Windows Media Player user license extensions

[Philip Rowlands]

On Wed, 3 Jul 2002, Derek Fawcus wrote:

>> I'd assume the onus to be on you to prove you have a right to use the
>> software at all. Otherwise warez becomes legal.
>
>Guilty 'til proven innocent?

There is no such thing as unlicensed use of software. You can't be
innocently using it without a license, so yes, guilty until innocent. I
imagine this is much like car insurance; it's infeasible for a software
publisher to prove all licenses sold were not to you, including
resellers and second-hand, whereas it's trivial for you to prove you
have a license.

>By this theory,  I could be reading my newspaper at home,  and have to
>face someone from the publisher coming around to confiscate it and
>prosecute me unless I could prove I had purchased it.

Not at all - I was illustrating that bypassing ineffective prohibitions
on illegal acts does not make them legal. It's not legal to speed just
because there's no camera watching you. It's not legal to shoplift just
because there's no manned turnstile at the door. It's not legal to use
[copy] software just because you navigate to the ftp:// URL your friend
sent you and avoid the license agreement.


Cheers,

Phil