Re:"Magic Words" Trump User Rights: Ninth Circuit Ruling in ...
by jrockway on Monday September 13, 2010 @11:14PM
(#1689283)
The more I think about this, the more it seems like the old email signature "by reading this, you owe me a million dollars" is actually enforceable.
In the US, nobody has any obligation to pay me a million dollars. Similarly, a copyright holder has no right to regulate what happens to their CD-ROM after they legally sell it to someone.
But the court ruled that a piece of paper included with the CD-ROM that was not required to fully use that CD gave Autodesk some new rights and created the obligation for the original purchaser to ask Autodesk for permission to perform an otherwise-legal activity, selling the disk. So it follows that a little message that you do read at the end of my emails should be equally enforceable.
Actually, I think this decision is on its way to reversal.
In the US, nobody has any obligation to pay me a million dollars. Similarly, a copyright holder has no right to regulate what happens to their CD-ROM after they legally sell it to someone.
But the court ruled that a piece of paper included with the CD-ROM that was not required to fully use that CD gave Autodesk some new rights and created the obligation for the original purchaser to ask Autodesk for permission to perform an otherwise-legal activity, selling the disk. So it follows that a little message that you do read at the end of my emails should be equally enforceable.
Actually, I think this decision is on its way to reversal.