Re: LICENSE LIMITS

Subj: LICENSE LIMITS

Dave Thomas says:

>The more persuasive rationale is that at the time of formation of the
>contract (presumably when the buyer paid the price) there was no meeting
>of the minds because the content of the license wasn't disclosed at that
>time. That one also gives me a bit of a problem, because in the software
>context restrictive license terms are so commonplace that any purchaser
>could arguable be deemed to have contracted with the expectation of such
>terms, even though he may not have been aware of the specific language.
>
>Dave T.
><david.thomas[_at_]asb.com>

I think "any purchaser" is going a bit far. With respect, have you _seen_ some of the folks out there buying/using software? Nothing could be further from their minds than any notion of intellectual property ownership. ...When I get this home, I'll make a copy for Fred, and he can make a copy for Sally.... and so on. It's very difficult even here in the University to get staff to take care with licences.

However, yesterday I had a visit from one of the librarians, who wanted to check out the terms of a shrink-wrap licence to see if it was OK to loan the package to students, and he told me that the software salesman had refused to show him the licence conditions before purchase, on the grounds that "If I open the pack and then you decide not to buy it, I'll have a broken pack on my hands...so no way am I going to open it just to let you read the licence conditions." No loose copies held at point of sale. I'd say that you'd probably be able to establish in a case like that that no meeting of minds ever took place...maybe there was only one mind operating?

Cheers,
Mike

 *Mike Lean, University Copyright Officer*
 *and Audiovisual Production Coordinator *
 *at Queensland University of Technology * 
 *    in sunny Brisbane, Australia.      *   
 * Internet/AARnet:lean[_at_]qut.edu.au       *        
 *  VoiceNet:0011 61 7 864 3383          *
 * Searching for the Bird of Paradigms   *
 *    in the Cyberforest.                *   
 *Disclaimer:  Bilip bilong mi tasol!    *
 *****************************************