Copyright vs? Click-wrap "contract"

[David Johnson]

On Friday 01 November 2002 12:32 am, Brendan Hide wrote:

> Cryptography in C and C++ reads:
> "Copyright (c)2001 by Michael Welschenbach
>
> All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or
> transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
> including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or
> retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright
> owner and the publisher."
>
> These look like licenses to me.

Hmm, are those really licenses, or are they mere copyright notices?

> Does this mean that, if I don't read the license for MS Windows XP (I
> haven't and never will - I refuse to install such a trojan), and I let
> my 8-year-old sister click on "Agree", that I can reverse-engineer
> Windows XP?

I don't know about South Africa, but here in the United States lawsuits are 
won not according to the law, but according to who has the biggest laywers. 
Microsoft has bigger lawyers than you do. This means that if they say you 
have agreed to their license, then you have indeed agreed to their license. 
If they say the moon is made of green cheese, who are you to argue?

-- 
David Johnson
___________________
http://www.usermode.org
pgp public key on website
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