By Jo Best
Published: Friday 17 February 2006
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Name
Simon
Location
Cumbria
Occupation
IT
Comment
When is it theft, and when is it "fair use" ?
The SLA for OS X (http://www.apple.com/legal/sla/macosx104.html) says "This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time."
So that's pretty clear, the licence does not allow you to run the software on a non-Apple computer. But is that clause legally valid ? I guess only a test case could decide that, but where does the vendors rights to control use end, and the consumers rights to use a product as they wish start ?
To my mind, it cannot be considered theft if the end user has paid for a licence to use the software. But it would be theft to use a copy of OS X that hadn't been paid for even if running it on an Apple computer.
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