While it is true that money is the primary driving force for corporations, I think the issue with copyright is more general.

Don't you think that the creator of a work should be able to put whatever restrictions on its distribution they choose?
E.g. shouldn't Apple be able to say that they don't want anyone who uses a forum username that starts with Z is not allowed to run Front Row?
Why? Just because - a whim of the creator.

It's not necessarily only about money.
Here's a real life example I heard on the radio today. A songwriter wrote a Christmas song for his wife. The radio guy had heard some of his previous songs and wanted to play this new song on the radio. The songwriter refused - he wanted to keep it just for his sweetheart. Now what would you think if someone got a copy of that song somehow and made it available via P2P ? There is no financial loss since the songwriter never intended to sell the song.

Gosh, we've been around the block about legal and moral issue re. piracy so many times on this board, and it's a bit annoying to see the same people throwing out the most absurd justifications again and again.

No, it's not about money. It's about intellectual property, which no one has a right to use contrary to conditions stated by the owner of such property. That's it. All other considerations are self-indulgent rationalizations, imo.

So you're ok with this one for example ?

"...Just to be sure, this afternoon I went down to the store and bought a copy of FrontPage 2002 myself. In the box was the "Microsoft Frontpage 2002" license on a four-page folded sheet, titled "End- User License Agreement For Microsoft Software." Under Section #1, Grant of License, the second paragraph headed "Restrictions" states in part: "You may not use the Software in connection with any site that disparages Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC, Expedia, or their products or services, infringe any intellectual property or other rights of these parties, violate any state, federal or international law, or promote racism, hatred or pornography."... "
full story:
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/09/21/1438251.shtml

I disapprove of what that licence says, but I defend Microsoft's right to say it.

What about Sony installing rootkits on their customers machines ?

detailed discussion in:
http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=46807

When you say that you defend their right to say it, does that mean you would defend their right to enforce it? In other words, do you think such a thing should be legal?

I think something like Microsoft's EULA for FrontPage is dangerous. I mean, if enforceable, could Apple decree in their contracts, someday, that I cannot use my Mac to disparage them?

I don't think that is relevant to the discussion here.
I'm obviously against Sony's actions. One way of saying it is that they didn't have a licence to modify their customers' machines in that way. Their customers did not agree to this change.

I'm not sure. I think the legal system should probably be reserved for use when other mechanisms of avoiding undesirable behaviour fail.
In this case, I suspect that normal market and PR mechanisms will ensure that the restrictive parts of that licence will get changed.

A more interesting case of despicable licence restrictions is that of the source-code control software "BitKeeper where the licence prohibits users from working on any program that might compete with BitKeeper.

Things like this don't affect me directly since I'm not a developer. Given my profession, I sometimes go days without even touching a computer. But I can see how something like BitKeeper would be a definite thorn in some people's sides.

While I'm an advocate of privacy, I'm also an advocate of keeping things open. As I've learned more over the last few years, I've made an effort to use open source as much as possible, contributing monetarily when I could, because I believe it's a good thing for people to get paid for what they do. I've also made an effort to save all files in non-proprietory file formats and have become a big believer in the text document, basic html, and the like.

I don't understand a society, those people and those corporations, where it can't be as simple as making an honest buck. I don't understand why these entities do what they can to lock people into a type of circularity.

Years ago when I had as my personal computer a machine running Windows 98 and I was much more noobish, technologically, than I am today, although I still am today in many ways, I thought I'd give Gnu-Linux a try. So I backed up all my information, including a 1000 or so emails saved from Outlook Express, and made the transfer. Woe and behold, about half those emails are fairly lost to me having been saved as .msg files. That's the kind of thing that hurts someone who isn't a developer.

I suppose I've gone off topic from the original post of this thread. :)

I get to throw stones? Rad!

And you know, I do wonder about what your saying. It would be interesting if Apple just said "hey, go ahead and use this for whatever you want." And then they go laugh to themselves knowing that you're going to go out and guy an iMac if you get addicted to it.

But, this whole foray into legal precedence and bylaw has really helped me to realize why law school is so hard for my friends... Quite the dilemma between what feels good, what feels right and what is actually legal :).

Hear!! Hear!!

I think the answers to these questions are typically clear cut and those who are making the rationalizations know in their hearts that they are doing so.

One has to know whether or not they are taking the straightforward and direct approach (boycott/purchase/use competitor's product/etc.) or the sneaky approach.

I am reminded of a handful interesting points from page 4 of this thread: http://forums.macosxhints.com/showth...t=39802&page=4

Beyond ensuring that I do not profit from his hard work through outright theft, no. There's a clause somewhere in the XBox's EULA that prohibits the owner from using a modchip to install Linux on it; maybe I want a cheap PVR. I paid hard earned money for the raw materials, who are they to tell me what I can and can not do with it?

There's a problem with making 'rules.' When general, it's fine; when specific, it's a huge problem, because the rule maker never realizes where to stop.

In reality, Apple, Jobs, whoever -- probably doesn't care about a young guy installing FrontRow. However, no corporation (authority) can ever show weakness and say "that's okay." All bases need to be covered, and its perception of a strongman needs to be maintained -- all to ensure its customers (followers) stay in line and never feel as if they have too much clout.

Now, if someone wants to be in that category of people -- who need things spelled out to them to function properly, that's their decision; the majority of the people enjoy being told what to do. Thankfully there's always a small minority who think differently, and that's where great and new ideas emerge.

When I read the history of computer hackers in the 70s -- people ilke Woz, or look at the awesome ingenuity and idea exchange it took to do things like establish early BBS systems, it becomes pretty sickening to watch people bicker over some five page document written in a 6 point font destined for any sane man's trash can when they could just be working together and generating great ideas.

I love OS X and all proprietary apps I've purchased for it, but watching people blindly follow corporate mandates in the name of the Intellectual Property boogeyman makes me seriously contemplate a 100% switch to open source -- for the same 'moral' reasons many claim to be upholding.

I agree in your annoyance with that part of the EULA, but that doesn't make it legal for me to modify the XBox and install Linux on it. Also, this is a legal issue, not a moral issue.

I don't think anybody is telling anyone that they have to be a sheep. I think the point of view of the people here who agree with me is that if you are going to do something illegal, you should admit it is illegal and leave it at that. Any rationalizations one makes might point toward a possible vector which a lawyer could take to challenge the EULA, but they do not make the illegal act into a legal act. Ignoring the EULA by doing things which it forbids might be 'thinking different' but neither improves nor changes the EULA. I don't think it makes one a rebel just because they violate a EULA. The wolfish or rebel thing to do is to challenge the EULA. Similarly, not entering into agreements which one does not intend to keep does not make one a sheep.

I am annoyed by all the legalese these days myself, but (and this does not include the EULA mentioned or others like it mentioned in this thread) some of this is a product of the times we live in. I am a faculty member at a university and I'd like to tell the nervous untenured group here how our department tenure committee operates so as to assuage some of their fears (then they might seek guidance for addressing a weakness rather than trying to mask it). However, I can't do so because anything I say or write to them might be interpretted as a policy. So here we are, all hoping for the same outcome, yet we can't say anything which might aid us in working together toward that outcome. At the present I am involved in negotiations between the faculty and the administration and there are similar legal straight-jackets and hoops to deal with. It annoys and frustrates me to no end.

Now there is a rebel thing to do...and over time with enough people doing so, it would cause change. Myself, any applications I use which did not come on my computer from Apple are shareware applications which I paid the licenses for, or open source applications. I have no Microsoft (or hardware like XBox) or other commercial software whatsoever, partially due to EULA (typically restrictions about how many computers it can reside on, even if they are only used one-at-a-time) but mostly due to an early annoyance with fights I had with Word 6.0.1 to keep it from doing what it wanted to do rather than what I wanted to do.

But speaking of intellectual property (from the XBox EULA) we have moved to something which is a moral issue as well. There are chicken-and-egg issues here. If pirating were not so much of a problem, developers and companies would not have to be as draconian as they sometimes are (or charge as much as they do for the software), and if they were not so draconian or did not charge so much there would not be as much of a backlash resulting in more pirating (due to rationalizations). I don't know all the answers, I only govern myself, and I won't tell anyone else what to do. However, it rankles me to hear that 'it's ok to do X because of Y' when in reality 'X' doesn't change 'Y' one iota.

This has become a Coat Room discussion, so that's where it's going.

I don't own an XBox and never will, but without reading that clause, I must say it sends a chill up my spine. As bedouin pointed out, I own the hardware - I didn't rent it our lease it - I bought it, so if I choose to modify it, that should be up to me. If I buy a car and modify it to race it, that's my decision, not the manufacturer's. I accept that they don't have to honor any guarantees after I do it and their liability for disasters is nil - but the choice is still mine and so are the consequences.

The problem then with a EULA that prohibits modification is that it's like a red light that won't change - unreasonable. Most folks will wait, and then drive on. I'm a hobbiest tweaker, so I have modified hundreds of gadgets over the years to do things they weren't intended for, even gadgets that were clearly never intended to be opened. Similarly, I have repaired hundreds of gadgets that failed even though in this throwaway economy of ours most would have simply bought another.

In a way, we bring this on ourselves. There's a movement afoot, for example, to make manufacturers responsible for recycling their products at the end of their lives. Why isn't that my responsibility? It's mine.

I've never really said disobeying a EULA is legal, I've just pointed out numerous times that the legality of something doesn't make a choice right or wrong; it's all contextual.

For the record, I don't own an XBox either, though not because of the EULA; I'm just opposed to Microsoft attempting to monopolize yet another industry for the sake of media dominance and refuse to let one penny go toward that, even if they are taking a 'loss' on each unit.

There's a lot of drugs (forget recreational ones for the moment) that are not approved by the FDA for use in the US. However if one of those drugs is the sole cure to your chronic pain, perhaps you'll want to break a few laws to obtain it. There's situations where legality is irrelevant. People who commit atrocities and propagate stupidity world-wide are generally "just following the rules."

Well, when a mass of people ignore and dismiss an idea it just becomes antiquated and irrelevant, even if it stays on the books; kind of like some of these laws. Of course, that chain of reaction can't begin unless others start.

If people couldn't pirate say -- Dreamweaver, they'd just use Nvu; if they couldn't pirate Photoshop, they'd just use GIMP. I don't really buy the line that high software prices are the result of piracy; that's a scapegoat. It reminds me of the time when CDs were brand new, and methods to duplicate them digitally (DAT tapes) were too expensive for most consumers; that didn't stop the record companies from charging $18.99 for a album that was $8.99 on vinyl or cassette, despite the fact that the CD's manufacturing costs were lower.

Bedouin, you make some good points, but what still trumps is the right of owners of intellectual property to state the legal terms for the use of their product. When one agrees to these terms and uses the product, one is showing that they value the work of the creator of the product. If one has pirated the product and continues to use it, one should pay the fee (as I'm sure you'd agree). I cannot think of a "context" in which this principle is antiquated or rendered irrelevant.

As most software vendors provide a demo version of their applications, there should seldom be a need to pirate anything. That inclues Dreamweaver and most other prime time apps. There's also extensive documentation online to learn about these apps.

I just paid around $500 for a new digital camera without having a pirated version or even a demo. Why? Documentation, the reputation of the manufacturer, magazine and Internet reviews, etc. People do this kind of stuff all the time and there's absolutely no reason why decisions about purchasing software can't be made that way as well.

But the point I was making vis-a-vis the XBox was that a manufacturer can certainly tell me that modifying the product will void the warranty, but surely not how I might use it. If the product will do something legal and I do it, then the original manufacturer has no beef in my view. Apple, for example, doesn't support processor upgrades and that's fine with me and fair enough - but they don't have a EULA with their products that says I agree not to change some piece of internal hardware. It's just made clear that I do so at my own risk. An XBox is a computer. If I want to use it in some way for which it wasn't intended, how do I misappropriate Microsoft's intellectual property rights? I can't sell my modified version because it still contains their equipment installations, but I can certainly use it myself.

One can almost always finds extremes which illustrate the absurdity of following any train of thought blindly in all instances. I hardly think that is what anyone was talking about.

With respect to NovaScotian's point about the XBox, I agree and I don't believe that what Microsoft is asking is appropriate and wouldn't buy something which I thought was inappropriately restricting me. If one buy's an XBox and then modifies it against the EULA they are doing something illegal by the EULA and perhaps this is something which falls almost in the category of absurd laws and situations that bedouin is referring to. The nature of an issue might make it a badge of honor to violate the law in that instance, and it might be morally correct to violate that law, but it remains an illegal act.

And, of course, what MS is worried about it that someone will set up a nice little business modding XBoxes to be very fast powerful Linux machines or even building and selling kits for you to install yourself. Like a lot of things these days, XBoxen are probably sold at a loss or near cost like ink jet printers - it's the consumables they want to sell at a big profit.