Waging War on Business

[Lee Einer]

What one is guilty of in this case is breach of contract, assuming that 
there has been a service (provision of the software) in return for a 
consideration (you paid for it,) this assuming that there was a common 
understanding of the terms of the contract when it was entered into. The 
EULA, of course, is the contract, although I don't know how legit it is 
not to divulge the EULA until after the transaction has occurred. 
Violating the terms of a EULA is not piracy, nor theft. I am even 
somewhat doubtful that this is copyright infringement.

What scares me about all of this is that our government is so completely 
the whore of large corporations that laws like the DMCA and the BSA, 
etc, which are strongly in the interest of a few large corporations and 
clearly against the interests of the citizenry get passed into law 
routinely. Assuming that these laws backfire by encouraging the use of 
free software, don't you think that the next round of legislation will 
be directed at  squelching free software?

Lee Einer

Derek Neighbors wrote:

>>nah.  Ill call it what it is.  theft.  If somebody is selling something
>>and I take that something without paying for it, that is theft.  it does
>> not matter what it is.  i.e.  if I use my friends copy of WinXP on my
>>box  without paying for it, its theft.  If I get permission from MS to
>>do this,  it is no longer theft because they gave it to me.
>>
>
>No its not.
>
>Example:  Say I own Windows 95.  I have the disk, I install it on a second
>computer.  I have violated copyright.  Are you going to argue that I have
>stolen something?  Virtually you are saying that you want to prosecute
>yourself for stealing from yourself.  Which just doesnt make sense.
>
>MOST violations are not someone, buying an "illegal" copy.  Rather it is
>one person using a "legal" copy multiple times for themselves (or their
>business).  Legally theft and copyright infringement are different things,
>thus we need to discuss them as different things.
>
>-Derek
>
>
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