On Fri, 18 Feb 2011, Josh Smift wrote: > d> there is a principal in English Common Law (which is the foundation for > d> much of western law) called First Sale, which says that once you sell > d> something to someone else you no longer can dictate how it is used. > > Yeah, but the idea here is that you aren't buying the hardware, you're > buying a license to use the hardware under certain terms. > > This is a somewhat new thing, but it's not just "the last few years" -- > license agreements are pretty well established law at this point, aren't they? > > You may not like them (I don't particularly), but I think we're stuck with > them for now.
such things have existed for a long time, but according to the courts they have to be structred very clearly as such, and such contracts impose obligations on the real owners of the devices (things like liability, disposal, etc) there are not a lot of court cases on this matter, but there are some where the company claimed that they were only licensing things and the courts have looked at the situation and said effectivly 'if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's a duck not a dog'. David Lang _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
