sued Orange in 2010
14 years. Insane.
And now you know why French companies are literally pegging users with total impunity. Seldom anyone sues companies in France, and when people do, most of the time it ends up ruining their lives with a giant slapp suit.
ISPs especially, since there are only 4 for the entire country, and consequently, they have enormous resources at their disposal.
To make matters worse, the French judicial system is extremely dated, has no understanding of technological matters, and is slower than the Deutsche Bahn processing a broken engine situation.
This is a far cry from Germany, where there are dozen of ISPs per land or even major city, and where lawsuits can happen over the course of months.
When you think of French administrations, think of people who are playing pretend-beamter, but who have neither the tools nor the skills (save for maybe 10% of them who have to manage literally everything by themselves with a stupidly low salary). No accountability, no expectations, and no barrier of entry aside from the “luck of the draw” ended up creating a system where too many people tried forever to work there, only to be paid better than welfare and do less work (let’s be honest, being on welfare is no walk in the park, the state will fuck you up if you keep refusing to take underpaid, exhausting labour “offers”).
How historic is this? Has there been other copyright awards based on infringement of the GPL before?
I’ve only ever heard of corrections for GPL violation from a settlements (which is usually the goal of a group like the Software Freedom Conservancy who focuses on fixing violations).