Copyleft Through Copyright

The primary goal of every GPL enforcement action is to gain compliance, which means getting to users complete and corresponding source code so they can copy, share, modify and install improved versions. The GPL itself is a copyright license that does a weird hack on copyright: it uses the copyright rules to turn them around, and require people to share software freely (as in freedom) in exchange for permission to copy, modify and distribute the software. A GPL violation occurs when someone fails to meet the license requirements and thereby infringes copyright. The copyright rules themselves then are the only remedy to enforce the license — requiring that the violator come into compliance with the license if they want permission to continue distribution.

Up until now, almost all the enforcement I've done has been purely under GPL version 2 (GPLv2). GPLv2§4 says that upon violation, the violator loses permission to engage in those activities governed by copyright: including copying, modifying and distributing the software. The only way to get those permissions back is for the copyright holder to grant them back.
Speaking For the Users

Copyleft's unique way of using copyright means the parties who may enforce are copyright holders (and their designated agents). However, the victims of the violation are typically thousands of users who have bought a product that included the GPL'd program. The goal, therefore, is to get source code that these users can actually use to compile and install the software. In GPLv2-speak, the goal is to get the all the "complete source code", which includes "the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable".

In the film, Clark proclaims the house is decked out with”25,000 imported Italian twinkle lights.” At 7W per bulb, that works out to 175,000 watts (175 kW). Putting aside, for a moment, the secondary concerns like whether or not his home could handle that load, let’s just deal with the raw numbers.

At 1989 electricity prices, that means Clark’s display uses $12.25 per hour. Run from, say, 6 PM to midnight every day, it would cost $73.50 per day. If run for the month of December, it would cost $2,205. Adjusted for inflation, that’s around $5,294. //

You can read the analog dials on an old power meter to determine how much energy your home uses. It’s an old trick we shared in our guide to measuring your home’s energy use. A 2014 blog post from an equally curious person used that very trick to calculate how much energy the Griswold home is using while the lights are on based on how long the meter is visible and how many times the various dials rotate in that time frame.

We have to assume that the clip was sped up for theatrical effect because if the meter was spinning in real time, ol’ Clark’s house was sucking down 529 MW—or about as much power a quarter of the greater Chicago region. So whatever the activation of auxiliary power did in the film, we can safely assume it delivered that much extra power to the grid.

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