Interesting notion ... I doubt that ActiveState would
to damage Perl. If they are being forced to do so, then perhaps that's an indictment of the legalities involved (as opposed to an indictment of the course of action that ActiveState have chosen to pursue).
Basically, I'm just wondering whether you should instead be asserting that "the law has reached the point of damaging perl". (I'm not a lawyer, so I can't give an answer ... and if I were a lawyer, then my answer would probably be biased :-)