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Path: utzoo!watmath!watnot!watdcsu!rsellens
From: rsellens@watdcsu.UUCP (Rick Sellens - Mech. Eng.)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: Software License Bill - California
Message-ID: <1379@watdcsu.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 16-May-85 10:40:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: watdcsu.1379
Posted: Thu May 16 10:40:03 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 16-May-85 23:39:40 EDT
References: <858@sdcsvax.UUCP> <241@ucbcad.UUCP> <1835@watcgl.UUCP>
Reply-To: rsellens@watdcsu.UUCP (Rick Sellens - Mech. Eng.)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 40
Summary: 


It strikes me that this bill is concerned with the enforcability of a
license agreement, not it's contents. Software publishers currently
have no convenient (and legal) way of administering license agreements.

If this bill makes the shrink wrap license legally binding you will
have three alternatives:

1. Buy the software just like before, but obey the license agreement.

2. Buy the software just like before and disregard the license agreement
   just like before. This will be no more dishonourable than breaking
   current agreements on the technicality that they are not enforcable.
   (Most oral contracts are unenforcable too, but honourable people
   honour them anyway.)

3. If the conditions of the license agreement are unacceptable to you,
   then do not buy the software. Write to the offending publisher and
   tell them that their product was your first choice, but that their 
   license agreement was the pits, therefore they lost a sale.

I feel that software publishers have the right to limit your use of
their software by means of a license agreement. The mass market
requires a reasonably streamlined method of licensing to keep admin-
istrative costs down (and sticker prices too!). A shrink wrap license
makes the contents of the license available to the purchaser *before*
binding him to it, and therefore seems like a good vehicle to me.

Don't get me wrong. I HATE most current license agreements for being
too restrictive. I HATE copy protection. I feel that the only reasonable
restrictions in a software license are "one machine at a time" and
"we cannot be responsible for consequential damages". If we want to change
things we have to attack the contents of those agreements, not the 
vehicle by which they are delivered.


Rick Sellens
UUCP:  watmath!watdcsu!rsellens
CSNET: rsellens%watdcsu@waterloo.csnet
ARPA:  rsellens%watdcsu%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa