On Friday 26 April 2002 07:07 am, Lee,Benjamin S - LGA wrote: > But what does it mean when you say "for any legal purpose"? For any > purpose whatsoever? For example, when you purchase a video cassette, do > you get > -- right to public display of the content? (uhm, no) > -- right to public performance of the content? (no) > -- right to broadcast the content? (no) > ... and of course you don't get to modify it or copy it in any shape > whatsoever...
I don't have the right to any of the above. But so what? I DO have the right to USE the software. If I buy a book, I don't have to get the author's permission to read it. If I buy a painting I don't have to get the artist's permission to view it. How much plainer can this be? If I buy a piece of software then I don't have to ask any damn person for permission to use it. > The only clear right you have is to that darn physical cassette. The > content on it is pretty much locked up by Disney et al. Title 17, section 106 <http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html>, lists the exclusive rights of the author. They include a whole bunch of things. Depending on the nature of the work, other sections grant them additional exclusive rights. But nowhere does it say that usage of the work is a right exclusive to the author. I really don't give a fsck what Disney thinks. If I buy a video cassette of Bambi, then I have the legal, moral, and ethical right to view Bambi! > So, clearly, when you say for "any legal purpose" under Copyright Law, > you mean only those purposes that the law allows... That is exactly what I meant. The law allows me to use the software which I legally possess a copy of. Any license that says I must first enter into a contractual obligation to the author before I can use the software is a meaningless license. > I think you may be ingoring many years of serious (and boring) debate in > the legal community as to the proper handling of software under the > UCC... No single human being can possibly understand all of the law that is currently in effect in the United States. Not George Bush. Not Al Gore. And certainly not me. Therefore I have to resort to common sense, logic, and rationality, what little of which I happen to possess. Common sense tells me that if a piece of software is wholesaled by the manufacturer to a retail outlet, and I aquire that software at a retail outlet by exchanging some of my money for it, and I receive a receipt, then that software is a commercial product, and the US Commercial Code should apply. Perhaps the UCC doesn't apply. If it doesn't, it should. Otherwise someone should start suing these manufacturers for fraud. -- David Johnson ___________________ http://www.usermode.org pgp public key on website -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3