Linux kernel on HTC Hero Android phone (CDMA/US-Spec)

[Chris McCracken]

I would agree that its not terribly clear on the legal ramifications. The
inference I'm making is that the law says that you have to honor the
copyright wishes and licenses of the copyright holder.  Since I'm sending it
to tech support, and not the legal department (nor would I send to legal,
since IANAL), I didn't want to get too particular about the legalities.  I
intentionally avoided writing anything threatening, and instead kept the
tone just "informational" enough to get their attention. I'm hoping to
resolve the issue with a specific request from techie-to-techie and no legal
intervention, but wanted things to be well documented in case it comes to
that.

Thanks for your insight, and I'll post up if I hear (or don't hear) anything
from them.

-Chris

On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 10:56, Neil Brown <neil at neilzone.co.uk> wrote:

> (Originally replied just to Chris, by accident, so copied back onto list)
>
>
> Quoting Chris McCracken <chrismc at ozarkmountain.net>:
>
>  HTC is required by US and International copyright law to do so.
>>
>
> This is, perhaps, a little misleading, at least to my understanding- HTC is
> required by the terms of GNU GPL to do so (as you point out above), not by
> any copyright law. If HTC does not comply with the terms of the licence,
> then, HTC may infringe copyright, but there is no requirement of copyright
> law as such to make the source code available.
>
>  If this request is not
>> met, then HTC is required by law to cease and desist distribution of said
>> software (Linux kernel), which would require ceasing distribution of the
>> US-spec CDMA Hero phone as currently configured.
>>
>
>
> Similar to the above - this may be an aspect of US law with which I am not
> familiar, but, in the UK, there is no legal requirement to cease
> distributing something, even if it is infringing copyright, without a court
> order requiring this - it's just that the distribution would amount to an
> infringement of copyright.
>
>
> In any case, were the request not met, cessation of distribution would be
> insufficient, to my mind, since this only prevents future infringement - it
> does nothing to remedy past infringement.
>
>
> Just my thoughts, as always!
>
> --
>
>
>
> Neil
>
> neil at neilzone.co.uk | http://neilzone.co.uk
>
>
>
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