[ubuntu-uk] [Fwd: Re: [OT] - MS XP Pro OEM CD - How?]

[alan c]

Chris Oattes wrote:
> Sean Miller said the following on 17/02/08 10:02:
>> On 2/16/08, Eddie Armstrong <eddie_armstrong at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>>> Well what started out as a simple request has turned into a lot of
>>> unpleasantness:
>>> I don't know how to make it any more obvious I was seeking a *legal*
>>> solution and hoped somebody here might have one. I've all ready agreed
>>> that what you say may be correct in essence not necessarily the detail
>>> but I really can't be bothered arguing it any more.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> I really don't think Micro$oft is going to go to all the effort of suing
>> somebody for re-installing an OEM machine using somebody else's CD (be that
>> their physical CD or a burned image of it), I really don't... it would be
>> incredibly pedantic to classify such a thing a piracy as the software is
>> protected by licence keys and is useless without them... I would call
>> copying the CD a "technical infringement of the licence terms", no more than
>> that.  Piracy would have to involve also sharing the key or distributing a
>> hacked copy that doesn't require a key, something that has not happened here
>> at all... whether a copy has been burned from one's own CD  (legal, I
>> believe, for backup purposes) or from somebody else's what is arrived at in
>> the end is the same... an installation of Windows XP using a valid OEM
>> licence on the machine for which that licence was supplied...
>> 
>> Sean
>> 
>> 
> 
> I don't think the issue is that you will get fined loads of money for 
> copying a Windows CD. The point is that it is, at best, against the 
> terms of the license, and at worse could be considered piracy. Therefore 
> the act of making a copy of the CD for someone else is "wrong" whichever 
> way you look at it, and is not something that should be promoted on this 
> list.

That was simply the way I understood things too, it is more a matter 
of principle than anything. But principles are important. It would be 
pretty bad politics to have a MS comment that the Ubuntu UK list was 
colluding in something - anything - that was against a licence 
agreement. Licence agreements are all that stand between us and the 
world of proprietary software and all that it leads to.    GPL and 
variants that is.
-- 
alan cocks
Kubuntu user#10391