Chris Oattes wrote: > Sean Miller said the following on 17/02/08 10:02: >> On 2/16/08, Eddie Armstrong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> Well what started out as a simple request has turned into a lot of >>> unpleasantness: >>> I don't know how to make it any more obvious I was seeking a *legal* >>> solution and hoped somebody here might have one. I've all ready agreed >>> that what you say may be correct in essence not necessarily the detail >>> but I really can't be bothered arguing it any more. >> >> >> >> I really don't think Micro$oft is going to go to all the effort of suing >> somebody for re-installing an OEM machine using somebody else's CD (be that >> their physical CD or a burned image of it), I really don't... it would be >> incredibly pedantic to classify such a thing a piracy as the software is >> protected by licence keys and is useless without them... I would call >> copying the CD a "technical infringement of the licence terms", no more than >> that. Piracy would have to involve also sharing the key or distributing a >> hacked copy that doesn't require a key, something that has not happened here >> at all... whether a copy has been burned from one's own CD (legal, I >> believe, for backup purposes) or from somebody else's what is arrived at in >> the end is the same... an installation of Windows XP using a valid OEM >> licence on the machine for which that licence was supplied... >> >> Sean >> >> > > I don't think the issue is that you will get fined loads of money for > copying a Windows CD. The point is that it is, at best, against the > terms of the license, and at worse could be considered piracy. Therefore > the act of making a copy of the CD for someone else is "wrong" whichever > way you look at it, and is not something that should be promoted on this > list.
That was simply the way I understood things too, it is more a matter of principle than anything. But principles are important. It would be pretty bad politics to have a MS comment that the Ubuntu UK list was colluding in something - anything - that was against a licence agreement. Licence agreements are all that stand between us and the world of proprietary software and all that it leads to. GPL and variants that is. -- alan cocks Kubuntu user#10391 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
