Re: Re: DVD legal maneuvers (decss and the lawyers) (fwd)

[Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>]

----- Forwarded message from Sunder -----

Date: Tue, 04 Jan 2000 19:10:56 -0500
From: Sunder <sunder@sunder.net>
Subject: Re: CDR: Re: DVD legal maneuvers (decss and the lawyers) (fwd)

You miss the point, there are two separate issues.  One is copyright, the other
is the shrinkwrap/installer license.  

[ Actualy you miss the point. This is all about contract law.

  Contract Law > License Law > Copyright Law

  It's different levels of the same animal.

  Contract law says what a contract is and who the participants are and what
  the limits of the contract may be - note it doesn't necessarily detail
  what is actualy in the contract/license. In a real sense contract law is
  private law. Copyright law simply says who may define that contract/license
  for a new work. ]

I say that you can legally abide by copyright law, and that fair use would be
reading and using the software as you see fit.  Further that the
shrinkwrap/installer license doesn't come into play at all since you never have
to agree to it.

[ You might see fit to give it to a friend, that would be illegal under the
  copyright statutes. Strictly speaking your friend must buy his own copy
  of the software if he wants to use it. You might see fit to put it on two
  or more machines and use them both at the same time, unfortunately the
  contract you agreed to at time of purchase prohibits this.

  What you see fit to do with it is irrelevant. What matters is what you
  agreed to do with it when you accepted the terms of the contract (whether
  is it verbal, written, or simply implied is irrelevant) at time of
  exchange with the agent of the copyright holder.

  When you paid the money to take the product from the vendor you agreed
  implicitly to abide by the contract in the box, the vendor after all is 
  nothing more than an agent for the copyright holder. ]

Why is it that books (or audio CD's or VHS movies) do not come with shrinkwrap
licenses that say "you must always read this book (cd, vhs tape) from page 1
sequentially to the end, you cannot skip around, you cannot reverse engineer an
outline of this story to write your own with the same theme, only one person
may read this book (this CD/VHS tape, may only be played in a single CD player/
VCR), etc..."?  

[ Because they haven't found it profitable, pretty obvious answer. As to
  books, the fact is that strictly speaking whether you can actualy loan
  it to a 3rd party (other than you and the copyright holder) is at the
  discretion of the copyright holder, NOT you. You can of course sell your
  privilige to another 3rd party, contract law provides for the transfer
  of rights.

  What you OWN is the paper and the right to read it. The actual text of
  the media is still owned by the copyright owner. You are in fact doing
  nothing but borrowing it from them.

  I've seen many books, I've probably got some in my library, that say
  explicitly that you can not loan the book. They are usualy cheap
  paperbacks. Should I stumble across any I'll forward the title and
  ISBN.

  When you buy software, you are NOT buying the software but rather the
  privilige of using the software. What those priviliges may be is at
  the discretion of the owner, not the user. And in this case they aren't
  the same person. ]

[ mucho text deleted ]

----- End of forwarded message from Sunder -----

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