Windows Media Player user license extensions

[Adrian Midgley]

On Thursday 04 July 2002 11:25, you wrote:

> Nonsense. In the absence of a specific licence, normal copyright rules
> apply which, AIUI, certainly allow you to make normal use of it within
> any computer indefinitely, or to sell it on or lend it out.

And an argument from a lawyer (but free and in his lunch hour therefore "=
this=20
is not advice") presented in TheRegister which I found very convincing, w=
as=20
that EU law prevents such attempts to limit OEM operating system sales in=
=20
such ways as to prevent you doing those things above.

Taking note particualrly of the first one, this realisation may have been=
 one=20
of the drivers for the new authentication code system in XP, perhaps.

Interesting to see what the genuine situation would be if someone called =
for=20
a new code because he had moved his copy of XP (bought with hardware, fro=
m a=20
supplier who was passing on the saving he had obtained from an agremeent=20
which Microsoft had freely entered into to sell it to him cheap) to an=20
entirely new machine a few years later.

Perhaps the pragmatic solution MS owuld arrive at would be to close the=20
department that issues the codes, and open another doing something else, =
but=20
having sold software that _requires_ someone to give a code to make it=20
continue doing what hte buyer can reasonably expect it to doing, do they =
have=20
an obligation to continue to provide that for a long time?

--=20
=46rom one of the Linux desktops of Dr Adrian Midgley=20
http://www.defoam.net/            =20