If you find a EULA that says something on the order of "by using this software you agree to...", simply laugh at loud and ignore it. They cannot impose legally binding terms upon you unilaterally.
If they could then what would stop you sending them a letter which says "by opening the envelope you agree to..."? Or even "By reading this letter/fax you agree to..."
You might well find that the onus is on you to find out if you are selling it to a minor
and he agrees to pay me $10 a month for maintanece or something, he can keep it and I can keep the money, but he isn't bound to pay the $10 a month for mantanience.
He isn't bound to honour the contract, but if he pays his $10 a month you are.
The cars you buy are decent not because the government regulates their quality, and not because corporate execs are angels, but because the manufacturers compete with each other. Making bad cars is just bad business.
IIRC governments got involved with car safety because the market wasn't addressing the issue.
Yes and no. In the US, OPEC would appear to have a stranglehold on gasoline.
Whilst OPEC might have a say in the price of crude oil, though there is plenty of oil extraction going on in and around North America. A huge number of products are produced from crude oil, motor fuels are amongst the simplist.
Those, where the consumer has a choice:
*software*,food,housing,movie theatres,car manufactureres
Those, where the consumer has no choice:
gas,water,sewer,electicity!($$$),gasoline
Except that Microsoft have worked hard to put at least their software in the the latter catagory and I'm not convinced that gasoline shouldn't be in the former catagory. The oil companies might be big and nasty but they do at least compete.
That something is a contract does not make it leagal. All contracts are subject to law, and any that violates the law is null and void.
Which is why most contracts contain a clause which says "if any of this isn't legal then the rest still stands". (Assuming this kind of clause is legal, a statue to void such a clause would have interesting consequences...) It's not unknown for commercial entities to put all sorts of clauses in their contracts which are at best questionable.
Part of what the backers of Divx envisioned was selling the discs in grocery stores and other non-rental outlets for impulse buyers. I think this is what Flex/Spectra are trying to do, so it's not as if you can return the disc once you're done with it. There was also a well-founded concern that certain studios, namely Disney, intended to release certain movies exclusively on Divx, preventing ownership and ensuring a permanent revenue stream. Should a movie get the permanent-rental-window treatment, there would almost certainly be a demand for copies that don't die after three days.
You only need to be able to read the media once in order to copy it. Also in order to produce the self destructing media copies there need to be a permenant copy somewhere.
AFAIK. Professional pressing machines are mad expensive, probably not even for the determined small-time pirate.
Pirates don't need their own machine, they simply need use of one. If the "legit" operations take place in the poorest parts of the world then it's even less money for a pirate to bribe the factory into producing a few (thousand) extra copies...
The major point here, in case your head has been too dense to absorb it, is that these guys are going after people who have legimately paid for their software licenses, but no longer have all the paperwork to back up their purchase.
Because these are the easy targets. Easy to find and afraid of being accursed of being "pirates". Someone who actually really is pirating software as a commercial enterprice is going to be harder to find and knows enough about the law (and relevent legal loopholes) not to be easily intimidated
On top of that, changes in licensing requirements have left some businesses who didn't understand the change in a questionable status.
Or possibly the licence is so complicated that complying with it is a matter of subjective opinion.
What needs to happen is some company that has their licenses in order should tell the BSA to screw off.
Maybe a little more formally, e.g. anti-stalker legislation.
When BSA comes storming in with a court order the company should obviously comply. The BSA will find nothing. They should then sue the BSA for wrongful prosecution, sue for damages (lost productivity due to having to deal with them)
"Wrongful prosecution" does not make much sense. "Trespass" does, as does "fraud"...
You gentlemen are confusing criminal law with civil law. A criminal in US court enjoys the presumption of innocence. The burden of proof is on the prosecutor. In civil court, a simple proponderence of evidence is neccessary. If the plaintiff can make it look like the defendent did them wrong, then they win. They don't have to prove it by dusting for prints or anything.
There is also the matter that in a civil case the "defendant" can counter sue the "plaintiff".
Since when does the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution apply to croporations?
Since the USSC decided that US corporations are legally "people". The 4th, 5th (and quite possibly 2nd) ammendments would appear to be quite relevent here.
Yes, but they still need "weight of evidence" to make the accusation stick in court.
Probably why it isn't their method to simply fight people in court.
I'd guess that simply not helping them, letting them run up costs in a battle they cannot win, and then filing a massive counter-suit for harrassment (with additional punative damages, of course) could be a very effective deterrent to future action.
If you had deep enough pockets to do this then they probably wouldn't bother you in the first place.
One almost envisions OSS firms acting like little tar pits...every one the BSA crosses could cost it vast sums of money, in addition to undermining its credibility. How many of these could the BSA afford to attack, I wonder?
Only if they have sufficent resources to cover having their business disrupted and possibly their computers vandalised.
You're saying there are only two solutions? Either democrat, or republican? I could handle either one, as long as they weren't crooks.
Sounds like an accurate summation of current US politics. Domination by two political parties with mainstream press ignoring even where there are other political parties.
If this Enron thing had come to light during Clinton's era we'd be calling him a crook too, this time it's a republican (Bush) who needs to toss a bunch of execs in jail or be seen to be part of it all.
From the lobbiests' POV having only two political parties taken seriously is a good thing. Means they only have to lobby (and pay off) two groups of people.
Imagine if all the bridges in the US had a EULA like that? We would have a lot of dead people.
More likely you'd have some dead people, a ruling from the USSC voiding the EULA and a pile of bankrupt bridge builders. It's only in software which such EULA agreements appear to be tollerated.
They do it because there is a law against using unlicensed software. It's called "stealing".
However there are plenty of other illegal things involving software where, including failure to comply with open source licences (which is just much "copyright infringment" as the kind of thing the BSA makes a fuss about) such "law enforcement" is never applied. The issue is that of double standards.
Well, ok, but at least they already *know* how to use Word. You won't believe how resistant "ordinary users" are to learning something new.
How can they possibly cope with something like MS word, which has been through several different versions in the last few years? The same people would be made fun of if they made as much of a fuss about anything else.
For example, today we can read the documents that were created during WWII to study the history. Some documents are kept secret for 50 years, before they are released to the public.
50 years isn't the longest, the 1901 UK census was recently released after 100 years. Also even old documents which are not kept secret can be very important. e.g. to ensure that the copies of statutes and court rulings are acurate.
Not if you're a government: it's a really bad idea to give a commercial entity complete control over all of your documents (which are, or should be, public)
It's a bad idea even if the commercial entity is based in your country, it's an even worst idea to do this with a foreign owned commercial entity. Quite often government data is kept private for a period of time, then made public. The last thing you want is for this data to end up in a format which is 10, 20, 50, 100 years obsolete....
I've never understood why governments do this. IMHO, your public responsibilities as a government agency far outweigh the reduced ease of use civil servants may experience when working with something that isn't Microsoft.
Assuming Microsoft stuff actually is easy to use in the first place, which is debatable. Even the "everyone uses it" argument ceases to mean anything which the national government of a large country uses something else.
I assume its huge. If all the work on systems NOT involving national security (for obvious reasons) were made open source and free these budgets would be creating a vast resource.
Probably even more important that systems which do involve national security exclude proprietary software. Especially from foreign companies or any which could become foreign owned in the future.
But to be honest, if I was in a government, I'd be _very_ suspicious of M$ products with all their secret NSA keys installed.
If you were a government then it would probably be wise to be suspicious of any proprietary software. Then be even more suspicious of any such software which originates from outside your own country...
Countries because of Free/Open-Source Software's independance with respect to other countries/companies agendas. With F/OS Software, the German Bundestag can be sure that nobody will be able to use its own computers as a lobbying tool.
Or even worst, hold the entire country to ransom or use their own computers against them militarily.
You would have though they would have learned from the Licence 6.0 fiasco. It's nice to see that the europeans (at least France, Germany and the UK) have the guts to stand up to Microsoft and consider alternatives.
Sort of, there are obvious exceptions such as the UK NHS deal.
Why isn't this happening in the US?
Microsoft is a major earner of foreign currency to the US for one thing///
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If you find a EULA that says something on the order of "by using this software you agree to...", simply laugh at loud and ignore it. They cannot impose legally binding terms upon you unilaterally.
If they could then what would stop you sending them a letter which says "by opening the envelope you agree to..."? Or even "By reading this letter/fax you agree to..."
IE, I knowingly sell a kid a computer for $50
You might well find that the onus is on you to find out if you are selling it to a minor
and he agrees to pay me $10 a month for maintanece or something, he can keep it and I can keep the money, but he isn't bound to pay the $10 a month for mantanience.
He isn't bound to honour the contract, but if he pays his $10 a month you are.
The cars you buy are decent not because the government regulates their quality, and not because corporate execs are angels, but because the manufacturers compete with each other. Making bad cars is just bad business.
IIRC governments got involved with car safety because the market wasn't addressing the issue.
Yes and no. In the US, OPEC would appear to have a stranglehold on gasoline.
Whilst OPEC might have a say in the price of crude oil, though there is plenty of oil extraction going on in and around North America. A huge number of products are produced from crude oil, motor fuels are amongst the simplist.
Those, where the consumer has a choice:
*software*,food,housing,movie theatres,car manufactureres
Those, where the consumer has no choice:
gas,water,sewer,electicity!($$$),gasoline
Except that Microsoft have worked hard to put at least their software in the the latter catagory and I'm not convinced that gasoline shouldn't be in the former catagory. The oil companies might be big and nasty but they do at least compete.
That something is a contract does not make it leagal. All contracts are subject to law, and any that violates the law is null and void.
Which is why most contracts contain a clause which says "if any of this isn't legal then the rest still stands". (Assuming this kind of clause is legal, a statue to void such a clause would have interesting consequences...)
It's not unknown for commercial entities to put all sorts of clauses in their contracts which are at best questionable.
I used to work in a direct-mail list company, and I tell you, these lists are at least a year out of date.
Only a year? That'll explain why I still get junk mail for people who left 10 years ago...
It IS wasteful, not only do we have 20 CDs falling out of every computer mag we buy - we'll have a DVD to bin every time we 'hire' a movie.
It would make more sense to have a reusable media with this kind of application...
Part of what the backers of Divx envisioned was selling the discs in grocery stores and other non-rental outlets for impulse buyers. I think this is what Flex/Spectra are trying to do, so it's not as if you can return the disc once you're done with it. There was also a well-founded concern that certain studios, namely Disney, intended to release certain movies exclusively on Divx, preventing ownership and ensuring a permanent revenue stream. Should a movie get the permanent-rental-window treatment, there would almost certainly be a demand for copies that don't die after three days.
You only need to be able to read the media once in order to copy it. Also in order to produce the self destructing media copies there need to be a permenant copy somewhere.
AFAIK. Professional pressing machines are mad expensive, probably not even for the determined small-time pirate.
Pirates don't need their own machine, they simply need use of one. If the "legit" operations take place in the poorest parts of the world then it's even less money for a pirate to bribe the factory into producing a few (thousand) extra copies...
Bad example. If someone tries to frame you for a criminal offense then you at least have a chance of defending yourself,
Also it's quite possibly that with something like a disgruntled employee planting drugs the police will still go after that person anyway...
The major point here, in case your head has been too dense to absorb it, is that these guys are going after people who have legimately paid for their software licenses, but no longer have all the paperwork to back up their purchase.
Because these are the easy targets. Easy to find and afraid of being accursed of being "pirates". Someone who actually really is pirating software as a commercial enterprice is going to be harder to find and knows enough about the law (and relevent legal loopholes) not to be easily intimidated
On top of that, changes in licensing requirements have left some businesses who didn't understand the change in a questionable status.
Or possibly the licence is so complicated that complying with it is a matter of subjective opinion.
What needs to happen is some company that has their licenses in order should tell the BSA to screw off.
Maybe a little more formally, e.g. anti-stalker legislation.
When BSA comes storming in with a court order the company should obviously comply. The BSA will find nothing. They should then sue the BSA for wrongful prosecution, sue for damages (lost productivity due to having to deal with them)
"Wrongful prosecution" does not make much sense. "Trespass" does, as does "fraud"...
You gentlemen are confusing criminal law with civil law. A criminal in US court enjoys the presumption of innocence. The burden of proof is on the prosecutor. In civil court, a simple proponderence of evidence is neccessary. If the plaintiff can make it look like the defendent did them wrong, then they win. They don't have to prove it by dusting for prints or anything.
There is also the matter that in a civil case the "defendant" can counter sue the "plaintiff".
Since when does the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution apply to croporations?
Since the USSC decided that US corporations are legally "people". The 4th, 5th (and quite possibly 2nd) ammendments would appear to be quite relevent here.
Yes, but they still need "weight of evidence" to make the accusation stick in court.
Probably why it isn't their method to simply fight people in court.
I'd guess that simply not helping them, letting them run up costs in a battle they cannot win, and then filing a massive counter-suit for harrassment (with additional punative damages, of course) could be a very effective deterrent to future action.
If you had deep enough pockets to do this then they probably wouldn't bother you in the first place.
One almost envisions OSS firms acting like little tar pits...every one the BSA crosses could cost it vast sums of money, in addition to undermining its credibility. How many of these could the BSA afford to attack, I wonder?
Only if they have sufficent resources to cover having their business disrupted and possibly their computers vandalised.
You're saying there are only two solutions? Either democrat, or republican? I could handle either one, as long as they weren't crooks.
Sounds like an accurate summation of current US politics. Domination by two political parties with mainstream press ignoring even where there are other political parties.
If this Enron thing had come to light during Clinton's era we'd be calling him a crook too, this time it's a republican (Bush) who needs to toss a bunch of execs in jail or be seen to be part of it all.
From the lobbiests' POV having only two political parties taken seriously is a good thing. Means they only have to lobby (and pay off) two groups of people.
Imagine if all the bridges in the US had a EULA like that? We would have a lot of dead people.
More likely you'd have some dead people, a ruling from the USSC voiding the EULA and a pile of bankrupt bridge builders.
It's only in software which such EULA agreements appear to be tollerated.
They do it because there is a law against using unlicensed software. It's called "stealing".
However there are plenty of other illegal things involving software where, including failure to comply with open source licences (which is just much "copyright infringment" as the kind of thing the BSA makes a fuss about) such "law enforcement" is never applied. The issue is that of double standards.
Well, ok, but at least they already *know* how to use Word. You won't believe how resistant "ordinary users" are to learning something new.
How can they possibly cope with something like MS word, which has been through several different versions in the last few years?
The same people would be made fun of if they made as much of a fuss about anything else.
For example, today we can read the documents that were created during WWII to study the history. Some documents are kept secret for 50 years, before they are released to the public.
50 years isn't the longest, the 1901 UK census was recently released after 100 years. Also even old documents which are not kept secret can be very important. e.g. to ensure that the copies of statutes and court rulings are acurate.
Not if you're a government: it's a really bad idea to give a commercial entity complete control over all of your documents (which are, or should be, public)
It's a bad idea even if the commercial entity is based in your country, it's an even worst idea to do this with a foreign owned commercial entity.
Quite often government data is kept private for a period of time, then made public. The last thing you want is for this data to end up in a format which is 10, 20, 50, 100 years obsolete....
I've never understood why governments do this. IMHO, your public responsibilities as a government agency far outweigh the reduced ease of use civil servants may experience when working with something that isn't Microsoft.
Assuming Microsoft stuff actually is easy to use in the first place, which is debatable. Even the "everyone uses it" argument ceases to mean anything which the national government of a large country uses something else.
I assume its huge. If all the work on systems NOT involving national security (for obvious reasons) were made open source and free these budgets would be creating a vast resource.
Probably even more important that systems which do involve national security exclude proprietary software. Especially from foreign companies or any which could become foreign owned in the future.
But to be honest, if I was in a government, I'd be _very_ suspicious of M$ products with all their secret NSA keys installed.
If you were a government then it would probably be wise to be suspicious of any proprietary software. Then be even more suspicious of any such software which originates from outside your own country...
Countries because of Free/Open-Source Software's independance with respect to other countries/companies agendas. With F/OS Software, the German Bundestag can be sure that nobody will be able to use its own computers as a lobbying tool.
Or even worst, hold the entire country to ransom or use their own computers against them militarily.
You would have though they would have learned from the Licence 6.0 fiasco. It's nice to see that the europeans (at least France, Germany and the UK) have the guts to stand up to Microsoft and consider alternatives.
Sort of, there are obvious exceptions such as the UK NHS deal.
Why isn't this happening in the US?
Microsoft is a major earner of foreign currency to the US for one thing///