Richard Kenner wrote:
Actually the whole notion of violating a license is a confused one. The
violation is of the copyright, the license merely gives some cases in
which copying is allowed. If you copy outside the license you have not
"violated" the license, you have simply infringed the copyright, and the
license is irrelevant.
Well, yes and no. In the current situation where the "license" usually
isn't a signed agreement between the parties, that's correct. However, if
two companies sign a license agreement for some software, that agreement is
a contract between the companies and is enforceable as a contract. What
you (correctly) point out is that the more usual enforcement is as a
copyright infringement because that has statutory damages and the license
violation would have actual damages.
Not the right analogy, the right analogy is a shrink wrapped license
e.g. from Microsoft, such licenses just
