Bruce Willis Dying Harder or Killing EULAs at Robert Pogson

The legal basis for an EULA (End User Licensing Agreement) is that an owner of a copyright work has the sole right to permit distribution. An owner can set any conditions he wants for giving permission to obtain a copy of the work or doing any particular thing with it such as copying. A legal contract can be the basis for obtaining permission to make or to receive a copy. It is not clear that owning a copyright allows one to prevent transfer (moving a copy around) rather than copying (increasing the number of copies in existence). Some laws do allow a copyright owner preventing transfer across regions or borders. However, some EULAs do insist the copy attaches to a particular PC or a particular user etc. If that PC or user dies, the copy permission dies with them.

Bruce Willis has copies of iTunes stuff he legally acquired and wants to bequeath to his heirs. iTunes EULA prevents that. If Willis wins the battle to force iTunes to change EULAs, will a precedent be set for M$’s EULA to be trimmed back? Things like number of PCs that can be connected together and phoning home and installation of malware etc. come to mind. This battle could be significant in the war of the operating systems/platforms of IT.

I don’t know any details of Willis’ legal argument but if it’s about not extending copyright protection it’s relevant to software in IT.

see Bruce Willis To Fight Apple Over His iTunes Collection Rights | TheTechJournal.

I would like to see EULAs for software limited to yes/no permission to have/make a copy/performance rather than attaching conditions to restrain competition. GPL would not be affected because it is not a contract but a licence. EULAs with undue restrictions on use of a copyrighted work should be considered unconscionable invalid contracts. That is a contract must be for a legal purpose and restraint of competition is not a legal purpose. One can argue that copyright law is restraint of competition but it should be narrowly interpreted for the encouragement of content-generators not to create global monopolies extending into every aspect of IT.

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.

4 Responses to “Bruce Willis Dying Harder or Killing EULAs”

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1 dougman Sep 3rd, 2012 at 8:34 am

I hate EULAs.

On my website, I explain it for people and have been asked about it a few times.

Take a few minutes and read the End-user license agreements (EULA) for XP, Vista and 7 sometime, you probably will be surprised as to what you may find. Also, there is an important principle that everyone needs to understand — regardless of the pure motives of the parties to a legal contract, the contract may contain “unconscionable” requirements, meaning requirements no reasonable or informed person would agree to if understood.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adriankingsleyhughes/2012/05/30/windows-8-eula-prohibits-class-action-lawsuits-against-microsoft/
2 ch Sep 3rd, 2012 at 8:45 am

Sometimes German courts can be surprisingly sensible: They ruled that a customer can only be bound by conditions he knew of before purchase. So any EULA you only get to see after purchase isn’t worth the paper it isn’t printed on.
3 iLia Sep 4th, 2012 at 6:33 am

What wrong with EULA? Use free software (there are some people saying that it is better than proprietary), listen to free or “Creative commons” music, you are free to chose, but wait, almost everybody wants to consume proprietary stuff made by professionals who make living by it and not some free amateurish content.

And tell me why these authors of free/open source software dare to prohibit me to use their stuff in my projects without following GPL or its peers. They are trying to restrict my liberties and freedoms, why on Earth should I follow GPL instead of doing whatever I want?
4 Dann Sep 4th, 2012 at 1:17 pm

@iLia:

So many things wrong with your comment.

Nothing is wrong with a EULA provided it is reasonable. Many aren’t.

Music is governed by copyright, therefore don’t need a EULA.

Not almost everybody wants to consume proprietary stuff. Please post your stats on this.

FOSS is not ameturish content, otherwise IBM, Facebook, Twitter and everyone else who uses a linux server, desktop, android device, is an ametuer. Perhaps some more research is in order.

Free/Open source software doesn’t prohibit you to distribute and use software. It’s funny that you complain about the AUTHORS of software trying to restrict your liberties and freedoms, when it is the proprietary licenses that don’t let you distribute or even give you the source to use in your project. You can find a BSD licensed project if you are so inclined, or view the source of a GPL project and build a compatible piece of software under a different license provided copyright is not infringed.

Your arguments could use some work. Instead you sound spoiled, “why on Earth should I follow GPL instead of doing whatever I want?” where GLP could be any license you don’t agree with at the time.