Re:'Windows 10 destroyed our data' Microsoft taken to US court
by belorn on Friday March 24, 2017 @07:19PM
(#13953032)
Its a poor argument to blame "the fine print" if you enter a train without a ticket. When the default is no permission it is pretty common understanding that you can't do it unless granted permission.
The legal argument around fair contracts is that a customer should not be tricked into agreeing to a unfair or hidden condition. For example, I can't sell a car and have a shrink wrap license that gives me permission to still use it after sale (ie, steal it back). Such contract condition would very fast be found to be illegal, and common sense say that a "sale" implies that I as a seller do no longer enjoy rights such as using the sold car after sale, regardless of trickery I might try with shrink wrap licenses.
To go back to the GPL case, its not a unfair contract condition that you need copyright permissions to distribute a copyright protected work. For the first thing there is no contract, and the second reason is that the condition is created by society and not the copyright holder.
The legal argument around fair contracts is that a customer should not be tricked into agreeing to a unfair or hidden condition. For example, I can't sell a car and have a shrink wrap license that gives me permission to still use it after sale (ie, steal it back). Such contract condition would very fast be found to be illegal, and common sense say that a "sale" implies that I as a seller do no longer enjoy rights such as using the sold car after sale, regardless of trickery I might try with shrink wrap licenses.
To go back to the GPL case, its not a unfair contract condition that you need copyright permissions to distribute a copyright protected work. For the first thing there is no contract, and the second reason is that the condition is created by society and not the copyright holder.