Wut?

Many of the arguments you use could be just as easily used to allow GPL works to be derived from and distributed in ways against the license. How do you reconcile that?

D'Oh! How could I miss that that's totally the same, right down to the draconian fines, prison sentences, and SWAT raids.

So if the penalties were reduced to the same penalties for GPL violations, you'd be all for it?

In this particular case, I think that's about right: The RIAA/MPAA publishers should consider Pirate Bay disreputable and everyone else can make up their own mind whether to do business with them or not. That's how GPL violations work in practice.

That's about how O'Reilly views people posting downloads of O'Reilly authors' books. That's why they don't use content protection on the e-books they sell. Content protection mechanisms are poisoning computing.

Well, whether tainting or actual legal actions are taken depends on which GPL violation you're talking about. The Busybox developers are quite happy to pursuit legal options when lesser means fail, for instance, and I will certainly not say they're doing anything wrong.

I personally don't think copyright infringement warrants anything near the level of legal activity it had just a few years ago, so I'm glad the RIAA/MPAA are moving away from suing the pants off of everybody. But a lot of people seem to have the idea that copying digital works is morally right as long as you're stealing from a business, and yet simultaneously believe that copyleft should apply all the time, which is doublethink.

> Content protection mechanisms are poisoning computing.

So we should get rid of EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL in the Linux kernel?

I'm not familiar with those cases. Have they collected damages? Or just enforcing C&D demands?