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Yes, its a license and you don´t own a thing.
There is however a problem with shrink-wrap-licenses in general. A license for a piece of shrink-wrap software, may not be enforcable, in case it puts the user in a worse position than he had reason to believe when he bought the software (the software is in shrink-wrap and he is unable to read the license before buying).
This is in contrast to click-wrap software (ex. downloaded from the internet), where you accept the license before you buy. In this case the license is probably valid (unless it infringes on other consumer laws).
AFAIK I know there has been a supreme court decision in Germany stating that the license (at least the part about it being tied to a specific PC) is not enforcable. Thus resellers are able to buy oem licenses from users, and resell them again together with a PC.
The license has however not been testet in court in many european countries. Among them is Denmark where I live.
Edited 2006-02-17 14:29
A license for a piece of shrink-wrap software, may not be enforcable, in case it puts the user in a worse position than he had reason to believe when he bought the software (the software is in shrink-wrap and he is unable to read the license before buying).
That's not an excuse.
"YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS EULA BY INSTALLING, COPYING, OR OTHERWISE USING THE PRODUCT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE, DO NOT INSTALL OR USE THE PRODUCT; YOU MAY RETURN IT TO YOUR PLACE OF PURCHASE FOR A FULL REFUND."





Member since:
2005-06-29
Here we own the damn thing, and do with it as we please.
That's the whole point-- you don't own a damn thing. You have a license to use the software, much like you are allowed to use a rental house, even though the house itself is not yours.
That is no different in Finland as it is on the moon.
That is not to say whether or not this stuff MS is doing with licenses being non-transferrable or not is enforcable.