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To: general_re
What you're attempting to argue - and not very successfully, I might add - is that if Apple puts a clause in their EULA that I agree not to smoke while using OS X, and I light up anyway, I've infringed upon Apple's copyright.

That's exactly true. A copyright holder can put anything he wants in the license unless it's otherwise illegal. If you want to use his software, you have to abide by his rules. And since it isn't a contract, it isn't bound by fairness, adhesion, coercion and other concepts limiting how much of a contract is enforceable.

Of course, the major problem you have is that copyright law says nothing about smoking being a copyright infringement. Obviously, to do so would be a violation of the license agreement, but the license agreement is not copyright law

There's your conceptual problem. I've said it before, but I'll try it just one more time for the legally challenged. Here's how copyright law works. Just for you, I'll distinguish between License (like a EULA) and license (permission to do something).

Let's go with a more normal case. I publish an ebook under the license that publishers normally do. You copy and redistribute it. You violated my copyright by doing something you were not licensed to do. I don't have to revoke a license. You violated my copyright. I sue.

"But you can't copy books, everybody knows that" you say. Wrong. Books are published under the Creative Commons licenses, and they do allow redistribution -- but with other specific terms, such as no commercial use. Commercial use of certain Creative Commons works is copyright infringement because you violated the license. Nobody has to revoke a license, they just file suit for copyright infringement.

Same with software: violate the license, infringe on copyright, because that license is by definition the only thing standing between you and a copyright violation.

THAT is copyright law. It doesn't care about specific terms. It only cares if someone does something without license.

134 posted on 05/26/2005 10:58:21 AM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: antiRepublicrat
Any use outside of the License, or in violation of restrictions in the License, is ipso facto a copyright violation, since you used the work without license

'fraid not. Simply violating a provision of the license agreement does not "ipso facto" cause the agreement to be in abeyance. That is at the discretion of the other party, and is not automatic. I notice that you are, thus far, wholly unable to cite any portion of copyright law to support your position,

135 posted on 05/26/2005 3:33:57 PM PDT by general_re ("Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith, but in doubt." - Reinhold Niebuhr)
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