Re: Corel's apt frontend
> > To balance this out, there's also a concept of fair use. Most uses
> > of the command line interface count as fair use.
On Fri, Nov 05, 1999 at 10:07:28AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> Is this an assumption, or do you have citations?
[I should also mention that there's section 117 of title 17 usc.
This basically says that copies made during normal operation of the
computer are legal.]
The citations are Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, and
Galoob V. Nintendo. [These are both court cases where "fair use" won.]
relevant urls include:
http://www.lawsch.uga.edu/~jipl/vol1/samuelsn.html
http://www.law.seattleu.edu/chonm/Cases/galoob2.html
http://www.hrrc.org/betamax.html
You can probably find more by doing your own web searches. I'd suggest
buying a law student dinner if you want some help getting access to some
of the case transcripts...
> I mean, presumably use of statements in the BIOS, or microcode in the CPU
> is fair use, too. Are there any references which distinguish between fair
> use between this sort of interface, and regular dynamic linked libraries,
> or, for that matter, the other cases of command line interface use?
>
> And even then, this doesn't feel overly relevant; it's very
> American-centric. I'd be a little disappointed if we end up with
> binaries being derivatives of dynamic libraries in some countries,
> and not in others. :-/
Well, one of the most relevant issues is the license under which the
software is distributed. Software which is designed for heavy duty re-use
(BIOS, linking libraries, etc.) tends to be distributed under much more
liberal licenses than software designed to tackle specific applications.
--
Raul
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