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Re: The 9th Circuit just made most of us criminals.


From: David Kastrup
Subject: Re: The 9th Circuit just made most of us criminals.
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2010 16:01:07 -0000
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.0.50 (gnu/linux)

RJack <user@example.net> writes:

> Your software EULA can make you a criminal if you don't hire a lawyer
> and have him review your license terms:
>
> "[5] We hold today that a software user is a licensee rather than an
> owner of a copy where the copyright owner (1) specifies that the user is
> granted a license; (2) significantly restricts the user’s ability to
> transfer the software; and (3) imposes notable use restrictions...

[...]

The relevancy of this verdict regarding first sale goes down a lot once
you consider that the copies in question were _upgraded_ to a newer
version (rather than buying a new full version), and the upgrade
agreement involved destroying the original copy.  So the first sales
right did not get lost, but was _repurchased_ by Autodesk, in return for
a sizeable amount of money.

Of course, selling the original copy of the software while still making
use of it (via the upgraded version) is not really viable.

Puts a bullet through Alexander's strange "once it was not provably an
illegal copy, I can do whatever I want with it without heeding the
agreement under which I had been entitled to make a copy" theory.

Not much of a surprise here.

-- 
David Kastrup


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