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It's super interesting to see the court go for active user and not install when calculating damages, may be the first acknowledgement ever that piracy distribut

It's super interesting to see the court go for active user and not install when calculating damages, may be the first acknowledgement ever that piracy distribution figures aren't a reasonable source for calculating damages.

willnonya 4y ago
Had this not been the government deferring to the government I might agree with you. As an entity with large legal and IT resources at its disposal there is no reason for this scale of violation. Especially if there is a per install license and acknowledgement.
deleted 4y ago
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colechristensen 4y ago
Lots of commercial software is licensed that way
- avereveard 4y ago
  yes! but lot of piracy argument about losses consider installations and distribution totals, not actual usage.
dhx 4y ago
This stood out to me as well. If the damages is only based on actual usage/active users, it seemingly values availability of the software at $0. The value of this software to the Navy I would argue is much more than how many active users ever actually used it. Given that Navy need to have software available to rapidly deploy in worst case scenarios (large conflict requiring extensive use of a particular type of software), this would often or usually necessitate acquiring many software licenses to be purchased, even though they'd typically never get used in peacetime situations. As another example, a business may have a disaster recovery plan that would make extensive use of alternative cloud-hosted remote computing services. If the business waited until the next global pandemic to purchase and setup these services, they'd likely be met with "sorry our capacity is full" responses from providers. Thus the business should be paying for the service at all times as if the disaster recovery plan could be immediately activated and alternative cloud-hosted remote computing services used immediately without risk of a "sorry out capacity is full" response. This service is worth a significant amount to the business as without the service in place and ready to use at a moment's notice, the business would have an unmitigated and costly risk presenting a much higher future liability to the business. As one last example, if a jukebox existed with a library of 1,000,000 pirated songs for users choose from, wouldn't this be more valuable than a jukebox with a library of only 1,000 pirated songs for users to choose from? Whilst only 500 songs from each jukebox may have ever been selected and played under similar conditions, users (and thus the venues hosting the jukeboxes) would more highly value the first jukebox with a larger library to play the exact song users want to listen to, not a song that is only similar enough.

willnonya 4y ago

Had this not been the government deferring to the government I might agree with you. As an entity with large legal and IT resources at its disposal there is no reason for this scale of violation. Especially if there is a per install license and acknowledgement.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

colechristensen 4y ago

Lots of commercial software is licensed that way

avereveard 4y ago
yes! but lot of piracy argument about losses consider installations and distribution totals, not actual usage.

dhx 4y ago

This stood out to me as well. If the damages is only based on actual usage/active users, it seemingly values availability of the software at $0. The value of this software to the Navy I would argue is much more than how many active users ever actually used it. Given that Navy need to have software available to rapidly deploy in worst case scenarios (large conflict requiring extensive use of a particular type of software), this would often or usually necessitate acquiring many software licenses to be purchased, even though they'd typically never get used in peacetime situations. As another example, a business may have a disaster recovery plan that would make extensive use of alternative cloud-hosted remote computing services. If the business waited until the next global pandemic to purchase and setup these services, they'd likely be met with "sorry our capacity is full" responses from providers. Thus the business should be paying for the service at all times as if the disaster recovery plan could be immediately activated and alternative cloud-hosted remote computing services used immediately without risk of a "sorry out capacity is full" response. This service is worth a significant amount to the business as without the service in place and ready to use at a moment's notice, the business would have an unmitigated and costly risk presenting a much higher future liability to the business. As one last example, if a jukebox existed with a library of 1,000,000 pirated songs for users choose from, wouldn't this be more valuable than a jukebox with a library of only 1,000 pirated songs for users to choose from? Whilst only 500 songs from each jukebox may have ever been selected and played under similar conditions, users (and thus the venues hosting the jukeboxes) would more highly value the first jukebox with a larger library to play the exact song users want to listen to, not a song that is only similar enough.