Can I viably sue for damages caused by bugs in freeware? Freeware is software released free of charge. Often times freeware is written by a hobbyist or academic who is looking to create a tool for their field, but is either not interested in profit or thinks that profit is not viable. I know that in some states, such as in Virginia, freeware comes with &quot;no implied warranty&quot; as per § 59.1–504. But does that include no warranty against damages caused by buggy code? And is this issue still a state by state issue or is there a general guiding principle which would govern the issue here? Since it is required to help answer the question, we'll assume the following. License: MIT License Jurisdictions of Interest: New York &amp; US Federal Statues/Practice. Note: I am excluding the obvious cases of gross negligence or maliciousness, such as including a virus in the code. Likewise I am excluding third party injury where the actions of the software cause damages to individuals who are not using it.
No, you can't The last paragraph of the MIT License explicitly says the author is not responsible for damages (emphasis mine): THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED &quot;AS IS&quot;, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. A software license is not a contract. You didn't enter a contract with the developer or team. You found software online and decided to use the software. When you install paid software you are almost always presented with the EULA and check-box saying you agree to it. You took an action and agreed to the EULA. You didn’t have to agree to anything before getting access to the code under the MIT license. The software is offered &quot;as-is&quot; which is further protects the author. You'd have to show the author convinced you to use the software fraudulently. You're unlikely to talk to the author at all, and since the entire source code is available for review, it would be very difficult if not impossible to claim fraud. Finally, in the U.S. people have been sued using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. None of the notable cases involve embedding a virus in an open-source project. Of interest is how the CFAA defines a virus (emphasis mine) (A) knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer; Simply writing bad code wouldn't be enough. You'd have to prove the developer acted maliciously. Hobbyists working for free don't usually have much money. The other major contributors to open source are large companies like IBM and Google, which have lawyers on retainer and deal with frivolous lawsuits frequently.
A voicemail greeting, like any original sequence of words, will be protected by copyright. Making and publishing a copy without permission would be an infringement of that copyright, and could subject the person who does it to a civil lawsuit. However, such a greeting normally has no commercial value, and it is hard to see how any actual damages could be assessed. In the US, statutory damages could apply, but since the greeting is unlikely to carry a copyright notice, the person sued might claim to be an "innocent infringer", which could significantly reduce the damages assessed. (However if such a person had read this answer, and that were brought out in court, s/he would be on notice of the copyright protection, and could not claim to be "innocent".) Moreover, the defendant could still raise the defense of fair-use (In the US). The would be no harm to the market for the work, since there is no market, which would favor fair use. The whole of the work would probably be used, which would tend against fair use. A greeting is somewhat creative, more so than a work of non-fiction, although usually less so than actual fiction or verse, which leans slightly against fair use. It is hard to say if this kind of reuse would be considered transformative, it would probably depend on what sort of commentary, if any, was provided. In all, a fair use defense seems pretty close to a coin flip, but not as predictable. In any case, judges often do not favor suits over technical infringements of works with no commercial value where no meaningful damage has occurred, and often award minimal damages within the statutory range, which is wide. Given all that, the risk of suit seems low. The question mentions "school district administrators" If the person doing this is a student, this might be looked on negatively by the school district, which might be able to frame it as against some district policy or other. Consider possible repercussions carefully. As always on Law.SE, this is not legal advice. Before acting you may wish to consult an actual lawyer.
Take a look at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design From that it appears that you are just following the specifications of the algorithm made by a third party. You're not copying the algorithm, you are re-implementing it based on certain specifications you saw online. I would say unless you agree to some contract like you will not implement this, it should be legal. Furthermore, there is distinction between legality and breaching contracts. It is not illegal to breach a contract. You could just be sued for damages and injunctive relief. Failure to abide by a judicial order, such as an injunction is illegal. DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A LAWYER. THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE.
The lack of a copyright notice is irrelevant, what matters is whether permission is granted. The material cannot be copied, except if the copyright holder grants you permission to copy. However, you might be able to create something legal and satisfactory on your own, because the underlying ideas are not protected. By way of analogy, you cannot copy the Turbo Pascal Numeric Methods library without permission, but you can study the logic of a module and write your own FFT routine. The status of something as &quot;declaring code&quot; is entirely irrelevant to the court's decision in Google v. Oracle. What is relevant to the court's finding of fair use is that the content constituted 0.4 percent of the entire API, and the fact that the copied lines of code are inextricably bound to other lines of code that are accessed by programmers, allowing programmers to bring their skills to a new environment. The court found that he amount of copying was tethered to a valid, and transformative, purpose.
Hacking into a computer owned by someone else and accessing the data stored on it without permission is a misdemeanor according to StGB 202a (de|en). But only if it's successful. So a failed attempt isn't a misdemeanor yet. When you notice that someone might have committed a criminal offence (regardless of whether you are a victim or just a witness), then the usual procedure is to report it to the police. If they consider the crime serious enough to investigate, then they will request the identity from the ISP. But the copyright lawsuits which are filed in bulk by law firms working with media companies are not crime reports. They are civil lawsuits. A civil lawsuit is when someone had a tangible damage because of something someone else did, and now they want money in compensation. When there is no damage, then there is nothing to sue for. So when you want a judge to file an injunction to force an ISP to give them the identity of one of their users, then you would first have to explain to them how much financial damage you had because of that person and that this is enough damage to make it worth everyone's time. That might be quite challenging for nothing but a failed SSH login attempt. But it might be possible if a single person made so many login attempts that it incurred you non-negligible bandwidth cost or even caused a denial-of-service.
Company B has created a derived work from company A's copyright-protected work, so yes, B has infringed on A's copyright. It might be difficult for A to prove it, however, so B might get away with it, but it's still infringement. On the other hand, if B creates software that behaves like A's through reverse engineering, that is, by examining the program's function without examining its code, then they will not have infringed the copyright in the code.
Addressing the question of programmer liability, generally speaking, a person who creates something that others use to infringe on copyright is not liable is liable if there are non-infringing uses for the thing (Sony). They can be liable if they intentionally contribute to infringement, viz Grokster one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties. End-user liability is different. In order to legally download (watch) anything, you have to have permission from the rights-holder, and from the site operator. The site operator will have terms of service according to which you can access material: if you violate those terms, you are infringing on copyright (you didn't do what the permission to copy required of you). If the site-owner knowingly distributes material without permission, he is an infringer and you have no legal license to copy (watch) that content, so you too are an infringer. If the site-owner unknowingly distributed material without permission and generally complies with the DMCA safe harbor requirements, he is not an infringer but you the user are. Congress has not created an innocent-infringement defense where you can defend yourself against an accusation of infringement by proving that you didn't know that the material was distributed without permission (there is an option to reduce liability for statutory damages to $200 in case of unknowing infringement, but not make all liability go away).
If an AI chatbot such as Bing Chat or ChatGPT said factually untrue things that did measurable harm to a real person's reputation, would that person have a case against the company that owns the chatbot for defamation? There can be liability for defamation, although the circumstances would determine who the liable party is. For instance, an owner's warning to the user about a risk of inaccuracies may have the effect of shifting to the user the issue of requisite degree of fault. See In re Lipsky, 460 S.W.3d 579, 593 (2015). The user ought to be judicious as to whether to publish the chatbot's output. Ordinarily, negligence suffices for liability in a scenario that involves special damages, i.e., concrete, ascertainable harm. My understanding is that a key part of defamation is malicious intent, which does not really apply to a non-sentient piece of software. Under defamation law, malice is not about feelings or emotional state. The term refers to reckless disregard for the truth or falsity or the statement or to publication despite publisher's awareness of the falsity of the satement. Id at 593. Regardless, malice needs to be proved only if the plaintiff is a public figure or in claims of defamaton per se, where damage to a person's reputation is presumed (and hence the damage does not need to be proved). What if the company was aware of the harm being done but chose not to take action? The terms of use might protect the company against liability. Absent any such protections, the company might be liable because its awareness and inaction are tantamount to the aforementioned reckless disregard for the truth of its product's publications.