Shrink-wrap licensing

[John Cowan]

Seth David Schoen scripsit:

> 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.

Shades of the AT&T bug fix tape!

But no.  Sorry, but no.

The point is that *contract* law doesn't operated between the
software author and someone who acquires the software other than
by way of sale (but still legally).  *Copyright* law operates
in full force, because copyrights are effective against everyone,
whether they have a contractual relationship with the author or not.

-- 
John Cowan                                   cowan at ccil.org
       I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin