5 ms·

> To be clear the "gotcha"s as referred to in the comments above aren't "bits of the written law one might find surprising or overreaching" they are attempts at

> To be clear the "gotcha"s as referred to in the comments above aren't "bits of the written law one might find surprising or overreaching" they are attempts at circumventing the meaning of the law by taking it absurdly literally (as in my stop sign example in my sibling comment) and hoping to use that narrow interpretation as legal reasoning instead of paying attention to the actual intent of said law. The point I'm making is that lawmakers themselves used a similar absurd literality ("actually your computer makes a copy in ram to run a program") in writing this law. > As I said the law as written doesn't singularly hinge on the process of loading a program into RAM to allow the requiring license to use software anyways, the software can require those additional terms as part of the installation onto the computer's storage which is clearly a copying process. Software doesn't inherently require installation, but if it does, it doesn't have to be permanent. I can make a temporary installation in RAM. > Similarly with the point on music, what makes you think it isn't licensed to a copyright holder? Because it doesn't prompt you when you hit play? CDs give unlimited private playback and backup rights The copyright law does not make personal playback of music an exclusive right of the rightsholder. It's not the CD giving me any rights, it's that the copyright law never took these rights away from me in the first place. That is why you don't need a license to listen to music that you own a legally obtained copy of. They never applied the absurd technicality of temporary copies to music.

zamadatix 5y ago
> The point I'm making is that lawmakers themselves used a similar absurd literality ("actually your computer makes a copy in ram to run a program") in writing this law. You're welcome to think any parts of the law are absurd (and given the size you probably will think many parts are) but perceived absurdity does not make a gotcha nor does it mean any other perceived absurdity not explicitly in the law now must also be valid or invalid accordingly. If the law had vaguely said "copies of computer programs are protected" and made no provisions towards the intent of protecting the object code in any form elsewhere then later a an argument in court said "and loading it into memory counts as a copy" to try to expand the right past the intent that would be a case of a gotcha. > Software doesn't inherently require installation, but if it does, it doesn't have to be permanent. I can make a temporary installation in RAM. How does the installation being done to a temporary location or not change whether the installer has to produce a copy of the software from itself onto the machine? The action the installer does is independent the medium the bytes are stored. > To be clear the "gotcha"s as referred to in the comments above aren't "bits of the written law one might find surprising or overreaching" they are attempts at circumventing the meaning of the law by taking it absurdly literally (as in my stop sign example in my sibling comment) and hoping to use that narrow interpretation as legal reasoning instead of paying attention to the actual intent of said law. The point I'm making is that lawmakers themselves used a similar absurd literality ("actually your computer makes a copy in ram to run a program") in writing this law. > As I said the law as written doesn't singularly hinge on the process of loading a program into RAM to allow the requiring license to use software anyways, the software can require those additional terms as part of the installation onto the computer's storage which is clearly a copying process. Software doesn't inherently require installation, but if it does, it doesn't have to be permanent. I can make a temporary installation in RAM. > The copyright law does not make personal playback of music an exclusive right of the rightsholder. It's not the CD giving me any rights, it's that the copyright law never took these rights away from me in the first place. That is why you don't need a license to listen to music that you own a legally obtained copy of. They never applied the absurd technicality of temporary copies to music. In the case of CDs copyright law provides the other restrictions explictly listed but the CD (typically) choses to give you unlimited playback ability. Copyright isn't the only law that dictates what you're allowed to do with the content privately, newer (2000s) laws around DRM for instance provide more of the other rights restrictions of digital content.

zamadatix 5y ago

> The point I'm making is that lawmakers themselves used a similar absurd literality ("actually your computer makes a copy in ram to run a program") in writing this law. You're welcome to think any parts of the law are absurd (and given the size you probably will think many parts are) but perceived absurdity does not make a gotcha nor does it mean any other perceived absurdity not explicitly in the law now must also be valid or invalid accordingly. If the law had vaguely said "copies of computer programs are protected" and made no provisions towards the intent of protecting the object code in any form elsewhere then later a an argument in court said "and loading it into memory counts as a copy" to try to expand the right past the intent that would be a case of a gotcha. > Software doesn't inherently require installation, but if it does, it doesn't have to be permanent. I can make a temporary installation in RAM. How does the installation being done to a temporary location or not change whether the installer has to produce a copy of the software from itself onto the machine? The action the installer does is independent the medium the bytes are stored. > To be clear the "gotcha"s as referred to in the comments above aren't "bits of the written law one might find surprising or overreaching" they are attempts at circumventing the meaning of the law by taking it absurdly literally (as in my stop sign example in my sibling comment) and hoping to use that narrow interpretation as legal reasoning instead of paying attention to the actual intent of said law. The point I'm making is that lawmakers themselves used a similar absurd literality ("actually your computer makes a copy in ram to run a program") in writing this law. > As I said the law as written doesn't singularly hinge on the process of loading a program into RAM to allow the requiring license to use software anyways, the software can require those additional terms as part of the installation onto the computer's storage which is clearly a copying process. Software doesn't inherently require installation, but if it does, it doesn't have to be permanent. I can make a temporary installation in RAM. > The copyright law does not make personal playback of music an exclusive right of the rightsholder. It's not the CD giving me any rights, it's that the copyright law never took these rights away from me in the first place. That is why you don't need a license to listen to music that you own a legally obtained copy of. They never applied the absurd technicality of temporary copies to music. In the case of CDs copyright law provides the other restrictions explictly listed but the CD (typically) choses to give you unlimited playback ability. Copyright isn't the only law that dictates what you're allowed to do with the content privately, newer (2000s) laws around DRM for instance provide more of the other rights restrictions of digital content.