>>Craig:
>>I'm telling my age, but I remember back in the early 80's there was a Fedral lawsuit that was filed by MicroPro (WordStar) against a software rental company asserting that their activities were in violation of MicroPro's licensing agreement. The software industry prevailed upon MicroPro to settle the lawsuit before it was litigated. The pundits claimed that the courts might rule against the industry's assertion that they have the right to allow a purchaser to only "use" the products purchased. Do you know if the license agreements that we allow accept have been validated by the courts?
>>
>>I've always wondered how a software product is different that the GM car that I buy. I can sell it to anyone without GM's permission. I can modify it any way I want without GM's permission. (They don't have to warrant the car if I make changes.)
>>
>>Thanks for your thoughts, expertise and have a Happy!
>>
>>Mike
>
>I'm not an attorney, nor an expert in software law. But, as a result of that MicroPro case, the software industry forced the laws to be changed and it eventually become illegal to rent software. I can't say if this is still the law today.


Craig,

Pretty much it is. The practice became pretty abusive and the industry was right to shut it down.

It strted out harmless enough, on the old time-share systems. (I'll bet those predate you...) There, the users of the system shared system resources on a cost per minute basis. When mini-computers came along, a lot of people were used to "renting" software and saw no reason not to continue to do so. In fact, 20 years ago, the idea of "owning" a personal copy of software was pretty strange, and stayed that way until Visi-Calc.

regards,