Re:The terms of the AGPL are pretty easy to comply with
by jrockway on Monday July 27, 2020 @03:05PM
(#23968291)
That's unlikely. You're falling into the common trap of assuming laws and computer source code work the same way -- you have a set of instructions that you evaluate from top to bottom until you get an answer. The law doesn't really work that way; there are laws, but there are also reasonable humans deeply embedded in the process. So in your case, you'd have to be the author of some AGPL software, have some third party install it on GCP, and then sue Google to get the GCP source code. Google would send a representative that says "this is a generic platform where anyone can run any computer program they want; we don't suggest that users run this AGPL program, and we have no way to detect that they're running it; this is an issue between Company X and the author." The judge and jury would then see that Google has absolutely no control over that license infringement, and would probably not award you their source code. It would just be unreasonable to any normal person for Google to be involved in your contract; they took no action to enter into a contract with you, after all. No cloud platform could ever exist if they automatically became parties to random software contracts. The legal system would take all of that into account when deciding how to make you whole.
Similar arguments would involve suing Intel for copyright infringement because their memory controller copied copyrighted information from RAM into cache. That's copying! But ultimately, Intel is just infrastructure; some user got the copyrighted data into RAM and knew full well that CPUs copy it into cache from time to time. That doesn't make Intel a party to your copyright infringement lawsuit, even though they did instruct the infringer's device to make a copy without your permission. It simply isn't reasonable -- no efficient CPUs could be manufactured if you won your lawsuit. So it's unlikely a court would hold Intel responsible.
Finally, there is the classic "if you read this, you owe me $50." You just did! But any court would find that an unenforceable contract because you didn't really consent to it. So I won't be suing you for $50. The world couldn't function if I could do things like this. So contract law exists without that particular contract being valid.
Similar arguments would involve suing Intel for copyright infringement because their memory controller copied copyrighted information from RAM into cache. That's copying! But ultimately, Intel is just infrastructure; some user got the copyrighted data into RAM and knew full well that CPUs copy it into cache from time to time. That doesn't make Intel a party to your copyright infringement lawsuit, even though they did instruct the infringer's device to make a copy without your permission. It simply isn't reasonable -- no efficient CPUs could be manufactured if you won your lawsuit. So it's unlikely a court would hold Intel responsible.
Finally, there is the classic "if you read this, you owe me $50." You just did! But any court would find that an unenforceable contract because you didn't really consent to it. So I won't be suing you for $50. The world couldn't function if I could do things like this. So contract law exists without that particular contract being valid.