At 02:27 PM 11/27/96 -0500, Mark O. Aldrich wrote:
On Wed, 27 Nov 1996, SafePassage Downloader wrote:
You can now download SafePassage. You'll need the following login/password:
Login: cypherpunks@toad.com Password: [elided]
Go to http://stronghold.ukweb.com/safepassage/ and select "Download" -- you'll be prompted for your login/password, after which you'll be able to download the software. Make sure you keep your login/password private. Revealing your login/password to anyone is a violation of the license agreement.
Is this to say that you wrote your license agreement with the foolish premise that an e-mail address belongs to just one person? Maybe you need to really understand how the Internet works before you write a license agreement based on incorrect assumptions and your personal preferences for how things ought to be.
The message that UKWeb sends with the SafePassage beta userid/password is incorrect - not because it makes any of the assumptions you're ascribing to UKWeb and license writers, but because the license itself fails to require the person who agreed to it to keep the userid/pw combination confidential. But you are entirely off the mark with your assumptions about the assumptions made by the writer of the license. I am the person who wrote the license. (Actually, I modified some pre-existing license text, merged some in from another source, and generally did the sort of copying & pasting that's considered perfectly acceptable in the legal field and is considered copyright infringement if a programmer does it.) And I made no such assumption. And I know enough about how the Internet works to laugh at anyone says they "really understand how the Internet works." (Hint: before and during law school, I worked as a consultant to ISP's who needed technical assistance.) You would do well to heed your own advice and learn something about law before making grand statements about "how [things] work". UKWeb does not enter into an agreement with anyone (or everyone) who receives E-mail. It enters into an agreement with the person who fills out the form to download the software. People and organizations who haven't filled out the form don't have an agreement with UKWeb to use the software; and absent that agreement, their use isn't legal. I'm not interested in turning this molehill into a mountain. The beta test of the software is unwittingly functioning as a beta test of the license document; this morning's message revealed something I missed when I worked on the license agreement. It will be corrected shortly. (This seems to be as good a time as any to announce that I'm now one of the Cpunks who's working at C2Net.) -- Greg Broiles | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell: gbroiles@netbox.com | http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto. |