[elihu]

> Which means the first person to pay the ~$500 is legally within their rights to reupload this product for the rest of the world to download freely?

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that's not how the GPL works. If some company were violating the GPL with their product, the owners of the GPL work could sue them to stop them from shipping their product. Nothing in the GPL causes infringing works to automatically become GPL (though it would be one way for the infringing company to resolve the issue, if they so choose).

I don't know how or if the GPL applies in this particular situation, I'm just referring to how the GPL works in cases where actual infringement is happening.