Windows refund: stymied

[Ian Goldberg]

On Fri, Aug 29, 2003 at 04:43:33PM -0400, Herb Richter wrote:
> BTW, I see a very interesting situation here:  if in fact the two
> contracts are separate and the first cannot bind the buyer to agree to
> the second; can the buyer end up with a "legal" instance of the OS without
> being obligated by the eula?

As far as I understand, this is never possible.  You can do all the
tricks you like to avoid agreeing to the EULA, but since that's the
document which grants you the permission you need to *copy the software
from the hard disk to the computer's memory*, you'd no longer be allowed
to do that.

*That's* the reason EULAs are so ridiculous: *using* computer software
is considered *copying* it, and you need explicit permission to do so.
Bundled with that permission, you get all manner of restrictions.

<thinking mode="wishful">
If only copyright law were phrased in such a way that you could only
infringe it in the case you were giving copies to other people...
</thinking>

But it's not.  :-(

   - Ian
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml