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Free the Cell Phone! (Wired)

Free the Cell Phone! (Wired)

Posted Sep 29, 2005 7:06 UTC (Thu) by Wol (guest, #4433)
In reply to: Free the Cell Phone! (Wired) by bfields
Parent article: Free the Cell Phone! (Wired)

As I understand it, "copying in order to use", or your ephemeral copy, is explicitly recognized in US law and is declared NOT to be copying for the purposes of the Copyright Act.

So, in the US at least, this "illegal copying" argument won't fly because the Act specifically addresses this situation and says, "yes, this is legal".

Unfortunately, in the UK certainly, and probably most of Europe, this is not so.

Cheers,
Wol


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Free the Cell Phone! (Wired)

Posted Sep 29, 2005 12:49 UTC (Thu) by bfields (subscriber, #19510) [Link]

As I understand it, "copying in order to use", or your ephemeral copy, is explicitly recognized in US law and is declared NOT to be copying for the purposes of the Copyright Act.

That would make sense, wouldn't it? Alas, here's the precedent I was looking for. Read it and weep. Congress's response to this case (where a 3rd party computer repair company was sued for violating copyright just by turning a computer on) was to make an exception for the specific case of computer repair. Talk about missing the point....

Congress didn't miss the point

Posted Sep 30, 2005 20:45 UTC (Fri) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]

They did exactly what their owners wanted them to do.

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