Re: Barriers to an ASP loophole closure
tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes:
> Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org> writes:
>> But I'm not yet clear what your argument for that is. On the face
>> of it, attaching it to use makes more sense, since who the
>> possessor of a copy is is really a technical detail that can be
>> changed or made unclear via technical means (e.g., ASP).
>
> The argument is simple. Making a new possessor of a copy requires
> *copying*, and is a legitimate thing for copyright to control.
> Adding a new user does not necessarily involve copying, and it is
> not legitimate for copyright to control this.
My understanding (IANAL, etc) is that public performance could cover
this sort of thing (the problem would be scaling it back to cover only
what we want it to). Are you simply objecting to that on principle,
or is there some reason people shouldn't or couldn't do that?
> Allow me to propose the "What if Microsoft Did It" test. Microsoft
> creates a new program, and says "you are prohibited from running
> this program behind a web site for other people without paying us
> money; after all, this is really a way of trying to cheat us out of
> selling the program to more people." We would cry foul, right?
They do that sort of thing all the time, don't they? I (fortunately!)
don't have to deal with MS licensing in my work, but I have friends
that do. From what I hear use-based licensing for web services is
quite common.
--
Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>
PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03
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