GNU GPL - Copyright helps Copyleft Problems of GPL Enforcement Problems distributed copyright is an important safeguard can make enforcement difficult, since copyright traditionally doesn't know cases with thousands of copyright holders distribution of damages extremely difficult the legal issue of having to do reverse engineering in order to prove copyright infringement(!) only the copyright holder (in most cases the author) can do it users discovering GPL'd software need to communicate those issues to all entitled parties (copyright holders) infringers obfuscating and/or encrypting fres software as disguise