is this legal?

[LongCoolMother]

ive seen many large sites actually offer people the option to PAY for a CD with their choice of downloads on them. for example, fileplanet hosts a large number of shareware files or whatever, and people can actually BUY a CD with the files on it. yes, its legal for them, but dont those files have certain protective laws or something? i mean, they are taking the property of someone else and then making profit off of it! do they have to license it or something before doing something like that? also, they charge people ro provide them with fast bandwidth to those files. thats also using them to make $$. how is that legal? i know its free to distribute, but they are actually making a profit out of it!

 

[aphex]

i think it is.

 

[Noriaki]

Legality of that depends entirely on the license agreement.

For example Windows NT has some code in it that is under the BSD license.
Microsoft obviously makes money off WinNT. The only requirement is that they give credit to BSD for the code they use. So if you look at the end of the Windows manual there is a credit to BSD.

There are several licenses that the software could be under. And many of them permit resale for a profit.

Look at the companies that sell Linux on a CD. Linux is freely available. Is it illegal for them to sell it?

No.

I'm sure there are some licenses out there that this is illegal under, but there are plenty that it's fine.

 

[Nocturnal]

it probably is for the most part. if not, im sure people would be suing them already

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

It's also legal to charge $5 or whatever for a CDR. Now... if that CD has freeware on it, you're not paying for it. You're getting reamed up the butt for a CDR. The software itself is free.

nik

 

[LongCoolMother]

i thought it was completely illegal to download a bunch of freeware, burn it on a CD, and then sell it.

 

[KennyTheGreat]

heheh

 

[ThisIsMatt]

They're selling a service.

 

[Frosty3799]

<< They're selling a service. >>



i think its part this, and they have special licenses w/ the record companies... im sure the record companies get a portion of the sales, or a huge lump sum for every song that is available from the company

 

[Mitzi]

<< i thought it was completely illegal to download a bunch of freeware, burn it on a CD, and then sell it. >>



It is, however it is legal to charge a service fee, your cash goes into paying for the blank cd, the time to arrange and burn it and the cost of the postage and packaging.

 

[spanky]

<< i thought it was completely illegal to download a bunch of freeware, burn it on a CD, and then sell it. >>



maybe they cut some kinda deal with the software companies, where they are allowed to distribute their software on CD's. it's sorta like free advertising.