[vlc-devel] WARNING: VLC is being sold without permission!!

[jpd at videolan.org]

On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 11:40:47AM +0200, R??mi Denis-Courmont wrote:
> There are no grounds for developers or the association to go after VLC
> retailers. In the case of scam, it is up to the consumer to sue.

(Ab)use of trademarks, impersonation, misrepresentation, and so on all
touch on the victim's good name and can to varying degrees be litigated.

If alice offers something under GPL for free download and ernie
offers the exact same thing for the price of an expensive SMS, then
the latter's ``reasonable costs'' for distribution seem much less
reasonable.

In fact, what seems to happen here is that ernie is freeloading on
alice's bandwidth by through the link it hands out and is charging for
the link. I don't know what that is exactly, but it smells. By using a
website that clearly is intended to look like the official site (where
one can get the same stuff for free), that would be misrepresentation,
impersonation, and thus fraud. It also causes damage because it bypasses
the mirroring system. Calculating the damage will be interesting, but
that's a different issue.
 

I think it would be worth it to ask the FSF(E)'s legal opinion on this.