Is GPL enforcement outside the West impossible?

Question

Assume the following hypothetical situation: You discover a blatant GPL infringement in a piece of software. Blatant such that the programmers were so careless and lazy they made nearly no attempts to cover their tracks. However, the offenders are located in a country that is known to be hostile to matters of intellectual property. Is trying to enforce the GPL in such a situation basically impossible?

esarbe · Accepted Answer

If you want a comprehensive answer, you probably would want to do define what "the west" is. I'll go with "Europe and the USA" in my answer.No. "The West" is the worlds largest economic region. Any company not complying to the conditions of the GPL is toying with being excluded from western markets and that's a huge risk to profits. Mostly companies get away with it because nobody notices. But as soon as a GLP violation is detected, many legal (and extra-legal) paths are open to discourage the culprit.

pabs3 · Answer

No. For example Naomi Wu successfully got source code from Umidigi in China, by showing up in their offices while doing a livestream on YouTube.
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/aug/24/naomi-wu-request-...
So you just need to think outside the box and do actions that don't necessarily involve lawyers or use Western thinking.

wmf · Answer

Yes, but any proprietary license would be equally impossible to enforce so it's not that interesting.