Windows Media Player user license extensions

[Ken Brown]

Philip Rowlands wrote:
 
> >> You can't be innocently using it without a license, so yes, guilty
> >> until innocent.
> >
> >Which makes the backup's of any commercial software for which I've lost
> >the original media completly worthless.
> 
> Not if you still have your license.

Is a license a physical thing one can "still have"? Surely a license is
permission or authorisation to do something and the piece of paper it
came on is just evidence of that permission?  IANAL but I strongly
suspect that if a fire damages the printed "license" for the copy of
Solaris I installed yesterday,  my license to use it is not thereby
revoked.

<pause to read license booklet - for the first time of course>

Apparently it is revoked "without notice from Sun" if we fail to comply
with any term. And one of the terms is that we may make single copy of
the software for archival purposes. As we (I hope) have more than one
backup tape containing the software, and we now have 2 disks with copies
of it - because I cloned the system disk to enable us to boot off a new
disk as the old one has i-o errors - we've apparently broken the
agreement.

This of course can sometimes be useful. If /all/ customers have broken
their agreements it gives a supplier a lot of freedom in enforcement. A
bit like i.d. cards really. If they are brought in then sooner or later
effectively everyone will be breaking some law somewhere so the police
will be able to arrest anyone they want.