Re: [PLUG] Reg: You thought you bought software

Re: [PLUG] Reg: You thought you bought software – all you bought was a lie

On Thu, Oct 6, 2022, 07:29 Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 5, 2022 at 11:20 PM brent saner via plug
<plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
>
> This is the crux of it. Why can't you rip *and distribute* a song om a CD or a movie on a DVD you purchase?
>
> Because it was not *sold* to you, it was *licensed* to you. The terms *of that license* keep you bound to DMCA. Not the terms *of the sale*.

By this argument NOTHING in this world is sold to you, because almost
everything is subject to regulation.

You don't license a baseball bat, and yet you can't do anything you
want with it (like smash somebody's windows).

You can sell, woodchip, examine under a microscope, etc. a baseball bat once bought.

You can only "sell" CD's, DVD's, etc. with copyrighted content to another because the license allows for it. (And not always, at that! Read the Windows EULA sometime and you let me know how legal selling your copy of Windows is.)

You conflate the goods with the action. The *action* here, damage of another's private property, is illegal. The law doesn't care if it's a bat, crowbar, lawn gnome, ...

Likewise, Louisville Slugger would not be called as a witness or held legally liable whatsoever.

If your point stood, BitTorrent would be illegal. It is not. The unlicensed distribution of copyrighted content is.

The rules against
redistributing software is not something imposed by the person who
sold it to you, but a law just like any other law. The person who
sells you software cannot impose restrictions on what you do with it,
but the law already does in the absence of them extending you a
license to do otherwise.

When you buy software, you do just that, you buy it.

You *purchase a license*.

The owner of that software, the copyright holder, does, in fact, decide the limitations of redistribution of that content. Adobe has decided to not open-source Photoshop, not the judicial system. They can change their mind, at any moment, and change this with no governmental approval needed.

Because they own it.

The law provides a mechanism of *enforcement* of copyright.

It is entirely up to me if I decide if I want to bring to court or not someone who infringes on a copyright I hold.;

> "To sell means to transfer property from a seller to a buyer via a sale."
>
> Was property (intellectual or otherwise) *transferred*[1]? No! There was no *transferrance*, only *duplication* and *distribution*.

Sure it was transferred. One copy of the software was sold to you, in
the same way that when you buy a plastic toy you get one of millions
of copies of one of those. When you buy a car you don't get EVERY car
of that model that was ever made, and the exclusive rights to
manufacture more of them. You get one car.

"Transfer", in the legal definition, is the changing of ownership.

If ownership of an a car is transferred to you, you can sell that car to someone else, destroy it, etc. You own it.

You cannot sell commercial software if the *license* (again, determined by the *owner*, not the law) prohibits it.

You do not own it.

Ergo, no legal transfer took place.

All a license does is give you ADDITIONAL rights, by giving you
permission to do things that are otherwise illegal.

"Prohibited with legal enforcement" is more accurate; copyright is technically Civil, not Criminal. You sue a copyright infringer, you don't prosecute them. (Unless you can make a case for CFAA, but that again is going to be an entirely different trial because that IS criminal.)

You can buy a baseball bat, but only the owner of a property can give
you a license to use it to smash their window with it. The license
makes legal an act that would otherwise be illegal.

See above re: BitTorrent.

As an aside, I'm not particularly interested in "legal definitions"
but just how words are used.

I care about legal definitions. A lot. Especially when discussing things that can land you in court. They're pretty important then.

I really don't care if the Supreme Court
rules that software is licensed and not sold, for example,

Oh, you can totally sell software, too. Very few people do it, however, because licensing is immensely more profitable.

as this has
no bearing on what is true, and only has bearing on what the police
will do to you if somebody asks them to.

You mean the owner? Because ownership isn't transferred with a license?

A state can legally define
bees to be a form of fish, and courts will apply laws accordingly, but
it doesn't really have any bearing on how normal people see the
situation [0].

They did not rule that "bees are a form of fish". Focus on the latter of 1st paragraph, page 2: "...*as that term is used in the definitions*...".

Because bees are invertebrates, and the word "fish" as defined in that *specific* legislation included the overly-broad "invertebrates".

The legal term for ownership, transferrance, sell, etc. however are not afforded this "oopsie", because they are *commonly established*. That's why they're *in* a legal dictionary, and "fish" is not. (https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fish)

In any case, the reason I called it a pet peeve is that it really
doesn't matter as we're just arguing about the meaning of words.

"One of my pet peeves is that *the idea that commercial software is licensed, and not sold, is essentially a lie* at least in the traditional form."