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From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: What a dongle is (Was Re: Copy protection: boycott it!)
Message-ID: <912@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 31-Jul-87 18:23:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: bsu-cs.912
Posted: Fri Jul 31 18:23:59 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Aug-87 06:27:27 EDT
References: <6965@ism780c.UUCP> <1193@killer.UUCP> <776@cod.UUCP>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 48
Keywords: licensing vs purchase; reasonableness
Summary: Too much misinformation here

The amount of misleading information here is surprising.

In article <776@cod.UUCP> rupp@cod.nosc.mil.UUCP (William L. Rupp) writes:
>Software is copyrighted, as are books.  

Well, software that bears a proper copyright notice is copyrighted.
It's not clear that "Copyrighted as an unpublished work" in a published
work is a proper copyright notice, since it contradicts reality.

>I don't
>like a lot of the details of software licensing, but I recognize that
>nobody would bother to create software if the licensing protection did
>not exist.

Not true.  Copyright law is very strong today.  If software is properly
registered with the US Patent Office, and if it bears a proper notice,
copyright law even promises to compensate the copyright owner for
attorney's fees in a successful lawsuit.  Copyright violations are a
criminal offense.  The penalty can be up to $50,000 for *each*
violation.  If you have a good enough case, the FBI will investigate
it.  This is far more than a shrink-wrap license agreement could ever
do, even if it could be shown to be enforcible.

Violation of a software license agreement is a private matter between
the two parties, so it's a much weaker thing as far as enforcement
goes.

The people who write the shrink-wrap license agreements know perfectly
well they are worth nothing.  That is why they always try to back them
up with a copyright notice.  With a proper binding license agreement
the copyright status of the software is irrelevant.

Unfortunately a lot of people will believe anything they see printed,
especially if it has an impressive title like "LICENSE AGREEMENT".

I think what has happened is that the software industry developed so
suddenly that there were not enough lawyers around who had expertise in
the field.  The result was a scare created by these lawyers who were
novices in this field, which led to paranoia amongst the software
publishers.  This led to these unenforcible license agreements.  Now
your typical software publisher's lawyer isn't about to say, "Gee, what
a silly thing I did, the shrink-wrap license agreement I wrote up for
you is meanignless, and you wasted a lot of money paying me for it."
On the other hand, your naive average consumer is taken in by the
license agreement, and doesn't bother contesting it even if he can
afford to do so.  Thus the myth is perpetuated.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  {ihnp4,seismo}!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi