Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!symcom!chappell
From: chappell@symcom (Glenn Chappell)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Any piracy statistics in the US ??
Message-ID: <1991Jun26.142802.20881@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 26 Jun 91 14:28:02 GMT
References: <1991Jun24.205146.3372@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <Fum4416w164w@mantis.co.uk>
Sender: usenet@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News)
Reply-To: chappell@math.uiuc.edu (Glenn Chappell)
Organization: Math Dept., University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
Lines: 45

In article <Fum4416w164w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (Giving C News a *HUG*) writes:
>The "fine print" is not legally binding in the UK.  I actually own the
>software I have bought, regardless of what any shrink-wrap license may say.

Well, that's interesting! I wonder what the legal technicalities are
behind that...perhaps you can't legally "sign a contract" by ripping
a plastic wrapper in the UK as you can in the US?

A blanket reply to all the people who have e-mailed me on this subject:

Y'all seem to think I feel serial-number-specific programs would be a
great idea. Well, that's not true, although if such a thing became
common it might have one good effect (in the US, anyway): it would wake
people up to just how silly many software licenses are, and they would
start demanding reasonable ones.

Yes, many software licenses are silly, but they are very easy to break,
and so many people really don't care what their license says. The result
is that many (if not most) US micro users are caught in sort of a legal
limbo. In their day-to-day work, they break the law, but they don't
care, the software company doesn't care, the government doesn't care,
and the legal limbo continues. I'm not referring to piracy here, BTW.

E.g. if you've ever transfered data (via the "clipboard") between programs
on a Macintosh you've probably broken your software license. Read the fine
print in the manual of any Macintosh application that comes with system
software, and you'll see that it says that once you quit a program, you're
not supposed to use the system software to run any other programs. (At
least, that's what it said the last time I checked.) Obviously, whoever
wrote this wasn't thinking straight, especially since ease of data transfer
was one of the advertised features of the Mac when it was introduced, but
no one cares, and the silliness remains.

Now, suppose Apple released a version of System that wouldn't allow you
to break the license. Would anyone use it? No, and Apple would probably
realize the stupidity of the whole thing and take that clause out of
their license.

Yes, there are reasonable licenses out there. On the other hand, there
are also many single-machine licenses. Converting those over to the
serial-number-recognition scheme would make what had previously been
merely illegal also very difficult - and, in the process, perhaps wake a
few people up to what's really going on.

				GGC  <><