See below. I should have made some extra things clear. David Johnson wrote:
On Thursday 31 October 2002 07:42 am, Brendan Hide wrote:<Added emphasis> I didn't mean that without the license you can do only nothing. I just meant that if you haven't read the license, you should assume that you don't have any additional rights.
You have the right to do *anything* with a copyrighted work only if you have agreed and complied with (and read) the license.
Bull pucky!
Good one - LOL
The vast majority of copyrighted works don't even have licenses. Reaching my hand over about two feet, I find myself picking up a copyrighted work at random. This appears to be "In the Court of the Crimson King", by King Crimson. Let's see if there's a license in it...no there is not. Let me reach in the other direction... "The C++ Standard Libary" by Nicolai Josuttis...no license.The first two books I pick up from the shelves:
Licenses and copyrights are beasts residing in different phyla
The Concise Oxford Dictionary, reads:
"(c) Oxford University Press 1999
Database right Oxford University Press (makers)
First published 1999
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above."
Cryptography in C and C++ reads:
"Copyright (c)2001 by Michael Welschenbach
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher."
These look like licenses to me.
You're also supposed to get fair use rights, of course. I forgot to mention that I'm South African and that my experience of US law is limited to cliché television programs (and reading the license-discuss list).
I should have said "do anything beyond the rights given to you by fair use law" rather than use.Imagine you pick up some software from a store, but the box contains
everything except the license. Do you have the right to use the
software? Legally, you need to secure a license before you can use the
software. Of course, nobody would, in their right mind anyway, sue you
for using the software you paid them for.
If I pick up some software from a store and pay for it, and obtain a sales reciept, then I am the legal owner of that copy. If I have a sales receipt then a sale has been made. As an owner of the copy, I possess numerous rights, including the right to use, dispose of, make archival copies of, and reverse engineer the software.Does this mean that, if I don't read the license for MS Windows XP (I haven't and never will - I refuse to install such a trojan), and I let my 8-year-old sister click on "Agree", that I can reverse-engineer Windows XP? In South Africa, the receipt would count for diddly squat. You can't make a "backup" copy unless the license specifically says so.
Of course, many lawyers will disagree with me. But the boxes and receipts in my possession argue in my favor. One example: Windows ME. The box clearly says "Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition Operating System". The same is listed on the "Certificate of Authenticity".
-- Brendan Hide [EMAIL PROTECTED] Technical Writer SA Computer Magazine http://www.sacm.co.za/ +27 21 715 7134 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Opinions expressed in this Email are those of the individual sending it and not necessarily of the Company. This Email is confidential. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
