On Friday 16 May 2003 11:12, John Pettigrew wrote:
In a previous message, Peter B Van Campen wrote:
If two parties enter into an agreement, the terms of which are written down and signed, then the agreement is only in force until one party contests the agreements legality.
No, the agreement is in force until a judge decides that it is not valid. That is, the point at which it stops being enforceable is at the point of judgement, not at the point of contention (actually, of course, once it is judged invalid, it was *never* enforceable - the judgement is restrospective). If the person contesting its legality loses, they will be liable for any and all penalties applicable for breaking that agreement, even if they did so while it was in contention.
Dear John, I have been writing about the real world, not the theoretical world of legal scholars. When two parties disagree, and one does not honor the agreement a govt agency (police) is NOT going to intervene. Once a judge has issued a ruling a policce agency MAY attempt to enforce the ruling; but it MAY NOT. Case in point: Despite the court rulings in regards to the music swapping epidemic, the US FBI is NOT going to be compelled to arrest and prosecute every file swapper. Another example: The city of Chicago has lost many civil suits arising out of the mis-conduct of its employees and agents. The judgements are sometimes many millions of dollars. The city has simply not payed the judgements. The judges who made the rulings are livid; they have issued contempt citations. However NO govt agency will attempt to compel the city to pay the judgements. Fair? Hell no! But this is the real world and those of us who want to live and work in the real world need to understand how it really works. To do otherwise is to court insanity, for the definition of insanity is "A departure from reality". Until a court has ruled on the GPL, and a govt agency has actively enforced the GPL, it is not something sensible people and corporations will place great reliance upon. Once again IMHO .............. PeterB -- Proud to use SuSE since 5.2 Loving using SuSE 8.2 MyBlog http://vancampen.org/blog/? --