Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!yale!cmcl2!stealth.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd
From: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Old Software: what's legal/ethical?
Message-ID: <975@stealth.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 6 Jan 90 02:09:43 GMT
References: <1990Jan4.152944.8744@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <1990Jan4.182928.3154@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us>
Reply-To: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Distribution: usa
Organization: IR
Lines: 25

In article <1990Jan4.182928.3154@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us> johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine) writes:
> There is little reason to
> believe that shrink-wrap licenses are binding on the purchaser and plenty of
> reason to think that they're not, both because the purchaser has no
> opportunity to negotiate the terms (a so-called contract of adhesion) and
> practically because no sucessful suit based on a shrink-wrap license has
> ever been brought.

If I remember correctly, a Louisiana company won a shrink-wrap license
suit. Then a Federal court reversed the decision, ruling that such
licenses are unenforceable. So now there is case law establishing that
it's legal to give someone a copy of all your software. For some strange
reason, software publishers are returning to copyrights.

> I'm no more in favor of software piracy than anyone
> else, but believe that the only reasonable legal protection for retail
> software is copyright.

And licenses don't make any sense for free software. The point of
licenses is to specify exact conditions upon what the recipient can
do; but limited copyrights achieve this goal much more effectively.
Copyrights have just one disadvantage: it's impossible to stop someone
from using the copyrighted work once he has a copy of it.

---Dan