(OT) - Major Blow to Copyleft Theory

[Donovan Hawkins]

On Tue, 28 Aug 2007, Mahesh T. Pai wrote:

> BTW, the argument/FUD sought to be spread here works both ways. Just
> consider this:-
>
> A person violating the Microsoft EULA (for any of their OSes, for
> example) is exposing himself to CRIMINAL cation, because by violating
> the EULA, his copy of the OS has become unauthorised. Possession
> and/or use of unauthourised copies of copyrighted work is a crime as
> per the law of copyrights.

The thought has crossed my mind that even the big closed source players 
might want to step in and side with us on this one rather than let this 
recent decision stand. How many companies would want their program reverse 
engineered and used in a competitor's product for whatever fee the court 
decides is appropriate? I think they'd prefer an injunction, same as us.

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Donovan Hawkins, PhD                 "The study of physics will always be
Software Engineer                     safer than biology, for while the
hawkins at cephira.com                   hazards of physics drop off as 1/r^2,
http://www.cephira.com                biological ones grow exponentially."
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