bhoggett wrote:
Cymric wrote:
Quite correct. Legally, all copies of Amithlon are void unless you own an Amiga yourself (or a copy of Cloanto's AmigaForever) and do not use it at the same time as Amithlon.
I would dispute that. People bought - and indeed sold - Amithlon in good faith for some time before Amiga Inc chose to make their dispute with Haage & Partner known. Since Amigs Inc were not unaware of the product and even demonstrated it themselves (they were also the ones who handed over distribution rights to H&P even though those rights weren't theirs to give at the time), so to say that every copy of Amithlon out there is illegal is somewhat dubious.
I'm sorry, but 'good faith' has little to do with one party not having the license to distribute another party's copyrighted / trademarked / ... work. No license = not legal. (In the strict juridical sense of the word, without all that crap about 'morals' and 'right' and 'wrong'.) Notice that I specifically allowed for a loophole: namely when a buyer 'in good faith' is able to supply the disputed software on his own without breaking any of
his licenses.
What
does make it dubious is the fact that AInc 'diluted' their rights by not immediately responding to the fact that H&P distributed software without a proper license. (Although this is new to me, I couldn't find this bit in the descriptions of Amithlon's demise.) It would depend on AInc's history in defending their rights how a judge would rule: this is the reason that Apple and other companies are so incredibly quick to file scary lawsuits to even the slightest infringements of their work. If they
don't, they might not have a case in the future.
All in all, I agree with you partially. It depends on how the owner is using the software, as well as AInc's efforts to protecting its copyrights to decide whether it is genuinely illegal or not. But since it will require big bucks on lawyer fees to find out for sure---big bucks everybody would rather spend on things they like, such as feeding the kitty (<--- that one, for example)---the matter will go unanswered, and will very likely remain so until the end of time.
Is it legal to distribute the ISO now? Clearly not, and no one could possibly endorse such activity or give you permission to do so. Will anyone care if you choose to ignore the law? I doubt it.
Exactly.
