On Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:55:22 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> That's ultimately the question though - did you buy it, or did you buy
>> a license that says you can use it?
> 
> Yes. And does the license specifically deny me the ability to patch the
> software to run it on a different OS?   

Depends on the license, but I could see that a license could allow "only 
these specific uses and all other uses are prohibited".  That kind of 
legalese is commonly used so people don't circumvent it by being creative.

> If you're going to argue you
> only licensed it to me and that copyright fair use shouldn't apply, you
> don't get to argue that it's copyrighted too. :-)  *Everything* has to
> be in the license.

Well, yes, but "everything" can be included in the "no other use is 
permitted" language.  So, for example, the license could read that "you 
are permitted to install the software on one computer at a time, and 
execution of that program is permitted only on the system it is installed 
on for the purpose of using the program for its intended purpose as 
outlined in the product documentation.  Any other use is strictly 
prohibited under the terms of this license."

>> Could be.  Of course, if it's illegal to distribute the software, that
>> makes it kinda hard to obtain legally to use on media you legally own.
> 
> Not if you wrote it. Also, it depends on what's "software". Remember the
> whole PGP-printed-in-a-book argument? DeCSS printed on t-shirts?

Oh yes, I do remember those - I wanted one of those DeCSS T-Shirts, in 
fact, but never got around to purchasing one.

>> I'm getting out of my depth here, but it seems to me that federal law
>> would have *something* about contracts in it.
> 
> I don't think the Constitution says anything about intrastate contracts.
> Of course, not being in the Constitution never stopped anyone before. At
> least not lately.

Well, the US Constitution isn't the only document that outlines federal 
law, either.  That said, there are a lot of weird things that cover 
interstate commerce which is governed by federal law, but I think it'd be 
trivial to demonstrate that a piece of software produced in one locality 
can be sold in any locality and thus the terms of the license should fall 
under federal jurisdiction rather than state jurisdiction.  Not being 
familiar with the details of the Prologic case, I'm not sure why they 
didn't use that argument (or why it didn't work if they did use it).

Jim

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