Qualifications are IMPORTANT.

I have been a music publisher for 15+ years. In that time, I have been required to enforce copyrights in court on 11 occasions. And my "box score" is 11-0 so I claim far more than average experience on this subject. (But only with respect to U.S. law)

In most areas of the law, there is what is called the "doctrine of laches" which essentially means "use it or lose it". In other words, if someone fails to protect and defend their rights for an extended (but not precise) length of time AND if the defendant is harmed by believing that he can use the "protected" property because no one seems to care, then the defendant can and often DOES present the laches defense.

In that event the courts can rule...and often do...that the defendant was acting in the good faith belief that no harm would come to him by using the property and the property owner LOSES.

I have PREVAILED on that exact point in court so I'm not making this up.

The typical counter-argument to laches is the doctrine of "unclean hands" which holds that if the defendant KNEW he was doing wrong and KNEW that if he got caught he would be punished then laches is offset by the "unclean hands" of the defendant. In otherwords, if you don't come into the court with "clean hands" then you pretty much lose your ability to accuse someone else of having "dirty hands." That is AGE OLD common law in most Western nations.

The bottom line is SIMPLE.

1. Ambiguous contracts are OFTEN declared unenforceable. This thread stands for the proposition the the PG license IS ambiguous in the minds of well-intentioned people on both sides of the debate. For that reason alone, the license language should be clarified.

2. Laches is a CLEARLY available defense to any user who installs and uses BIAB on more than one computer at a time.

I NOTE however, that the availability of a defense and the defense WORKING are two very different things. Among the many things I've learned is that the law isn't what it says in some book but rather what a judge and/or jury SAYS it is on a given day!!!!

I'm over and out on this one folks as I've said my piece AND have BIAB installed on only one machine!!!

And I conclude by reiterating that if PG wants to permit the installation AND/OR use of BIAB on any number of machines but only one at a time, then it should so state CLEARLY to the extent that there are NOT multiple, reasonable interpretations of the langue because if there is, then the licensor is going to LOSE in a very, very high percentage of cases.

Just tryin' to help.

(-:

Jim

Last edited by av84fun; 07/13/13 11:11 AM.