But there are people, in this very thread, who have said that when they buy a piece of software that they OWN that software which is nonsense. Unless they want to write a check for cost plus on producing that software, they are simply licensing the right to USE the software under the terms and conditions provided by the maker. It has nothing to do with copyright IMO.
Actually, it has everything to do with copyright. Copyright attempts to place artificial limitations on the copying of expressive works in an effort to provide an incentive to create the works in the first place. But in the absence of a copyright, anyone has the right to copy anything they want because those rights are not reserved. (If copyright didn't exist, you do not need any affirmative or explicit right to make a copy because no one else would have the right to stop you from making one.) Copyright law exists and defines how copies can be made, transferred, sold, or otherwise disposed. Therefore, copyright is the controlling item in any discussion about ownership.
Copyright is clear that ownership of a copyright (which I'll call the copyright holder) is distinct from ownership of a individual copy of a work. So when you buy your favorite game from the store, you truly own the box, the media, and that one individual copy of the game. Many prior court decisions reinforce this principle (for example, Softman vs. Adobe). Your ownership of that copy doesn't give you the copyright to the game, however.
Your ownership of that copy of the game allows you to do anything you want with that game (since it is your property) except those things reserved to the copyright holder.
The most important right that the owner of a copy has is the right to use the work. (use implies read/listen/view/etc for the various media types.) You don't need a special license to read a book that you legally bought, because the book's publisher doesn't get the legal right to control reading. You can read your book at any time and for any reason, even if the first page of the book happens to have the text "READER LICENSE AGREEMENT" printed on it.
Another important right reserved to the owner of a copy include the right to dispose or sell the copy, known as the doctrine of first sale. Once the copyright holder sells you the copy, then that's ALL the copyright holder is ever entitled to getting from that copy (this is known as "exhaustion of rights".) The copyright holder cannot prevent you from selling or disposing your copy, or restrict the terms of sale or who you can sell it to, or expect to get more money in a subsequent sale. So once J.K. Rawling has sold you a copy of a Harry Potter book, you can legally sell or give that copy of the book to someone else. Its your book, after all. Rawling can't stop you from selling your book.
A third important right reserved to the owner of a copy is fair use copies. Although the copyright holder legally has the right to control most copying, you have the limited right to make copies.
The copyright holder gets to reserve certain essential rights, such as public performance, distribution, and reproduction. There's a whole lot of things a copyright holder can control (and for good reasons), but this control is limited. It isn't a "copyright holder gets the right to dictate every use of a work." Some authors might think this is their moral right to exhaustively dictate how their work is used, but copyright law disagrees with this notion. (For example, if authors can exactly control every aspect of their work, then fair use copies wouldn't be in copyright law at all.)
Now, many publishers don't like the rights that owners of copies have under copyright law. They hate fair use, they hate the first sale doctrine, and they really want to control how owners of copies use their copies. So intead of claiming that they sold you a copy, they purport to have sold you some "license" instead. If they sell you a license instead of an actual copy, they can claim that the doctrine of first sale doesn't apply and they can attach a whole bunch of legalese to restrict use. And the way they make you accept the legal fiction of a "license" is to force you to legally assent to the contract or else the setup program won't install.
Morally, ethically, and IMHO legally, this is a sham. Like I have noted in prior posts, (1) a publisher should not be able to recharacterize what is essentially a sale into a "license" merely by putting a piece of paper in the box or setup program, and (2) a publisher who benefits from the protection conferred by copyright law should not be able to remove the parts of copyright law that it doesn't like (or "avoid getting exploited by copyright law").
Copyright law is a balance between the rights of the copyright holder (to inspire the creation of works) and the rights of owners of copies (to use and enjoy the works that were legally bought.) Purported "licensing" distorts this balace by allowing the copyright holder to control more rights than entitled by law, using contract law as a legal loophole around users' statutory rights.
You should view any attempt by a software publisher to control how you USE (not copy) your lawfully purchased product as an infringement of your rights as the purchaser, in much the same way that a pirate's illegal copying is an infringement of the rights of the publisher.
Cheers!
