>>I don't see the problem since she's the only one using it, and she isn't using both copies "at the same time". If she had the two "connected", it might be a different story.
>
>Hm, interesting... I thought this is clearly still considered a violation in the software world?

One needs to distinguish between what is in the license and what is actually enforceable. "Saying it's so doesn't make it so".

>I have heard "fair use" bandied about a lot when it comes to music, but I hadn't heard it come up much with software.

Under "Fair use", one can use the "expression" (ie. software) under circumstances that do not seriously interfere with the copyright owner's ability to commercially exploit the expression.

Another example of fair use is "reverse-engineering". Almost every software license makes a point of prohibiting it, although it is unenforceable per se. In order to advance the state-of-the-art, one frequently reverse-engineers a product and then improves on it. That is one reason why reverse-engineering is "fair use".

>> But you are right...technically the only difference is the hard-drive installation. Imagine if software (even the OS) ran completely off a CD-ROM and you took that CD-ROM from machine to machine with you. Would that be considered piracy? Obviously not...no more than taking a music CD to a different CD player.

The same could be said for "removeable drives"; now there's a little bit of hardware attached to the medium ... but only one instance of the product is being used at any given time.

>Dang it gets complex though...what if I have a CD player that can cache a song. I get the song cached on that player and then I move to another player with my CD. While listening to that song, someone else goes to the first player and plays the cached song. Are we now both pirates? Ack...

This seems to touch on the area of "public broadcasting". This one instance, with one person, would not be a public broadcast and you retained possession of the cached copy.

>Though I suppose I had it in the back of my head, I guess I have never really considered software to be such a direct analogy to music, but it really is.

They are all "expressions" that can be copyrighted.

> Thanks for this discussion!

Thank YOU.

Gerry.