Hi Eddie, On Fri, 2008-02-15 at 23:16 +0000, Eddie Armstrong wrote: > Alan Pope wrote: > > Being brutal - not our problem and somewhat "OT" for this list. > > > > I clearly labelled the topic OT and i stressed that it must be a legal > solution.
My "brutal" reply was to Tony Travis, not your original message, so I'm a little susprised by this reply. > IANAL and do not > fully understand the legality of copying something for which I have a > licence and which I can use legally and whether that constitutes > /software piracy /, only retrospectively do I think it MIGHT be the case > that /sharing/ it is wrong. Therefore I am open to a better solution > I don't think you need to be a lawyer to understand that you can't go around making copies of, or sharing copies of software for which you don't have explicit permission for. I would recommend that you should read the license for software that you are running, which of course includes the EULA for Windows if that's what you're running. > As for the previous advice I was given I think it was given in good > faith and no one was attempting any fraud/theft/copyright > violations/piracy or anything else illegal. Yes they were. Tom Bamford suggested using bittorrent to download/share _copies_ of Windows XP. > I DID search Microsoft's > sites using different search criteria and could not find a solution, I > also read articles and MS documents re OEM software licensing. > Microsoft would not have been harmed by this, there was no financial > loss; in fact probably the opposite, as I was refurbishing the machines > and putting them back into circulation; re-installing- XP giving them > more opportunities to get even richer , making them dual boot instead > of pure Ubuntu boxes. Whatever the intention, however nice it may be, the fact is that the software is under a somewhat restrictive license. You can't claim that "I was pirating this software so I could give the computers to poor one-legged orfans" and expect that to be a legitimate defence in court. > I was not charging for this either > We download/copy/share licenced software all the time; as OEM software > has all ready been bundled and is only being re-installed it did not > occur to me that this was wrong. Again, I'd recommend you re-read the OEM Windows XP EULA as it makes this pretty clear. > Obviously if there's a risk of breaking > copyright then we shouldn't advocate torrents but I don't think we were > '/promoting software piracy/'. I have never knowingly installed > stolen/counterfeit etc software nor advocated it - quite the opposite, > in fact. Hence my concern that solutions be legal. > I didn't say you did, I merely pointed out to Tom that it wasn't a good idea for us (a free software group) to advocate / recommend the use of pirated software and sharing of that software. > There must be a legal way of getting a copy of MS OEM software - in the > absence of any other suggestion I will try phoning MS next week. That's probably your best bet. Cheers, Al. -- [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
