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Plan for voting machine probe dropped after lawsuit threat (nj.com)Plan for voting machine probe dropped after lawsuit threat (nj.com)Posted Mar 22, 2008 2:15 UTC (Sat) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998)In reply to: Plan for voting machine probe dropped after lawsuit threat (nj.com) by giraffedata Parent article: Plan for voting machine probe dropped after lawsuit threat (nj.com)
A basic fact of US copyright law and computer programs is that once you own a legal copy of a computer program, you have the right to use it, explicitly including the making of any temporary copies needed to do so.
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Plan for voting machine probe dropped after lawsuit threat (nj.com) Posted Mar 22, 2008 2:53 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] It certainly seems that way, but the article I read said it was an issue with a "license" that convinced Union County it couldn't analyze the voting machines. There's no such thing as a license to deploy a voting machine, so it sounded to me like they were talking about a copyright license. Without any more details, I wouldn't swear that there's no way they could have arranged things so that copyright law gives Sequoia control over how the machines are used, but thinking again, I think it's most likely that the author confused a copyright license with the contract under which Union County got one. Or maybe it's a patent license.
Plan for voting machine probe dropped after lawsuit threat (nj.com) Posted Mar 26, 2008 1:25 UTC (Wed) by wahern (subscriber, #37304) [Link] Protestations of distinguished people like Eben Moglen notwithstanding, generally speaking, a judge can treat any term of a "license", which technically might not conform to Copyright Law, as a term of a collateral contract. And because these days you can contract for just about anything (w/ limited historical exceptions, peaking in the 1960's and diminishing since), Union County could be found liable for breach of contract, and forced to pay through the nose. Remember, the amount of "damages" that Intellectual Property holders claim is up in the air as a practical matter, so there's significant risk to Union County.
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