Shrink-wrap licensing

[Seth David Schoen]

John Cowan writes:

> I read the SelectPhone case with great interest, especially
> the following bit of dictum:
> 
> # Someone who found a copy of SelectPhone (trademark) on the street
> # would not be affected by the shrinkwrap license--though the federal
> # copyright laws of their own force would limit the finder's ability
> # to copy or transmit the application program.
> 
> This suggests that when there is no relation of buying and selling
> between the copyright holder and the end user, no shrink-wrap-style
> license can alter the position between them.

That's convenient -- you could buy, say, a copy of Xing's DVD player,
or a copy of Cyber Patrol, and lose it on the street.  If you lose it
on the street in the right part of the world (Cambridge, Mountain View,
Urbana, Ottawa...), somebody is likely to find it and reverse-engineer
it -- and the copyright holder will have no obvious remedy against
disclosure of the information thus discovered.

If that trick actually works, this might be a big deal for the free
software community.  Copyright infringement lawsuits against free
software supporters are almost always for unauthorized reverse
engineering and almost never for unauthorized copying.

Can this actually be right?

-- 
Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org>  | And do not say, I will study when I
Temp.  http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/  | have leisure; for perhaps you will
down:  http://www.loyalty.org/   (CAF)  | not have leisure.  -- Pirke Avot 2:5