Copyright continued...

[pwermonger]

I hate it when I got to a restaurant and pay for a meal, but when I try to leave with the plates, knifes and forks then they call the police. They didn't tell me before I paid that I wasn't allowed to take them.

This is not nearly a correct analogy since purchasing a meal, you dont purchase the plates and silverware. More correct would be, you buy a meal at a restaurant (analogous to purchase of software) and you turn and sell, or give away that meal to the person next to you who eats it. Restaurant (software company) still got paid therefore lost nothing, still gained the price set for the product and you did not sell anything that wasnt yours to do with as you pleased.
 
Software companies are desperate to change your software purchase from that to a purchase of a "license" they then deem in a closed box agreement (you dont get to see the 'agreement' until you open the box and opening the box indicates your agreemet to the license you couldnt see until you opened it (oh, by the way, once you open software you pretty much cant return it either so you're likely stuck with whatever slip of paper they placed in the box limiting your use hip hip hooooray for more profit!)) that you have no right to sell or transfer. This way, like record companies in the past tried to do, they can try to destroy the used market and get all the money for themselves.

[pwermonger]

You didn't purchase the software, you just thought you did. That isn't anyones fault but your own. It said it inside the box, like all the other software.
 
I thought I bought the plates because they put them in front of me and I paid them money. If I were in a plate shop and that happened then I would own them, in a restaraunt I don't.
 
I only know that because of education. Knowing that shrink wrapped licenses say you can't re-sell the software is another piece of education.
 
Anyone that has read my post can no longer claim that they don't agree with shrink wrapped licenses, because I've told you all about them. Education is great.

Actually, if I'm not mistaken shrink wrap licenses have been thrown out pretty much everywhere they've been contested since you can not be forced to agree to something ex post facto.
 
When I'm in Best Buy I take a box off a shelf, walk to a cash register and pay, then walk form the store with what I purchased in my hand which I now own and law says the company can not further restrict how I dispose of it after that initial sale. Sit down restaurant, I buy my food sitting at the table and am served by a waiter that food which I ordered from the menu. Now, take out food, is more analogous to my software purchase. There, lo and behold, I get my plates and utensils in the bag in my hand to take from the store and again the take out food establishment cant chase me in the street and stop me from selling it to someone on the corner if I wnat to.
 
They dont lose a sale. now, book publishers and record copanies tried to limit used sales with the idea that you bought the book or record and had use of it then were able to 'steal' a sale from them by selling it used to someone who might have bought it new. They didnt succeed. I can venture software companies will not succeed either though they are trying the same things, few learn from the past.
 
Now, in the case of business purchased licenses, there is a different animal, and likely what this court was deciding on. There, no one walked from a store with a box of software, CD and license to use as a physical item, with an expectation of ownership of what they purchased and the right to dispose of it when done with it how they see fit.