Contrary to Morality - What is that?

I encountered a statement in license that I do not fully understand and I am turning to this discussion forum for help in interpreting the statement.

As a gift, my wife gave me Chessmaster 10th Edition. After long procrastination, I finally decided to install it in my PC. As the installation was proceeding, the license was presented to me. Because I was going to use the software for my other project, I had to read license very carefully. The portion that stopped me from continuing the installation is this:

     It is not permitted:

• To make copies …
• To operate …
• To use it contrary to morality or the laws in force,
• To modify …
• To transmit …
• To create ….
• To decompile, reverse engineer or disassemble …

Exactly what does "contrary to morality" mean? I searched Internet and found some references on it. But, all of them are related to patent. I could not find anything relating to the use of software.

So, I sent a question on the meaning of "contrary to morality" to Ubi Soft's on-line support. (Ubi Soft is the manufacturer of Chessmaster 10th Edition.) After hearing nothing from the on-line support for one or two weeks, I decided to call Ubi Soft's support.

I asked the person who answered my call about the meaning of "contrary to morality". He put me on hold for a while (I did not time it but I estimated that it was one or two minutes). He then explained to me that it was a blanket statement to prevent people from breaking any copyright laws. I was tempted to ask him to elaborate that but knowing that he was not expert in legal language, I thanked him for his time and I hanged up phone.

I thought more about what he said. If it is really that obvious that "contrary to morality" means breaking any copyright laws, why is this specific wording chosen over other wording? Is this an example where Ubi Soft went overboard and borrowed the language from patent? If "contrary to morality" actually is applicable to Chessmaster, can anyone think of examples where using Chessmaster is contrary to morality?

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<josephpietrojeungriolo[_at_]gmail.com>
<riolo[_at_]voicenet.com>

Number of days left until 1-1-2019 when all knowledge of 1923 in the land of the U.S.A. will be freed from their copyright owners' prisons: 4,837

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain. Received on Mon Oct 03 2005 - 22:50:45 GMT