Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!sean
From: sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Paying for Shareware (Was: Re: v09i070: newsclip 1.1...)
Message-ID: <14144@s.ms.uky.edu>
Date: 13 Feb 90 08:04:53 GMT
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greenber@utoday.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) writes:

|In article <14122@s.ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes:
|>I said "software vendors", like the Lotus corporation so fondly referenced
|>by Ross. They do have tens of thousands of dollars. So does Apple, and
|>the other people who will go after violation of copyright but to my
|>knowledge none have taken a shrink wrap violation to court.

|Sorry, Sean, but you're wrong.  Copyright violations, as in the usage of
|pirated software, is pretty old stuff and Lotus has won a few times.  On
|the shareware side of things, the folks who put out `Procomm' recently
|won a copyright infringement case against someone distributing their code
|without their permission.

Cmon Ross! I'm *not* talking about copyright violations! Everyone knows
that it's illegal to violate a copyright, and that software vendors have
prosecuted when feasable.

I'm talking about shrink wrap license violations where the copyright is
not otherwise violated. I've bought software at the store that said
"you can't lend this to friends" and "you may not make *any* copies".

Well the law says that if I own copyrighted software, and unless I am
bound by a license not to, that I can lend it and I can make archival
copies. The question is whether a shrink wrap license is binding, and my
point is that software companies are very reluctant to test it in court
because they will probably lose.

The deal with Procomm was a case of copyright violation, not shrink
wrap or other license violation. Procomm is not redistributable. Only
their test drive disk can be redistributed. It was the former--not the
latter--that was the subject of copyright infringement.

Sean
-- 
***  Sean Casey          sean@ms.uky.edu, sean@ukma.bitnet, ukma!sean
***  "May I take this opportunity of emphasizing that there is no cannibalism
***  in the British Navy. Absolutely none, and when I say none, I mean there
***  is a certain amount, more than we are prepared to admit." -MP