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.<br>
<br>Thanks for your insight, and I'll post up if I hear (or don't hear) anything from them.<br><br>-Chris<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 10:56, Neil Brown <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:neil@neilzone.co.uk">neil@neilzone.co.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">(Originally replied just to Chris, by accident, so copied back onto list)<div class="im"><br>
<br>
Quoting Chris McCracken <<a href="mailto:chrismc@ozarkmountain.net" target="_blank">chrismc@ozarkmountain.net</a>>:<br>
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</div><div class="im"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
HTC is required by US and International copyright law to do so.<br>
</blockquote>
<br></div><div class="im">
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.<br>
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</div><div class="im"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
If this request is not<br>
met, then HTC is required by law to cease and desist distribution of said<br>
software (Linux kernel), which would require ceasing distribution of the<br>
US-spec CDMA Hero phone as currently configured.<br>
</blockquote>
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<br></div><div><div></div><div class="h5">
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.<br>
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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.<br>
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Just my thoughts, as always!<br>
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-- <br>
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Neil<br>
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<a href="mailto:neil@neilzone.co.uk" target="_blank">neil@neilzone.co.uk</a> | <a href="http://neilzone.co.uk" target="_blank">http://neilzone.co.uk</a><br>
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