Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano [LWN.net]

Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano

Posted Feb 4, 2006 1:11 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

I'd say it's a proof how morally wrong and unintuitive is the notion of > non-free software.

I'll give you unintuitive, but not morally wrong. While there's probably some religion somewhere where anything unintuitive is morally wrong, I don't think it's generally true.

When I was about that age, there was a problem with inflation and I was puzzled by how difficult commentators seemed to think it was. I said, "why doesn't the president of the US just mandate that prices won't go up any more?" Just because I couldn't see how disastrous that would be for everybody even if it were possible, that didn't mean that the free market is morally wrong.

Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano

Posted Feb 4, 2006 1:30 UTC (Sat) by evgeny (guest, #774) [Link]

> While there's probably some religion somewhere where anything unintuitive is morally wrong, I don't think it's generally true.

No, it's not generally true, and neither did I pretend it was.

> Copyright is a rather complex way to bring about certain good results. I don't expect a 9 year old to know how it works.

I beg your pardon. This has nothing to do with copyrights. When one borrows a proprietary OS CD from his friend in order to install the OS on his PC (he is NOT distributing it), this is a license violation, not a copyright violation. If he got caught at doing so, the punishment would be similar to that for a theft. It's in this context (software copying vs. theft) that I made the "unintuitive == morally wrong" statement.

Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano

Posted Feb 4, 2006 3:40 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

This is totally about copyrights. If not for copyrights, there would be nothing to stop you from borrowing or lending the CD to install on another computer. The license involved is a copyright license -- i.e. a person who has the right under copyright law to stop you from making a copy of the software chooses to allow you to do so. If there were no copyright, there would be no license.

A license is not something one can violate. When people say "he violated the license," it's a shorthand for "he violated the conditions of the license, therefore didn't have a license, therefore under copyright law was obligated not to make a copy."

If the CD is ordinary proprietary software, then the kid has no license, conditional or otherwise to make the copy on the second computer; there's nothing to violate except copyright.

Copyright law creates a quite unintuitive right to control who gets to make copies of stuff you wrote. The copying public subjects itself to such laws because in the big picture, it may cause more stuff to get written. That's what's not intuitive to a 9-year-old.

If he got caught at doing so, the punishment would be similar to that for a theft. It's in this context (software copying vs. theft) that I made the "unintuitive == morally wrong" statement.

I don't quite follow, but if you're saying it's morally wrong to equate such a copying action with a conventional theft, then I agree. The law doesn't do so, by the way -- except in the most abstract sense where every legal right is a property right. It's just copyright owner publicity that tries to draw the analogy between copying and stealing a bicycle, to persuade people not to copy.

Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano

Posted Feb 4, 2006 10:34 UTC (Sat) by evgeny (guest, #774) [Link]

> If there were no copyright, there would be no license.

This is true, but compare e.g. the MS EULA.txt with the couple of standard copyright protection lines found in any book.

> I don't quite follow, but if you're saying it's morally wrong to equate such a copying action with a conventional theft, then I agree. The law doesn't do so, by the way -- except in the most abstract sense where every legal right is a property right.

IANAL, of course, but the general perception in public is certainly like software piracy == theft. Just google for "stolen sotware" and "illegally copied software" and compare the hit counts. Also, the notion is widely spread in all kinds of homebrew "explanations" of software fair use, e.g. see http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/ethics.html ("... illegally copied software is viewed as stolen property"). I had to sign a very similar form myself in the past.

Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano

Posted Feb 7, 2006 5:32 UTC (Tue) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

Borrowing is not theft. The problem in your hypothetical situation is the duplication of the software on the CD, so that it is copied to the other computer. If it only ran directly off the CD, there is the question of portions in RAM, but aside from that you may have to click "I Agree" to a EULA when you install it which is basically a contract. In many places these are now enforcable as contracts so even aside from copyrights there could be an issue, but it still wouldn't be related to "theft".

EULAs and contracts

Posted Feb 7, 2006 7:36 UTC (Tue) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

I have a small correction. An EULA isn't just basically a contract -- it's completely a contract. The "A" stands for "agreement," which is a legal synonym of "contract." Clicking "I agree" is as good a manifestation of assent as various other ways people form contracts, including signing a piece of paper. I'm not aware that EULAs are especially unenforceable, or ever were.

EULAs and contracts

Posted Feb 9, 2006 16:11 UTC (Thu) by arcticwolf (guest, #8341) [Link]

It very much depends on where you're from, actually. In some countries, you do need to accept the license to be able to (legally) use the software your purchased (the USA is one of these, AFAIK), but it's not true everywhere - there are also countries where *purchasing* the software already gives you the right to use it, so the EULA is basically meaningless. I know Germany is in the latter category, and I wouldn't be surprised if other European countries were as well, so it might well be that the same thing's true in Italy.

On a side note, it arguably makes more sense that way, too. When I pay a thousand bucks for Photoshop, then I *should* have paid for the right to use the program - not just for a few (physical) CDs and a printed manual. I shouldn't be required to enter into another contract with Adobe just to use a piece of software I paid the dealer a grand for already.

EULAs and contracts

Posted Feb 9, 2006 17:35 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

In some countries, you do need to accept the license to be able to (legally) use the software

Careful here. You mean you have to have a license, with means you have to accept the EULA. (You accept the license too, but that is of no consequence since it doesn't commit you to anything). The EULA offers you a copyright license in exchange for various promises. When you accept that offer, you have the copyright license and are committed to make good on those promises. If you don't accept the EULA, you have no obligations, but also don't have a copyright license, and thus can't copy the software.

I haven't heard of any places where you need a license to use software. The copyright license covers only copying it. I know some publishers write the EULA as if you need a copyright license to copy the CD onto your disk or make a backup copy, but from what I've read, the jury in the US is still out on that, because it might also be fair use of the one copy the publisher gave you.

I can believe that the courts have already decided that issue in Germany and elsewhere, making these EULAs superfluous.

This is getting fairly academic, though, because if Adobe can't trade you a copyright license for those promises about how you'll use the software, Adobe can just change the wording and instead of having a license agreement, have a purchase contract. To get that CD, you have to pay $1000 plus promise to use it a certain way. There was a time when the license agreement was thought to be the easiest way to do a store-shelf transaction, but now that shrink-wrap contracts are enforceable in the US, a straight purchase contract would be as easy.

EULAs and contracts

Posted Feb 10, 2006 19:53 UTC (Fri) by quintesse (subscriber, #14569) [Link]

You say "I haven't heard of any places where you need a license to use software. The copyright license covers only copying it" which is true, but you also say "The EULA offers you a copyright license in exchange for various promises. When you accept that offer, you have the copyright license and are committed to make good on those promises" which basically means that they are affecting how you can use their product.

Which gets me to the other thing you say "If you don't accept the EULA, you have no obligations, but also don't have a copyright license, and thus can't copy the software" because it does not only affect your right to copy but a host of other things that are commonly found in EULAs, like Microsoft saying that you MUST upgrade if they tell you to or you lose the right to use the product.

So we get back to what I understood is the norm in several european countries:

- the first is that you can not add restraints or additional requirements AFTER having bought the product. You are only bound to the requirements known to you at the moment of the sale. In that case a judge would most likely agree with the buyer ignoring an EULA.

- the second is that sometimes EULAs require you to make promises which go against certain rights given to the buyer by local laws and in that case local law trumps EULAs. The interesting thing would be to see if a judge would agree with a buyer selectively ignoring parts of an EULA or that you can only accept or reject the whole of it.

Of course IANAL, just relating what I think I heard a vague friend of a cousin of mine say at a party where we were all lying stoned around the swimming pool. But it could be true though :-)