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Re: School encouraging non-free software


From: Rui Miguel Seabra
Subject: Re: School encouraging non-free software
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 10:06:03 +0000

On Fri, 2005-01-28 at 21:55 -0500, Barry Margolin wrote:
> In article <mailman.15964.1106958783.27204.gnu-misc-discuss@gnu.org>,
>  Rui Miguel Seabra <rms@1407.org> wrote:
> 
> > In an argument with the teacher, it became obvious at a certain point
> > that I would be able to dennounce the University to the proper
> > authorities for inciting to commit copyright infringement under
> > coersion.
> 
> This seems like a big stretch.

When the license clearly forbids using said software outside the
University, and the teacher incites you to use it at home since they
won't install it in the University's computers... :)

> Most university courses require you to 
> use non-free textbooks -- would you claim that they're coercing you to 
> infringe those copyrights to avoid paying the purchase price?

There's always the University's library. That is actually a big problem.
In Portugal most universities have Students' Guilds which usually
provide copying services and distribute copies of books.
It's illegal to do so with most copyright laws, but they do it anyway
because over 95% of the students can't afford the cost.

Recently there has been some activity by the police against that
activity, but I've been a little detached from the University's circle
so I don't know exactly how's that nowadays.

>   If not, 
> why do you think they're forcing you to infringe the application 
> copyrights?

That situation is not comparable, since with books it's unusual that
they're directly coercing you to infringe copyright. They probably don't
even understand what they're doing...

Rui

-- 
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi
+ So let's do it...?

Please AVOID sending me WORD, EXCEL or POWERPOINT attachments.
See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

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