Why should we treat the situation differently just because you distributed the application electronically, versus shipping it in the traditional/literal sense on CD-Rom or floppies?
If you wrote an application that contained (say) code that wasn't yours, and shipped a few thousand copies before anyone caught on, well you'd be S.O.L. I'd imagine that the damages you'd be responsible for would depend in some way on the number of copies that made it out the door.
But I don't see any reason why a developer ought to be able to conduct a sort of clawback to cover their own ass if they let something out the door that they shouldn't have.
Let's see, Amazon pulled back 1984 because they figured out they didn't have the license for it. They returned the money and fixed the problem without fuss (kinda).
If you were in a situation like you said to unknowingly include unlicensed 3rd party code it sure would be nice to just return the money and do a remote delete. Compared to, say, waiting to be sued and having the damages determined upon the numbers of copies sold.
If you wrote an application that contained (say) code that wasn't yours, and shipped a few thousand copies before anyone caught on, well you'd be S.O.L. I'd imagine that the damages you'd be responsible for would depend in some way on the number of copies that made it out the door.
But I don't see any reason why a developer ought to be able to conduct a sort of clawback to cover their own ass if they let something out the door that they shouldn't have.