🚀 go-pugleaf

On 6 Oct 1998 17:31:08 GMT, unruh@physics.ubc.ca (Bill Unruh) wrote:

>In <TwzSEPAcHdG2EwgH@dlsl.demon.co.uk> Jason Clifford <jason@dlsl.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
>>In article <6vausd$9to$1@holly.csv.warwick.ac.uk>, Mr S A Penny
>><phuae@lily.csv.warwick.ac.uk> writes
>>>not true, the licence doesn't explicitly make it illegal to RE anything, but
>>>makes it impossible to do without overstepping the boundaries of the conditions
>>>of purchase which means that by REing you are breaking the law even if it is
>>>not actually illegal just to RE something...
>>In most parts of the world that restriction is not legally valid and is
>>therefore NOT part of the EULA.
>
>Unfortunately the software companies are also playing a different game.
>By including such terms in their software "licenses" they hope
>eventually to make them commonly known, and to argue that a) the
>purchaser did know of those terms becasue they were so commonly known at
>the time of the purchase, and b) that they had defacto become the rights
>of the publisher, and for the courts to overturn them would throw
>commerce in this area inot such dissarray that it should not be done.

well that's a theory but not much more than that.  People are free to
ignore unenforceable contracts of adhesion.  It would stand logic on
its head to say that the repeated exercise of the right to ignore
unenforceable contracts somehow renders the contracts enforceable.

>(eg inmany parts of the world, income tax is on a shaky legal base, but
>no court would entertain the notion that income tax was illegal. The

actually, the first income taxes in the US were declared
unconstitutional.

>practice had become so widespread that to rule it illegal would disrupt
>society far more than accepting the defacto legality. 
>

since governments impose income taxes, they are pretty much free to
change the law to make them legal, although I really have no idea what
you're talking about outside of the crackpot tax denial groups.

>It is thus crucial that such practices not be accepted blindly.
>

well ok, I'm in favor of organizing a public burning of Microshit
adhesion license agreements.