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Old November 9th, 2005, 03:13 AM
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Default Re: OT: Software copyright law?

Quote:
Phoenix-D said:
You'd probably have to break the copy protection to do so; DMCA again.
Presuming, for the sake of argument, that no such copy-protection is in place; perhaps it's downloaded software for a MMORPG, a demo for some utility, software purchased online, or some such.
Quote:
Phoenix-D said:Also a lot of the EULAs have clauses to the effect of "by using this software", and its arguable that you're using it.
Ah... so if I make up a user agreement for my EVIL(TM) router that basically says anything sent through this device becomes my intellectual property, and then go browse an art site, I can later sue the art site for distributing my intellectual property without my permission, (after all, in order to send the images to my browser, they first had to be sent through my EVIL(TM) router....) despite the fact that the art site had no way of knowing that my router was EVIL(TM), even though if you type the IP on my EVIL(TM) router into any functioning and connected web browser it returns a simple english text web page with the user agreement due to the nature of the EVIL(TM) routing software? No? How does the EVIL(TM) router useage agreement scenerio differ from not encountering the EULA of a piece of software, and still being bound?
Quote:
Phoenix-D said:
I sort of doubt the ethicallity of those sort of clauses, but oh well. Much worse is the EULA itself, given that A. its a contract you have to accept to use something you already paid for, and B. if you don't accept it, most stores won't accept a return..
Oh, it gets better - there's usually a clause that says it's not fit for any particular purpose, while the advertising on the package says that it's great for all sorts of purposes - hmm.... how is "False Advertising" defined? Perhaps "Bait and Switch"? Don't have the recources, but it might just be interesting to test that in court at some point....
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