What she is, is one of the few judges in the country who are more than willing to make sure that the law applies equally in her courtroom.
Unlike the overly credulous judge who issued the original search warrants(*) based on allegations without adequate evidence. Does anyone else find it interesting that judge's name is not in the public arena?
(*) Warrants which were over-broad, and yet the police and FBI went so far beyond them that even the NZ judiciary blinked.
FSF has sunk a lot of time and effort and legal fees into enforcing in this case. They have a right to demand reimbursment.
There are a lot of documented cases at www.gpl-violations.org - in most of them the companies said "mea culpa" and made good on the violations as soon as notified.
Compliance officers aren't exactly an onorous burden, my employer has 20 or so (15,000 staff) simply to handle MS-related software
Dlink tried to argue that GPL was bogus in German courts a couple of years back and had their corporate heads handed to them on a platter by the judge.
GPL is NOT public domain (Which is what Dlink tried to argue).
Cisco's choices seem to be:
1: Argue that GPL is actually public domain (not upheld in any case which has gotten as far as court)
2: Argue GPL is invalid (which would see the case being plain old copyright violation, and as it's well in excess of $50k, I believe US criminal law kicks in)
3: Accept GPL and do as they're told by FSF
4: Accept GPL and try to get the court to dilute FSF's demands - which is highly unlikely, given that it's an egarious violation.
Personal opinion:
There are a LOT of consumer gadgets now containing linux/GPL code and which aren't GPL compliant, expecially in the area of set-top boxes, DVD players and HDD recorders.
Cisco isn't the first company to be taken to court for GPL violation, nor will it be the last. FSF have spent a LOT of time trying to get them to comply, compared to past GPL enforcement actions and their demands are more than reasonable despite the schills in here who seem to not understand the difference between BSD/GPL/Public domain
I'm hoping that Cisco are soundly spanked - it will likely mean that future GPL actions can be dealt with quickly, especially against chipmakers selling embedded devices with Linux on them to 3rd parties and then claiming it's some proprietary setup.
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Re: Credit rating
Filing a bogus bad debt is a criminal action.
This could get pretty interesting. Criminal acts are enough to pierce the corporate veil.