Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!dcl-cs!gdt!gdr!exspes
From: exspes@gdr.bath.ac.uk (P E Smee)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re:  ST piracy
Message-ID: <1989Jun30.155339.1987@gdt.bath.ac.uk>
Date: 30 Jun 89 15:53:39 GMT
References: <890627.22503916.027053@SFA.CP6> <863@rex.cs.tulane.edu>
Reply-To: exspes@gdr.bath.ac.uk (P E Smee)
Organization: University of Bristol c/o University of Bath
Lines: 20

In article <863@rex.cs.tulane.edu> hoang@rex.UUCP (Dzung Hoang) writes:
>In light of the legitimate needs for copying programs for backup purposes,
>this is practically impossible.

Just as an aside, one interesting aspect of the copyright laws in the UK
is that it is ILLEGAL to copy programs for ANY purpose (including backup)
unless the supplier has included an explicit statement saying that you
are permitted to make copies.  There are several followons to this.  First,
it means that you can't put anything onto a hard disk legally unless the
supplier has granted permission to copy.  Second, you can't back anything
up ...  Third (since no-one really thinks those two conclusions are
reasonable) it is hard to get people to take the copyright laws seriously,
when they contain such obvious stupidity.

Also, the new copyright laws are apparently going to make illegal 'any
device or program whose primary purpose is making copies of software'.
The intent is to wipe out protection-crackers.  However, an overzealous
prosecution could easily try to expand that to eliminate your backup
utilities, the mv and cp commands, ...  I keep wishing that legislation
had to be written by people who understood the issues.