daly@ecs.umass.edu (Bryon Daly, ECE dept, UMass, Amherst) (01/24/91)
Hi all, I have an interesting question about copyright laws: When I recently purchased my 386 system, a copy of a popular Microsoft program (can you guess which one?) was thrown in with the deal. I already owned this program, so when I received the new one, I sold the old one to a friend. I'm pretty sure this is allowed in the license agreement. Now is the tricky part: due to some mix-ups, the computer company had to send me another CPU unit (this one was a tower, instead of a desktop), and I was to send back the old CPU unit (and retain everything else). But the new computer came with ANOTHER copy of the program (manual, serial number, etc included). So now I have two sets of disk, manuals. The question is, obviously, could I give away/ sell one of the copies? (I'm not really that interested in doing so; I'm more curious than anything else.) The question is more complicated than first thought: I would assume the company paid Microsoft for each copy of the software they give out, so if they gave me another copy of the software by accident, that's their loss. But to me that doesn't sound likely to be the way the lawyers would see it. I figure some of you netters must have some experience/knowledge about this stuff. What do ya think? Thanks for the advice, Bryon Daly daly@ecs.umass.edu