From: Steve Bryan <sbryan@vendorsystems.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 09:52:37 +0800
To: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
Subject: Re: Bits are Bits
In-Reply-To: <33CCFE438B9DD01192E800A024C84A1928463C@mossbay.chaffeyhomes.com>
Message-ID: <v03102802b21ee05d03b0@[192.168.3.63]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



>* Software: OK to resell if license allows it, if original is destroyed, if
>no copies are kept, blah blah blah. (Very complicated.) Not legal to rent
>software since around the mid-80s, when software rental stores stopped.
...
>-- rental of videos is allowed. (Why videos but not CDs? What about books
>on tape? What about books on CD, either audio or CD-ROM?)

Another weird twist in this topic is the "distinction" that is made between
video games for consoles and the same games for computers. It is legal to
rent a PSX title such as Tomb Raider but the same title ported to the PC is
not legal to rent. I read about this a few years ago in an article by Trip
Hawkins, CEO of 3DO, so maybe this information is out of date. But I have
not yet seen CD-ROMs for rent or even available to check out for home use
from the public library. I think this distinction is sometimes confused
because a publisher can choose to allow a CD-ROM title to be rentable but
has to explicitly sanction that. But a publisher of game console CD's
cannot prevent its products from being rented.

Steve Bryan
Vendorsystems International
email: sbryan@vendorsystems.com
icq: 5263678
pgp fingerprint: D758 183C 8B79 B28E 6D4C  2653 E476 82E6 DA7C 9AC5