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" and I find it hard to see how damages could be levied in this situation." Unfortunately, this would be intentional copyright infringement (assuming the code

" and I find it hard to see how damages could be levied in this situation." Unfortunately, this would be intentional copyright infringement (assuming the code is copyrightable, blah blah blah), since you are doing it on purpose with knowledge that it is copyrighted. In a number of countries, copyright infringement is also strict liability - it doesn't matter if you had any intent to commit it, but if you did, the damages often start much much higher. So the former case you'd probably have some nominal statutory damages, assuming you can't prove any actual loss. But in the later case, those damages get quite high. In the US, for example, statutory damages for intentional copyright infringement (IE you don't have to prove any actual damage) are 150k per infringement. I make no claims any of this makes sense, or someone will actually sue you, or that you should do anything different than "nothing". My only claim is that "and I find it hard to see how damages could be levied in this situation." is totally the wrong view in a lot of countries - you should expect, if it did get to that point, you would have plenty of damages levied against you. The author appears to be in the UK, where statutory damages for infringement were historically not available. but post-brexit, they were actually doing consultation/blah blah blah on making them available. I have no idea what happened. But even if they have no statutory damages, it won't prevent you from being sued wherever the contributor is, and having that law apply rather than your home law :) It just makes it harder to collect.

toast0 2y ago
> In the US, for example, statutory damages for intentional copyright infringement (IE you don't have to prove any actual damage) are 150k per infringement. I was of the possibly wrong impression that statuatory damages require that the work have been registered with the library of congress. Which seems unlikely for a small patch that might not even be copyrightable anyway.
- DannyBee 2y ago
  It's also required to file suit anyway, but for that purpose does not have to be done before the infringement (IE you can register after infringement) - see Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com LLC et al You are somewhat correct on the statutory damages part. You can also register after learning of infringement there, as long as it is within 3 months of publication: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/412 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/412 This is just the statutory damages side. The author is also wrong in the "no loss" thing anyway because what courts consider loss is much greater than the average expectation of people :) I also think they severely underestimate the ease with which they can cut off contributory/etc infringement liability claims. They seem to think they just get to remove the code and go about their life, but in practice, it's not that simple.

toast0 2y ago

> In the US, for example, statutory damages for intentional copyright infringement (IE you don't have to prove any actual damage) are 150k per infringement. I was of the possibly wrong impression that statuatory damages require that the work have been registered with the library of congress. Which seems unlikely for a small patch that might not even be copyrightable anyway.

DannyBee 2y ago
It's also required to file suit anyway, but for that purpose does not have to be done before the infringement (IE you can register after infringement) - see Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com LLC et al You are somewhat correct on the statutory damages part. You can also register after learning of infringement there, as long as it is within 3 months of publication: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/412 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/412 This is just the statutory damages side. The author is also wrong in the "no loss" thing anyway because what courts consider loss is much greater than the average expectation of people :) I also think they severely underestimate the ease with which they can cut off contributory/etc infringement liability claims. They seem to think they just get to remove the code and go about their life, but in practice, it's not that simple.