Re: Digital Rights Management - An idea (limited lease, renting,

[Richard B. Johnson]

On Wed, 14 May 2003, Larry McVoy wrote:

> On Wed, May 14, 2003 at 10:36:43AM -0400, Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> > Basically, in many states in the USA, you can't sell or
> > lease something that will become worthless or unusable if
> > the seller or leasor no longer exists.
>
> CAD software is mostly leased these days.  That would seem to contradict
> your position.  Can you quote some laws which say that leasing software
> is illegal?

What did I say? I never implied that leasing software was illegal.
What I said was that software that expires after a certain time
has certain problems, the most basic of which is that a renter
who makes a good-faith effort to pay the rent, must be able to
retain ("enjoy") the use of the rented property. If software
expires and there is no leasor available for the renter to
make a good-faith effort to pay, the property must remain
usable until this problem is solved. If software is not capable
of remaining useful even after a leasor is no longer available
then the software cannot be leased (although it probably can be
sold because you can sell anything, including lemon cars as long
as the condition of the property is not hidden).

Furthermore, companies that sell public stock need to protect
the interest of their stockholders. If the viability of one
company is dependent upon the continuance of another company,
then, as they say in Houston; "We have a problem".

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
Why is the government concerned about the lunatic fringe? Think about it.