2008/5/20 Raj Mathur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > A licence is not a contract. >
But proprietory software want it to be a contract :-( since they want to put more restrictions that copyright entitle them for. > A licence is a unilateral grant of privileges by the author of the > software (MS in this case) to the user (you). Without the licence you > do not have ANY rights on the software at all. > > A contract is a bilateral agreement between two parties, typically for > some form of renumeration. > > Technically, unless you accept MS' licence terms, you do not have any > rights to the software at all. On the other hand, since you do not > agree to their terms, you do not have any restrictions either... you Not correct. By default as per the Geneva convenstion (India and many countries in the world are a signatory to this) you need a license from the copyright holder to do ANYTHING at all, including copying. > just have some bits on the hard disk of your computer, and if you > choose to put those bits up for download on P2P they probably can't sue > you. Currently downloading: > Contents_of_my_new_Lenovo_laptop_hard_disk.iso :) They can as they own the rights, which they can prove easily, and there is no proof of you having the license (or even if you have proof - that doesn't hold as it explicitly prohibits it). > > Whether you agree or not, there is no contract between you and MS. In an ideal world yes, but not in this case. Because if you don't agree to the contract (whether they can do that is a different question) you don't have a license either. That is clearly different from a pure copyright license like GPL - which you don't have to accept for use, it comes into play only when it leaves your hands. Cheers Praveen -- പ്രവീണ് അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില് <GPLv2> I know my rights; I want my phone call! <DRM> What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak? (as seen on /.) Join The DRM Elimination Crew Now! http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Next Event: http://freed.in - February 22-24, 2008 Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org/
