Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!apple!oliveb!epimass!jbuck
From: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Shareware liscenses
Message-ID: <3017@epimass.EPI.COM>
Date: 26 Mar 89 02:33:54 GMT
References: <2214@hoqax.UUCP> <54799@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Reply-To: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck)
Organization: Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 42

In article <54799@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> spolsky-joel@CS.YALE.EDU (Joel Spolsky) writes:
>Absolutely false. Just because you didn't read the request to pay
>doesn't mean you don't _have_ to pay. If you go into a barber shop and
>sit down, and get your hair cut, you can't complain that you "never
>read" the sign with the prices posted, you are certainly obligated to
>pay.

There are thousands of years of common law behind the notion that you
must pay a barber.  Shareware is a brand-new legal invention, untested
in the courts.  We really don't know what the law is.  It may be that
the ASP folks are fooling themselves.  Just the same, I don't use
any shareware that demands payment and have no intention of doing so.

>	"In the absence of a contrary statute, acceptance of goods
>	or services by a person who did not request them is an 
>	expression of assent to contract if that person knew
>	or reasonably should have known that the goods or services
>	were offered with the expectation of compensation".
>	(Chem-Teonix Laboratories, Inc., v. Solocast Company, 5 Conn.
>	Cir. 533, 258 A.2d 110 (1968)).

This is a foolish example.  Until recently, all software distributed on
Usenet was completely free of charge.  Given this history, it simply
isn't true that someone reasonably should have known that they owed money
for a program posted on Usenet with an obscurely worded shareware fee
mentioned at the bottom of some documentation file that no one reads.
Unless the fee demand is at the top of the posting in big letters or
printed by the program, there is no way people are going to know.

>I wish people would stop thinking that it was _legal_ to use shareware
>without paying, because it certainly isn't. The law might not be
>enforced, but that is a different issue.

It may or may not be legal.  The first judge to hear a shareware lawsuit
might decide to throw out the whole concept.  The law is not enforced
because no legislator passed it; it was simply made up by computer
programmers.



-- 
-- Joe Buck	jbuck@epimass.epi.com, uunet!epimass.epi.com!jbuck