On 5/30/07, Tom Piwowar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Me, I would say that the store is being immoral. And the EULA wouldn't hold >up in most courts of law. And I would say the moral stand is to serve >whatever food you buy from them to whomever you want. So you are going to take the good old "two wrongs make a right" defense. As Bill Gates once said "If we tell them they have to put a ham sandwich in every box, they have to put a ham sandwich in every box." Your obligation is to read the EULA and according to the terms of sale, if you don't like the EULA you return the product and they give you your money back.
OK, you can believe anything Bill Gates tells you. Great. I choose instead to follow the law of the United States. Not the words of Bill Gates. You, as usual, will choose your own way. In actual reality, Constance has it basically right. 1. You need to know what the law is. Right now, the law surrounding EULAs is muddy at best. In most of the courts in the US, the rulings have been that no one has to abide by shrink wrap EULAs. Because it violates basic contract law, primarily. However, two federal districts have ruled in favor of shrink wrap EULAs. That is important to know, to be informed. 2. What the seller or licensor wants is not necessarily relevant. The seller can put illegal or immoral things in a EULA, after all. Especially since it is so complex. Lots of property in the U.S. was encumbered by seller-specified requirements that the property never be sold to blacks. It was even legal and enforceable for a long time. Was it ever moral? No. The same could be said for not using an OS in a virtual machine. It is clear, for instance, that Richard Stallman is a very moral person. He sincerely believes that information should be free and works hard to get that message across. Unfortunately for him, there is a lot of U.S. (and other countries) law that enslaves information. Immoral? Yes. -- John DeCarlo, My Views Are My Own ************************************************************************ * ==> QUICK LIST-COMMAND REFERENCE - Put the following commands in <== * ==> the body of an email & send 'em to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <== * Join the list: SUBSCRIBE COMPUTERGUYS-L Your Name * Too much mail? Try Daily Digests command: SET COMPUTERGUYS-L DIGEST * Tired of the List? Unsubscribe command: SIGNOFF COMPUTERGUYS-L * New address? From OLD address send: CHANGE COMPUTERGUYS-L YourNewAddress * Need more help? Send mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ************************************************************************ * List archive at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ * RSS at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml * Messages bearing the header "X-No-Archive: yes" will not be archived ************************************************************************
