Obviously they would be required to change it (or include the GPL licence), but is that all? What kind of 'damages' could be claimed in such a situation?.. ie what is the risk to Sony in doing this. NB i'm using this (somewhat trivial) example to talk about GPL violation more broadly.
It could come down to damges per sold unit if Sony is seen as intentional breaking copyright law, especially from this point on after Sony has become aware of the issue.
In more likeness, KDE can now prevent any future sale of VAIO if they want, but asking a judge for an injunction.
Of course, this assume that the copyright law is sanely being interpreted. If we use movie/music version of it, KDE can then dictate what a "license agreement" would cost for sony if they were to "buy" the image. They could then say "If we were to buy a similar image from apple, they would require this cart loads of money so that's what Sony should pay + damages and lawyer costs.
Could KDE prevent sales of VAIO machines if they were now complaint? I guess not?
Is there ANY precedent for damages of this kind of situation? (particularly where wilful infringement was not long-continued) If not, it would seem there is an almost non-existent risk.
And given that the license in this case merely requires attribution it would seem it's very easy to come into compliance.
I don't know jriddell personally but I would be willing to bet his point is not the infringement, so much as the hypocrisy by the Big Giant Defender of IP, Sony.
No one has brought up a case that got to the point of there being actual damages, which leads me to believe there isn't, really. The closest i (as by no means an expert) can think of in terms of commercial 'damage' is when Linksys released the source code for their routers found using linux. (And this release probably led to them making more money anyway).
Well, there's a pretty wide gulf between "The Board of Directors and CEO decided that any legal consequences would be cheaper than not infringing" and "Oops, we didn't mean to mis-appropriate that IP".
The tricky area IMO is when a company or industry repeatedly "Oops"es and you have to start wondering whether they're even performing due diligence.
A way to compensate is to link to the original artist page and maybe buy a license from him.