On Fri, Dec 06, 2002 at 08:51:52AM +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote: > If I illegally acquire the program, I don't have usage rights, AIUI.
Under traditional U.S. copyright law (the DMCA notwithstanding), there is no such think as "illegal acquisition". Just tortious or illegal distribution. For example, simply owning a bootleg CD is not illegal, and it cannot be confiscated from you unless it can be established that you plan to distribute it. So, under traditional copyright law it's legal for the Big Time Record Company to smash into a warehouse and truck off crates full of the Bob Dylan _Ten of Swords_ bootleg, but not legal for them to execute a search of people's homes or persons and confiscate any copies of _Ten of Swords_ they find. (This may be a bad example because I don't even know if Bob Dylan's record contract gave his record company the sound recording rights to the live show(s) from which _Ten of Swords_[1] was made.) [1] Yes, it's a real bootleg. Or was. Rendered obsolete by some official CD box set that was put out a few years ago, I think. Ask a Dylan fan. -- G. Branden Robinson | Suffer before God and ye shall be Debian GNU/Linux | redeemed. God loves us, so He [EMAIL PROTECTED] | makes us suffer Christianity. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Aaron Dunsmore
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