5 ms·

That's an interesting thought. What would happen in court if you went with that? "The license said to only install if you accept the license, but since I reject

That's an interesting thought. What would happen in court if you went with that? "The license said to only install if you accept the license, but since I reject the license, I'm not bound by its contents, so I installed even though I didn't accept it".

bomdo 5y ago
I would assume this falls under Severability [1]. In most cases, the button you click on literally says "I accept", which the corporate lawyer would interpret in a similar way to signing a contract in full. In other words, if I click "send" on my resignation email to my employer, but later argue in court that I totally didn't mean to actually resign, but only to check if my email program works, I may have a challenging case. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severability
- TheCoelacanth 5y ago
  How do they know that I didn't patch the binary to replace "I accept" with "I reject"?
dragonwriter 5y ago
> That's an interesting thought. What would happen in court if you went with that? "The license said to only install if you accept the license, but since I reject the license, I'm not bound by its contents, so I installed even though I didn't accept it". The license is what gives you legal permission to make copies in the process of installation; copying is otherwise an exclusive right of the copyright owner. So that’s very much an “if you win the argument on rejecting the license, you still lose” situation.
- progval 5y ago
  > The license is what gives you legal permission to make copies in the process of installation In France and Germany, you are allowed to copy copyrighted works, as long as it's for private use (including family and "private circles") and you don't sell it. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copie_priv%C3%A9e#Principes_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9raux https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copie_priv%C3%A9e#Principes_g%...
  - NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
    What kind of copyright work? I have heard from friends in Germany that ISPs sniffing all transport so if you download movie with torrent they will send you exact titles, and ask you to pay 1000-2000 eur or they will take you to court where you will pay 1000 per each movie downloaded ... And I have friends that actually paid fine.
    - progval 5y ago
      France also has an agency doing this, HADOPI, but it works by joining Bittorrent swarms to collect IP addresses. What they punish is the download itself, ie. the acquisition of a copy. Not copying something you acquired legally. For example, before fast internet connections, people would borrow music CDs from libraries and copy them.
      - jhgb 5y ago
        > What they punish is the download itself, ie. the acquisition of a copy. In some countries, such acquisition of a copy is legal on its own.
    - q3k 5y ago
      German ISPs don't do that ('sniff all transport' and automatically sue? for copyright infringement). ISPs have no business in doing this (Why would they? DPI infrastructure is expensive, so it setting up some magical automation to detect torrents, check against some database, etc. Plus, pre-preemptively suing someone will likely cause them to not be a repeat customer.). Traffic inspection by ISPs (let alone sharing of collected data with third-party entities) in the EU is required to have a legal/technical basis and/or user consent, depending on what is being done and for what purpose [1]. Even attempts at blanket (meta)data retention for law enforcement agencies have pretty much been ruled illegal in the EU [2] and Germany [3]. What probably happened is your friends were torrenting, and some entity acting on behalf of copyright holders got their IP from public trackers/DHT. Then they came knocking to the ISP with a cour order, asking for information about the person behind that IP address, and the ISP gave them that [4]. Finally, the entity sent a C&D to your friends. [1] - See the EU DPS' opinion on how the existing EU legal framework affets ISPs' data inspection abilities: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52012XX0208(01)&from=EN https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE... [2] - See Directive 2006/24/EC, tl;dr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention#European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention#European_Union [3] - htps://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Sachgebiete/Telekommunikation/Unternehmen_Institutionen/Anbieterpflichten/OeffentlicheSicherheit/Umsetzung110TKG/VDS_113aTKG/VDS.html [4] - https://blog.raychenon.com/file-sharing-violations-in-germany/ https://blog.raychenon.com/file-sharing-violations-in-german...
- gizmo686 5y ago
  Is there any legal precedent on what qualifies as "copying"? By the time you are even presented with the license agreement, you already copied the program several times (unless it is a thin installer that litterally avoids downloading the content until you accept).
  - drwiggly 5y ago
    Well in this case of a video game. There was a loader loading the image into ram then hot patching it. They deemed the loader copying it into ram was copying. IANAL but sometimes they take the term copying very literally.
- ydlr 5y ago
  In United States, copyright law explicitly allows for copying that is essential to operating a piece of software. That is a big part of why companies try to claim they never sold you a copy in the first place, only licensed it.

bomdo 5y ago

I would assume this falls under Severability [1]. In most cases, the button you click on literally says "I accept", which the corporate lawyer would interpret in a similar way to signing a contract in full. In other words, if I click "send" on my resignation email to my employer, but later argue in court that I totally didn't mean to actually resign, but only to check if my email program works, I may have a challenging case. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severability

TheCoelacanth 5y ago
How do they know that I didn't patch the binary to replace "I accept" with "I reject"?

dragonwriter 5y ago

> That's an interesting thought. What would happen in court if you went with that? "The license said to only install if you accept the license, but since I reject the license, I'm not bound by its contents, so I installed even though I didn't accept it". The license is what gives you legal permission to make copies in the process of installation; copying is otherwise an exclusive right of the copyright owner. So that’s very much an “if you win the argument on rejecting the license, you still lose” situation.

progval 5y ago
> The license is what gives you legal permission to make copies in the process of installation In France and Germany, you are allowed to copy copyrighted works, as long as it's for private use (including family and "private circles") and you don't sell it. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copie_priv%C3%A9e#Principes_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9raux https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copie_priv%C3%A9e#Principes_g%...
- NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
  What kind of copyright work? I have heard from friends in Germany that ISPs sniffing all transport so if you download movie with torrent they will send you exact titles, and ask you to pay 1000-2000 eur or they will take you to court where you will pay 1000 per each movie downloaded ... And I have friends that actually paid fine.
  - progval 5y ago
    France also has an agency doing this, HADOPI, but it works by joining Bittorrent swarms to collect IP addresses. What they punish is the download itself, ie. the acquisition of a copy. Not copying something you acquired legally. For example, before fast internet connections, people would borrow music CDs from libraries and copy them.
    - jhgb 5y ago
      > What they punish is the download itself, ie. the acquisition of a copy. In some countries, such acquisition of a copy is legal on its own.
  - q3k 5y ago
    German ISPs don't do that ('sniff all transport' and automatically sue? for copyright infringement). ISPs have no business in doing this (Why would they? DPI infrastructure is expensive, so it setting up some magical automation to detect torrents, check against some database, etc. Plus, pre-preemptively suing someone will likely cause them to not be a repeat customer.). Traffic inspection by ISPs (let alone sharing of collected data with third-party entities) in the EU is required to have a legal/technical basis and/or user consent, depending on what is being done and for what purpose [1]. Even attempts at blanket (meta)data retention for law enforcement agencies have pretty much been ruled illegal in the EU [2] and Germany [3]. What probably happened is your friends were torrenting, and some entity acting on behalf of copyright holders got their IP from public trackers/DHT. Then they came knocking to the ISP with a cour order, asking for information about the person behind that IP address, and the ISP gave them that [4]. Finally, the entity sent a C&D to your friends. [1] - See the EU DPS' opinion on how the existing EU legal framework affets ISPs' data inspection abilities: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52012XX0208(01)&from=EN https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE... [2] - See Directive 2006/24/EC, tl;dr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention#European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention#European_Union [3] - htps://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Sachgebiete/Telekommunikation/Unternehmen_Institutionen/Anbieterpflichten/OeffentlicheSicherheit/Umsetzung110TKG/VDS_113aTKG/VDS.html [4] - https://blog.raychenon.com/file-sharing-violations-in-germany/ https://blog.raychenon.com/file-sharing-violations-in-german...
gizmo686 5y ago
Is there any legal precedent on what qualifies as "copying"? By the time you are even presented with the license agreement, you already copied the program several times (unless it is a thin installer that litterally avoids downloading the content until you accept).
- drwiggly 5y ago
  Well in this case of a video game. There was a loader loading the image into ram then hot patching it. They deemed the loader copying it into ram was copying. IANAL but sometimes they take the term copying very literally.
ydlr 5y ago
In United States, copyright law explicitly allows for copying that is essential to operating a piece of software. That is a big part of why companies try to claim they never sold you a copy in the first place, only licensed it.