Re: License Restrictions revisited
Re: License Restrictions revisited
- Subject: Re: License Restrictions revisited
- From: Robert L Krawitz <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2003 12:32:53 -0400
Date: Sun, 01 Jun 2003 11:53:20 -0400
From: Jim Rich <email@hidden>
That was a very astute observation about the ColorVision Licensing!
It would seem that the folks at ColorVision need to read (it sounds
like for the first time) the U.S. Constitution. You know that
clause about FREE SPEECH!
#include <disclaimer/std.h>
#include <disclaimer/ianal.h>
It's only the government that isn't allowed to restrict speech like
that. From ColorVision's perspective, this is a contractual agreement
between private parties, which isn't covered by the Constitution.
There are plenty of private contracts that restrict speech, such as
NDA's.
That said, my understanding is that just because a clause is in a
contract doesn't mean that it can't be found to violate public
policy. Ask a lawyer whether this kind of clause does or not.
Personally, I think software companies are trying to have it both ways
-- they want to be able to sell software as a normal retail
transaction, for their convenience and to not alarm users, but then to
treat it as a contractual transaction so as to make the terms
something quite different from the terms of a normal sale (curiously
enough, those terms always seem to be outrageously favorable to the
seller and give the end user no rights whatsoever).
I believe (I could be wrong here) that this all started in the 1980's
when somebody managed to convince a court that the transitory copy of
a program in RAM is a distinct copy from the copy on disk, and so the
program could not legally be loaded into RAM without the permission of
the copyright holder. Of course, that kind of interpretation means
that the program can only be used under terms set by the copyright
holder. A more reasonable interpretation, more analogous to that of
books and other traditional media, would have been that it's only
legal to have a copy loaded onto one computer at a time (with the
usual fair use caveats). If that interpretation held, the copyright
holder could not put restrictions on what you could do with the
software other than making and distributing copies.
The "usual" restrictions on fair use, reverse engineering, making
derivative works for personal use, etc. also go way beyond traditional
copyright restrictions. Copyright is supposed to "protect" (sorry, I
can't use that word with a straight face) the expression, rather than
the idea, and so using copyright to forbid you from seeing the
expression is a bit farfetched. As for derivative works for personal
use, that would seem to be like forbidding you from writing notes in
the margins of a book.
--
Robert Krawitz <email@hidden>
Tall Clubs International --
http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail email@hidden
Project lead for Gimp Print --
http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net
"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton
_______________________________________________
colorsync-users mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives:
http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/colorsync-users
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.