On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 07:16:22PM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: > On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 10:16:12AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote: > > On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 10:31:02PM -0800, D. Starner wrote: > > > > Also, in any sane legal > > > > system, it should only affect those users who willingly violate the > > > > licence, > > > > even after a cease-and-desist letter, and i would say they deserve what > > > > they > > > > get. > > > > > > In any sane legal system, the judge is going to find out what's going > > > on from both sides before he even considers dismissing the case. That > > > > Ok, but we are in the case where the defendor is innocent, right ? > > So? The cost of defending against the suit is still considerable. And > there is no guarantee of being awarded costs even for a frivolous lawsuit, > let alone collecting.
Well, the cost would be mostly the same, but i answered that elsewhere to you. > > > means that the user has to hire a French lawyer to write a response to > > > the statement of cause. Unless the judges are omniscient, that's what > > > has to happen. > > > > What exactly is stopping him from hiring a local lawyer to write the > > statement > > and sent it per letter to the judge, and how will it differ from the case > > where the court of venue is local to him ? The choice of law is the french > > law > > in both case. > > It's still very costly. Here's an example from the US: > http://mainsleazespam.com/law/ema.html Yeah, but cost in the US and cost elsewhere may not be comparable. And we have free legal counsel here. And an instruction judge, which mean that you have to somehow convince the judge of the legalities of your claim before the lawsuit starts. This would not be the case in the US, i think. > Whilst this is America, home of the bullshit lawsuit, I contend that > something substantively similar could happen basically anywhere. It > happened in Australia, too, again around the issue of spam, and I think > there's been a similar case or two in Europe somewhere. Well, the law of australia and US are mostly similar, are they not ? > > > And let's be honest; a court case may look obvious to us, but few > > > judges have ever had a case where an open-sourceish license is > > > > Well, but a tentative to repeteadly harass using lawsuits will probably not > > be > > missed by a judge. > > s/tentative/tendency/? Possibly not, but it's not hard to identify this > sort of thing if the suits don't come before the same judge. No, a try would be more like it ? Also, since the defendor has at least the chance of an initial reply, he could very well mention other suits, or tries of suits, and i thougt there were something about a suit once tried or dismissed, you cannot simply go to another judge and try again. Friendly, Sven Luther

