🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <14144@s.ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes:
>
>Cmon Ross! I'm *not* talking about copyright violations! Everyone knows
>that it's illegal to violate a copyright, and that software vendors have
>prosecuted when feasable.

I'm still getting confused.  It looks like you uphold all of the copyright
stuff, that you approve of the owner of an intellectual property being able
to determine exactly how that software might be protected from copying
against the owner's desire?  Are you know acknowledging that the owner
of the intellectual property owns the right of determining the copying
of that software, regardless of how it got on your machine?

>
>I'm talking about shrink wrap license violations where the copyright is
>not otherwise violated. I've bought software at the store that said
>"you can't lend this to friends" and "you may not make *any* copies".

Actually most of them say that you may make backup copies and that you
may only use the product on one CPU at a time.  Backup copies are permitted
by copyright law.  Making more than one viable copy and using it is
specifically against copyright law.  Above you indicated that you upheld
the copyright laws.  Now you do or you don't.  Which is it?

>
>Well the law says that if I own copyrighted software, and unless I am
>bound by a license not to, that I can lend it and I can make archival
>copies. The question is whether a shrink wrap license is binding, and my
>point is that software companies are very reluctant to test it in court
>because they will probably lose.

The shrinkwrap agreement we're speaking of here seems to be the lessening
of the terms of the copyright law.  If you don't want those laws lessened,
fine.  If, however, you've agreed with the shrinkwrap license enough to
allow yourself, to force yourself, to bend the copyright law as the 
shrinkwrap agreement indicates you can, then you've already agreed to
what the shrinkwrap license says, Sean.  Enforceable in court?  Probably
not.  But, again, I'm only speaking ethics here.


>
>The deal with Procomm was a case of copyright violation, not shrink
>wrap or other license violation. Procomm is not redistributable. Only
>their test drive disk can be redistributed. It was the former--not the
>latter--that was the subject of copyright infringement.
>

It was copying their software without their permission.  A simple case of
copyright infringement.   But, fortuneately, you have already agreed that
the owner of an intellectual property may decide how that intellectual
property may be distributed.




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Ross M. Greenberg, Technology Editor, UNIX Today!   greenber@utoday.UUCP
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