30 Sep, 2008, quixadhal wrote in the 21st comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
If I invite you into my house, then I've granted you a bare licence - I cannot sue you for trespass. But I can revoke that licence by asking you to leave, and if you refuse then you are infringing on my property rights.


Arguments about intellectual property that refer to physical property law usually don't work well. Violations of license or copyright don't deprive the owner of the use of their product, nor of the ability to sell it to others. It's absolutely still wrong, and illegal, but it's not quite the same as theft, trespass. or property rights.

It's more like I built a house and we agreed that you can live in it, so you move in. I still have other houses just like that one, and I'm offering those to other people. After you've moved all your stuff in, I suddenly decide I like dogs. I change our agreement so that you're now required to buy a dog or move out.

To me, that makes no sense… it might be legal, but it smells like bait-and-switch to me.

Out of curiosity, does the DikuMUD license qualify as bare? I read the entry here, but I'm not sure what qualifies as an "interest".
30 Sep, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 22nd comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
It's more like I built a house and we agreed that you can live in it, so you move in. I still have other houses just like that one, and I'm offering those to other people. After you've moved all your stuff in, I suddenly decide I like dogs. I change our agreement so that you're now required to buy a dog or move out.

To me, that makes no sense… it might be legal, but it smells like bait-and-switch to me.

Except that you can't really do that either. Assuming some kind of contract was signed (the lease) you would have to follow various procedures before you could decide to get your tenant out. If the tenant felt you were doing something illegal – even if the lease says you can – they can go to court, too. Besides, bait-and-switch is illegal, too. :wink:


As for "interest", I believe that has to do with what I mentioned above: making it a part of your business or activities, i.e. you have some non-trivial interest in the continued usage of the program according to the license you were given.
30 Sep, 2008, Mabus wrote in the 23rd comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
Arguments about intellectual property that refer to physical property law usually don't work well. Violations of license or copyright don't deprive the owner of the use of their product, nor of the ability to sell it to others. It's absolutely still wrong, and illegal, but it's not quite the same as theft, trespass. or property rights.

As the owner of many copyrights I have to disagree with your characterization that copyright violation is not "theft" or denial of full "property rights". Copyright violation is most certainly "intellectual property theft".

To quote from the USDoJ:
Quote
* Cyber theft comprises crimes in which a computer is used to steal money
or other things of value. Cyber theft includes embezzlement, fraud, theft of
intellectual property
, and theft of personal or financial data.

(Bold my own. Source USDoJ - Cybercrime against Businesses)

And to the point of revoking usage after a user has license to use, this happens all the time with shareware. You are often allowed to download (or otherwise obtain), and use, the software but are asked to pay if you wish to continue using it beyond a set threshold. Once a time period, or other usage threshold, has been met the license to use is revoked. Some software even has built in code to make the software useless after expiration of the usage threshold.
30 Sep, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 24th comment:
Votes: 0
What you describe with shareware isn't really revoking a license. You're still bound by the license, it just happens that the license says you can't use the software in question after some condition is met. The license itself still holds. IMHO IANAL etc.
01 Oct, 2008, Mabus wrote in the 25th comment:
Votes: 0
DavidHaley said:
What you describe with shareware isn't really revoking a license. You're still bound by the license, it just happens that the license says you can't use the software in question after some condition is met. The license itself still holds. IMHO IANAL etc.

Perhaps, in a rhetorical sense.

The license may be for evaluation purposes. The license to use can end after the evaluation conditions, or usage threshold, are met. This would depend on how we define "license". If we define it as "to give permission" then taking away the permission would certainly be "revoking the license to use".

Also note that there are differing types of shareware; from partialware, crippleware, demoware to freeware (and other various names and expected usage conditions). There is no set standard on how each handles the conditions and usage, only loose expectations that can vary from user to user, definition to definition, and distributor to distributor.
01 Oct, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 26th comment:
Votes: 0
I still think that a planned expiration time is quite different from a revocation without some condition being met. The former is well-established up-front whereas the second can be essentially arbitrary.
01 Oct, 2008, Caius wrote in the 27th comment:
Votes: 0
And I think this quote is perfectly applicable to software licenses:

Lewis Carroll - Through the Looking-Glass said:
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
01 Oct, 2008, Guest wrote in the 28th comment:
Votes: 0
Mabus said:
As the owner of many copyrights I have to disagree with your characterization that copyright violation is not "theft" or denial of full "property rights". Copyright violation is most certainly "intellectual property theft".


The problem with that argument is that physical property theft deprives the owner of use of the property while it's stolen. The same doesn't apply to copyrighted material. The owner still has possession of the code and is still freely able to use it to continue doing business. A single person stealing one copy of the code does no harm.

Where you start getting into difficulty is what happens when the person who stole a copy of the code then goes around distributing that code for free to anyone who asks, undercutting your business in the process. We have a term for this. It's called piracy, and in some cases carries severe criminal penalties. "Intellectual property theft" is usually handled as a civil matter.

And I say this as an owner of a few copyrights myself :)
01 Oct, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 29th comment:
Votes: 0
Are you seriously saying that if somebody violates copyright or license – e.g. by not paying royalties that come with the license – but keeps it to themselves, no harm is done?
01 Oct, 2008, Guest wrote in the 30th comment:
Votes: 0
If it's widespread, obviously harm is done. But are you seriously trying to tell me that one person violating the terms is going to cause your imminent collapse?

Also, if your distribution system is weak enough to put a copy in someone's hands before they've consummated a royalty contract you're a fool, period. You'd make damn sure that you had signatures, mailing information, credit card numbers and such long before selling a license to someone. I would hope your terms would be ironclad enough to include charging someone's card automatically each month/year/whatever to collect those royalties, and contain provisions for being able to collect damages from someone who commits fraud against you in the form of stopping payments through some other means.

Regardless, even in that extreme, physical property analogies fail hard because despite widespread fraud, piracy, and whatever else, you still have possession of the original work. Nobody has deprived you of that provided they haven't physically stolen the media you store it on. And again, fraud, piracy, property theft, these are all criminal matters you could involve the police in rather than calling your civil attorney to sue for a license breach.
01 Oct, 2008, KaVir wrote in the 31st comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
Arguments about intellectual property that refer to physical property law usually don't work well.


I was explaining the way bare licences work. Trespass is a form of infringement on property rights, and it has plenty of legal precedent. There is no such precent for bare licences and software, so we (like lawyers) can only speculate at this point.

quixadhal said:
It's absolutely still wrong, and illegal, but it's not quite the same as theft, trespass. or property rights.


http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf

"Copyright is a personal property right, and it is subject to the various state laws and regulations that govern the ownership, inheritance, or transfer of personal property as well as terms of contracts or conduct of business."

quixadhal said:
It's more like I built a house and we agreed that you can live in it, so you move in.


No, it's not, because we're talking about bare licences. Unless you're suggesting that we didn't sign any contract, and that I don't have to pay any fees or rent - in which case it's rather like a (grown-up) child living with their parents, or a live-in lover or relative. If you break up with your girlfriend, and she doesn't pay anything towards the rent, you certainly have the right to kick her out of your house. The fact that you originally agreed to let her live with you doesn't mean that you're stuck with her for the rest of your life.

quixadhal said:
Out of curiosity, does the DikuMUD license qualify as bare?


As I said earlier, "Some lawyers argue licences such as the GPL are bare licences, while some argue the opposite; there's currently no way to be sure how mud licences would be classified."

It is my personal opinion that the Diku licence is a bare licence, but I know others feel differently.
01 Oct, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 32nd comment:
Votes: 0
Samson said:
If it's widespread, obviously harm is done. But are you seriously trying to tell me that one person violating the terms is going to cause your imminent collapse?

I didn't say it was going to cause imminent collapse… no need to go to hyperbole. I was saying that there was at least some harm done as opposed to none whatsoever.

Samson said:
Also, if your distribution system is weak enough to put a copy in someone's hands before they've consummated a royalty contract you're a fool, period. You'd make damn sure that you had signatures, mailing information, credit card numbers and such long before selling a license to someone. I would hope your terms would be ironclad enough to include charging someone's card automatically each month/year/whatever to collect those royalties, and contain provisions for being able to collect damages from someone who commits fraud against you in the form of stopping payments through some other means.

You realize that there are several whole categories of products for which the above does not work at all, right? Any kind of software download, for example, for which you're supposed to limit usage to non-commercial activity. Or student versions that you're not supposed to use in certain circumstances. In these cases, all of the safeguards you describe above cannot exist.
01 Oct, 2008, quixadhal wrote in the 33rd comment:
Votes: 0
Mabus said:
To quote from the USDoJ:
Quote
* Cyber theft comprises crimes in which a computer is used to steal money
or other things of value. Cyber theft includes embezzlement, fraud, theft of
intellectual property
, and theft of personal or financial data.


That just tells me that the USDoJ is as clueless as everyone else. The definition of the word theft makes it impossible to apply to data, unless you were to have physical access to the media. Theft has nothing to do with wrongful possession, it's wrongfully depriving someone of a possession. I could steal your bicycle and dump it a block away, and even though I don't have it anymore, it's still theft. I can copy all your mp3 files, and despite what the RIAA wants you to think, I haven't stolen anything. I may have violated quite a few copyrights, and one can try to make the argument that I've denied the record companies "virtual profits" that they "would have received" if the copies hadn't been made… but that's NOT theft.

Of course, I suppose they can just redefine theft. Why not, nobody seems to care about accuracy these days anyways.

Regarding Samson's comments about piracy, I wish I could find the exact quote, but the CEO of Oracle once said something that seems appropriate here. "We're not really concerned about piracy. Those people wouldn't be our customers anyways." Not exact, but the gist of his statements in the interview I read was that most of the people who pirate (software) would probably do without, or find another solution, rather than buy it.

Personally, I detest people talking about "virtual profit" or "losses" of sales that "should have happened." That's the same kind of speculation that led to the dot.com collapse, and is now leading to the housing and loan industry's meltdown. Count the checks after you've cashed them, that's your profit. Anything else is just fairy dust.
01 Oct, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 34th comment:
Votes: 0
It's almost nonsensical to say that the DoJ doesn't know what comprises a given crime, no? Is not the legal/judicial system (almost by definition) the source of such things?

Re: piracy. It's not a question of should-have-happened, it's a question of being owed something that is being withheld. Yes, the Oracle CEO is correct in that those people wouldn't be customers anyhow. But that doesn't excuse or make acceptable the piracy, it just means that Oracle does not see the need to act upon it.

quixadhal said:
That's the same kind of speculation that led to the dot.com collapse, and is now leading to the housing and loan industry's meltdown.

Eh… not really, the picture is a little more complicated, but let's not go there at the moment. :wink:
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