Amiga osX

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As someone who retails software and has to explain these licences on a daily basis I understand the confusion.  

A company can make up any licence for thier software.  If it says that you have to a certain age, nationality, or run it one certain software then they are quite entitled to.  It doesn't matter how immoral or wrong it is but if you use thier software and you break thier EULA then you can be considered as a pirate.  I know it's wrong but it is thier product and they can distribute it however they want to.

At the end of the day you 'do not own' the software, you only have a licence to use it.  If you breach that agreement (End User Licence Agreement) then they are quite within thier rights to remove or make the product unusable.

The common assumption with every day products like the ones from M$ is that if you have the disk and you paid for it then it's yours to do whatever you like with it.  Once you tell people that they cannot copy the software or duplicate you always end up with the same old argument.

The LAW here is fuzzy because laws within countries are different.  In the U.K. there was such a thing as a privacy law...however, M$ are allowed to probe your machine for information and pass your information to other companies???
The balance has to be between the manufacters 'Intellectual rights' and whatever they use to enforce it and what might seem to be wrong.

I think from Apples point of view that it would be very difficult to enfonce this type of agreement when it could be difficult to probe a non-apple computer for serial codes (like they do with M$ software).  Making software which is hardware dependant could cause serious legal problems when you pay for software and it doesn't work due to a mechanical problem when the description on the box clearly says it works!

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Please excuse me for loving this thread.  I am finding it interesting, amusing, and informative even though some might be getting a little hot under the collar!  So here's something for you guys to chew on...

Taking into account what has been said so far lets put this all into perspective.

Imagine, if you will, that I have written a killer application for the Amiga and everone wants to use it, port it etc etc.  However, to ensure that my program isn't pinched, reverse engineered or damn right stolen from me I have made up an EULA to protect my software.  This EULA is agreed to by the user who purchases it BEFORE installation.
In this EULA I say something like "It can only be used on an Amiga (hardware)", is this wrong?  If I said something like "you must be over 30 years old", is that wrong?  O.k. it's age descrimanation and some countries probably have laws against that, but you don't have to agree!

It all comes down to what the user agrees before installation.  You DON'T have to agree but doing so means you cannot use the software.  The problem arrives when you take the software back to the store saying that you didn't use it or install it and ask for a refund.  There are also laws/rules for retailers when it comes to returned software.  It's very tricky to work out if the customer is entitled to a refund especially as you can easily copy, registered, and return software without it bieng checked by the store.  This is probably where software should be checked with a central database to see whether the software was installed or registered.  M$ are trying to do this by enforcing thier registration techniques via the internet, but no check is made at the stores.

By selling the software the customer/user may own the physical disk (by law) but they do not own the software or the right to do as they please with it.  There is something called 'Intellectual property' whereas the software is not owned by the person who has the disk...they simply just 'rent' the software (so to speak).  An everyday example is a bank or credit card.  That card may be yours, it has your name on it, but the bank owns the card and they can withdraw it at any time.

At the end of the day, if I said that in order to use my software you have to comply with MY rules, no matter how immoral they may be, then I can inforce that because the software is mine (intellectual property).  If you continue to use the software and by doing so have agreed to my rules, should you break these rules then you have broken an agreement (or contract) and you can, quite rightly, be classed as a pirate!

The world of computing has turned from 'Personal Computing' to simply using terminals on the internet.  The end user owns nothing but the physical product.  :-(

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I dunno if I have got this right but if I haven`t then this might seem like a good idea to help stop pirating software.  Or maybe I am just repeating old news....hmmm...here goes.

Apple are using this great idea which they have introduced into thier own music software, itunes, where you can preview and listen to a music track before paying a small fee and downloading.  This is an old idea iirc but finally put to good use with Mac OSX and iTunes 4.  It`s known as the Apple Music store.

Ah, but what if you download the music and then copy it onto CD?  Well, from what I understand you can put that music file onto a CD or copy it 10 times before it becomes unusable...however I believe the track itself is encoded and they use some sort of serial number or encoding to make sure you don`t pass it around.  O.K. so there are ways around it but the idea seems good.

Maybe this is what M$ are trying to do with thier EULA and registration thingy?  They are going to encode the files and you can`t access them without the key which is generated via the serial number/s on your computer when you registeryour PC to M$ via the internet?
I have read all the articles about how M$ can access PC`s without your concent and change files remotely and how windows XP expects to connect to a M$ server when you go online!

What scares me most is that you computer gets probed ever minute by some scumbag and leaves a great gaping hole in your internet security.

THE BEST WAY to stop people copying software is to put a sodding big book with the disk and do what `Frontier Elite` did....ask for the word in a paragraph or page xxx!  By the time you have photocopied all the pages you might as well have bought it!  :-)