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Julian Hall wrote: > > MS and SCO are irrelevant to the argument. FAST are not as they are the > body charged with monitoring activities in this area. No they're not a > law enforcement agency, but then nor are Customs and Excise who monitor > various activities. Most of the laws in this area are civil laws, so there is no law enforcement agencies for most of it, other than when the individual who perceives a wrong against them taking legal action. So in that sense FAST is a law enforcement agency. One of the mistakes, I believe, in the DMCA (and the EU Copyright directive) was to move some copyright offences into criminal law. The police/state have more important things to do than protecting "property" that is created only by agreement anyway. As such if you write a program you licence for £29.99 and Ben copies it, and doesn't pay you, it isn't worth you pursuing the case against him as an individual. Although I agree with you that if that is the licence you apply to your software people should respect it, I'd be very upset if people didn't respect the licences on software I contribute to. Of course if FAST or someone found lots of such software on Ben's computers it might be worth them pursuing it collectively, also as an example to others. I suspect Ben's computers are mostly covered in free software.
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