🚀 go-pugleaf

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

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