free-software licenses vs. EULAs [LWN.net]

free-software licenses vs. EULAs

Posted Aug 14, 2008 22:35 UTC (Thu) by stevenj (guest, #421)
Parent article: Why the JMRI decision matters

You are required to accept a unilateral license only if you want to do things that are forbidden by copyright law but which are permitted by the license.

That's why free-software licenses have proven so easily enforceable, time and time again: if you redistribute the software, then you are either violating copyright law or you accepted the license.

With an EULA, it doesn't seem so clear. Once you have legally bought the software at a store and brought it home, there's a reasonable argument that you already have the right to run the software (the "copying" required to load the software into memory notwithstanding). Hence you don't need any additional license, and you don't need to accept the EULA.

Indeed, while free-software licenses increase what you can do with the software compared to copyright law, EULAs tend to do the opposite (claiming to forbid reverse-engineering, overturn the first-sale doctrine, and so on).

My understanding is that the case law on this kind of thing is somewhat mixed and unclear, but IANAL. Still, I wish the EFF attorney had made the distinction clearer between free/open-source licenses and EULAs.

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Result for device importers

Posted Aug 15, 2008 2:04 UTC (Fri) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

Proprietary software executive: "Hey, does this mean we can make our EULA stricter?"

But one of the many implications of this case is that it will probably be easier to use the US Customs Service to seize products with GPL-violating embedded code.

free-software licenses vs. EULAs

Posted Aug 15, 2008 2:42 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> Once you have legally bought the software at a store and brought it home, there's a
reasonable argument that you already have the right to run the software (the "copying"
required to load the software into memory notwithstanding). Hence you don't need any
additional license, and you don't need to accept the EULA. 

Actually, under US law, this "incidental" copying necessary "as an essential step in the
utilization of the computer program" is explicitly not a copyright infringement.  (USC 17 Sec
117)

free-software licenses vs. EULAs

Posted Aug 15, 2008 9:38 UTC (Fri) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]

Tell it to the court that found in favour of Blizzard over that World of Warcraft bot case. :(

free-software licenses vs. EULAs

Posted Aug 15, 2008 12:54 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

The thing is, that WoW Bot case wasn't (arguably) covered by this, because the in-ram copy he
made (to hack on?) wasn't "essential to the operation of the computer program". 

I'm not familiar with the technical details of the case, so I'm speculating more than I
normally do.  :)

free-software licenses vs. EULAs

Posted Aug 23, 2008 16:45 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

You are required to accept a unilateral license only if you want to do things that are forbidden by copyright law but which are permitted by the license.

You may have missed the essence of the acceptance distinction between contract and license. There's a legal concept of accepting a contract. Acceptance is an identifiable event -- a court can determine the moment that it happened. It's something the acceptor does, such as writing his name on a piece of paper or clicking a mouse, that indicates the acceptor's intent to form a contract. There is no such acceptance of a license. You aren't required to accept one ever. You can't reject one.

if you redistribute the software, then you are either violating copyright law or you accepted the license.

I would say, "you are either violating copyright law or you are taking advantage of the license."

The End User License Agreement, which is a contract in which the user promises things in exchange for a copyright license, obviously touches both worlds.