>> > I'm affraid about copyright laws. >> >> I'm no legal expert, but isn't it just considered a backup copy as long as >> you still own the original version? > >your are not aloud to create a copy of anything , without the copyright >owners permission.
That's wrong, or at least, wrong in England (I think). <fx: semi-informed waffle alert!> Most of the things you'll find in the average software license agreement are unenforcable in the UK. It's protection by intimidation, the software company says "you may not do this, that or the other" and hopes that most people believe them, and don't it. But they also say "this does not affect your statutory rights", because they are not allowed to reduce the consumer's rights below a certain minimum threshold as defined by UK law. I'm almost certain that threshold includes making (but, of course, not distributing) backup copies. I'm absolutely certain it includes reverse-engineering and modifying the software, which is another thing these "end-user license agreements" tend to disallow. They might therefore try to argue that by doing any of this you are in breach of your agreement, but since you haven't signed anything there's no danger there either. A major distinction between the UK and the US, is that when a UK consumer buys a piece of software, he owns that copy of the program - wheras a US consumer merely owns a license to use that software (under just about whatever terms the software producer sees fit). </fx> > Having a backup of a disk thats not used for illegal >purposes , is like have a gun and NEVER thinks of firing it (Pointless) Invalid analogy. You've never ever had a corrupted disk then? If it doesn't actually involve much effort, I will usually make a backup of anything I buy. That way, if my Sam decides to chew up my disk, I don't have to spend more money on buying the same program twice. Sometimes I will remove protection, like the one on SamPaint which just became tedious after a while (and actually only took me about 90 seconds to remove). But I don't distribute the copies. Andrew -- | Andrew Collier | email [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Talk sense to a | Part 2 NatSci | http://carou.sel.cam.ac.uk/ | fool and he +----------------+-----------------------------+ calls you foolish | Selwyn College Student Computer Support Team | -- Euripides
