Speech on Linux...

[Stewart C. Russell]

Robert Brockway wrote:
> 
> Imagine if books were licenced like
> commercial software so that lending your book to someone to read was a
> violation of the licencing agreement.

In the UK at least, lending books *is* illegal. Libraries have a special 
dispensation to lend books. As the clause states something like, 'This 
book may not be lent, resold, ..." secondhand bookstores are also 
technically illegal. I don't know if there have ever been any 
prosecutions for this.

Mind you, as the UK used to have the Nett Book Agreement (== price 
fixing cartel between publishers and booksellers), and still has 
exclusive Queen's Printers for certain books (woe betide anyone who 
publishes an online bible in Scotland without Collins's permission), 
it's a pretty messed-up place.

  Stewart

--
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