Distinction, What distinction?

The distinction between software purchasing and licensing exists only in the minds of lawyers and software vendors. Real people don't license software, they go to the store (or online) and buy it. And then having got their purchase home, they click "agree" or whatever that stupid little button is labeled in order to use the software they've already paid good money for. But they certainly don't read all that text above the button or have any intention of obeying any silly rules that might be contained therein.

"the critical distinction between software licensing and software purchasing"

>As they explain it: "A publisher cannot forbid you from reading a book in the bathroom or listening to a music disc while riding your bicycle."

>Clearly, the Floridians continue to have a difficult time understanding the critical distinction between software licensing and software purchasing.

Or maybe they're making the point that it's a bogus and unreasonable mechanism used in the restraint of trade and the denial of consumer rights?

It's reasonable for a software publisher to tell me I can only run their OS on one machine at a time unless I buy multiple copies. It's not reasonable for them to tell me what machine I can run it on, or what I may or may not do with that machine while running their OS.

Copyright law provides publishers all the mechanisms they need to prevent the first course of action. They are abusing the concept and practice of rights licensing to impose improper restraints such as the second, and the comparison to a book publisher who claims that they have not actually sold you a book but merely licensed you to read the content within and that they may therefore impose licensing conditions such as forbidding you from reading it on the toilet is entirely accurate, and a perfectly good illustration of what is wrong with the concept.

If you accept that Apple may use licensing constraints to restrict you from freely running a copy of their OS that you have legitimately purchased and paid for in any way that you please, if you accept that they can tell you what hardware you may or may not run it on, then do you not accept that they may also tell you what software you may or may not run on it? Do you not also accept that they may tell you how you may or may not use that software? The rights that publishers attempt to abrogate to themselves through the use of licensing would allow them to tell you you can't write a critical review of their products using a word processor running under their OS; do you accept that?

The sooner EULAs and click-wrap licensing are understood as a massive rights-grab and thoroughly struck out in the courts, the better. Until then, any publisher that attempts to rob us in this fashion *deserves* to have its software pirated; it's legitimate self-defence to steal from someone who is robbing you.

So Sad

That's just sad that a for-profit company has to ask for donations.

My donations go to the United Way, not some poor joe who has a failed business model and thinks of himself as the people's savior from corporate tyranny.