Hacker News Reader

Are there actual cases of this on the books?

I'd be pretty surprised if a judge was like "ah yes the defendant's consultancy modified a piece of industrial control software that you haven't given a thought to in three decades to make it run on a modern computer and not require a parallel port dongle, and that's definitely a DMCA violation and you've been harmed by it and deserve all the money."

View on HN

"Laches" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_(equity) is probably a relevant concept here. In a scenario like the one you're describing, the delay is likely to be taken into account, but it's unlikely to be the whole of the argument.

As I understand it (IANAL), the delay period for laches only starts when the complainant becomes aware of the violation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com