wrote:
| This seems reasonable as the US Navy likely hadn't bough
| licenses for $155 mil, but had negotiated or accepted other use
| patterns than en-masse installation.
|
| Importantly, this should also be seen as precedence for private
| piracy and that people with thousands of movies on their
| harddrives naturally aren't liable for the sum of their retail
| price.
| kasztelan_ wrote:
| >Importantly, this should also be seen as precedence for
| private piracy and that people with thousands of movies on
| their harddrives naturally aren't liable for the sum of their
| retail price.
|
| I don't think that holds. They installed all this software
| automatically, when you download movies you have to manually
| action each one. I mean, unless people are downloading movie
| packs from torrent sites these days or whatever?
| Kinrany wrote:
| Automation is merely a tool. There's little difference
| between running a script and clicking "download" blindly a
| thousand times.
| avereveard wrote:
| It's super interesting to see the court go for active user and
| not install when calculating damages, may be the first
| acknowledgement ever that piracy distribution figures aren't a
| reasonable source for calculating damages.
| [deleted]
| colechristensen wrote:
| Lots of commercial software is licensed that way
| willnonya wrote:
| Had this not been the government deferring to the government I
| might agree with you.
|
| As an entity with large legal and IT resources at its disposal
| there is no reason for this scale of violation. Especially if
| there is a per install license and acknowledgement.
| flerchin wrote:
| Jammie Thomas should have been so lucky.
| willnonya wrote:
| The problem I have with this type of verdict is that it's based
| on a hypothetical version of what could have happened had the
| Navy not actually violated the license agreement.
|
| It reeks of deference to a favored party, in this case the Navy.
| It's doubtful a commercial entity would have received this same
| deference.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Or Joe Random Pirate who always get an exemplary, harsh
| penalty.
| tzs wrote:
| I don't know how common that method of figuring damages is in
| copyright infringement cases, but it is often done in patent
| infringement cases regardless of whether the defendant is the
| government or a commercial entity.
| kasztelan_ wrote:
| That seems like a reasonable verdict. I wonder if the software
| company tried to argue that there would be additional costs
| associated if the deal really took place. Support, upgrades, etc.
| cwillu wrote:
| "Sounds like they saved your company the cost of those
| services; we'll reduce the damages accordingly."
| kasztelan_ wrote:
| Yep, I can imagine that.
|
| That got me wondering, if the software company was from US
| and not Germany, how different would be the amount.
| vkoskiv wrote:
| "It's better to be a pirate than join the navy."
|
| - S.J.
| mywacaday wrote:
| I once saw a true-up scan on banking software come up with a
| million dollar bill. Turns out the software ended up on the new
| starter form and most mangers checked the box in case it was
| needed but nobody realised it was 5k a seat. I would also be
| suspicious that the reason for the scan was due to the vendor
| getting wind that they were being replaced. With the contract
| being iron clan and no leverage the bill was paid.
| pengaru wrote:
| $154,400 is nearly zero in this context, no?
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(page generated 2022-11-26 23:01 UTC)