Thank you for the apology. It actually means a lot to me.
I like a good debate too. And I was on a high horse. I think I may have been spending too much time over at the ZDnet forums, where "good debate" is usually defined by how refined your insult is. Sometimes when I have some spare time I head over there to defend the honour of Apple.
The problem with your examples is that the University and I both have the ability to negotiate for more favorable terms. We are on an equal footing to discuss what you feel is a fair price and terms. With clickwarp, this ability isnt there. Its agree or disagree, no talk.
I don't believe that is an issue. There are a lot of examples of "take it or leave it". I don't have the ability to negotiate my mortgage rates with my bank. And I don't, we bank with a credit union where they advertise and are proud of their "you get our best rate" policy. And yes, if I walked in with a huge commercial account, I could probably talk to the manager to try to get a better rate. But that is also what happens with Apple. If you walk in with an order for 1000 licenses, guess what.... you get to negotiate.
By your reasoning, the contract with my credit union is not valid because we aren't equals. Or, do you feel that a contract that deals with IP is somehow different than a tangible product contract?
There are any number of online stock agencies that sell photos for people to use. There is no mechanism to "negotiate" the price. Its listed there. Buy the photo on these terms, or don't.
In both of those examples, its a clear breach of copyright law. They are overextending their use of reproduction/display.
In this particular case, I just don't see the difference between copyright law and software licensing.
People should respect the conditions that software is licensed to them. However if person-A has only one desktop and one laptop, it shouldn't be considered a breach of copyright law since he/she is only using one copy at a time. Had this person had the ability to negotiate the terms, he/she may have been able to get a license for two computer for a smaller fee since he/she isnt installing it on 5 computers.
I happen to agree with you, to a point, here. I think more software should be licensed this way. But, Apple doesn't. It would add a degree of complexity to the licensing, though. Do you have to shut down the computer that's not in use (not "sleep" but shut down). Because the Macs are often, though sleeping, still doing Mac things for e.g. my desktop system wakes up every night to run some maintenance scripts. These are Apple's, not mine. It also checks for and pulls in email at the same time. If I'm travelling with my laptop, would this not constitute two instances of the software running, even if only for an hour or so? Or do I have to make sure both the desktop and the laptop are running their scripts at different times so they don't overlap? And, do you then turn of the Back to My Mac functionality if there is a single license? And the ability to share folders across the house network is turned off if there is a single license?
Another example. My wife has MS Office for her Mac, single licence. Sometimes she is working on her laptop in the living room, using Excel, and gets up to go to do something. She'll end up in her office and fire up the her desk system, check email, open an attachment - blam - license violation. MS Office even tells her, and refuses to open up. She is not actually
working on the other system, may not even have a document open, and if it was open it would be a spreadsheet not a Word document. But if she hasn't completely shut down Office, its no go.
The additional fee with iWork/iLife is $5/license. ($20 difference between family pack and single divided by the additional 4 licenses) If someone only needs to install it on two computers, wouldnt a five dollar additional fee be reasonable? If the ability to ability to negotiate was there, a person might be able to get that rate.
I was actually suggesting paying the full $20 since those are two price points Apple lists.
I think putting it this was show that negotiations are important to a contract better than my other arguments.
And I think that there many more examples of "contracts" that occur with no negotiation. I can't negotiate with my hydro supplier, my food supplier, my water supplier, my car insurance supplier (provincial crown corp), the collector of taxes and supplier of government services, my health care supplier, etc etc
