[geeks] Virtualization-supporting Celeron

[gsm at mendelson.com]

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 06:56:24PM -0500, Joshua Boyd wrote:

>Are the keys not legal there?  I know they wouldn't be here, but I'm a
>little surprised that they wouldn't be there.

That's all very complicated. Israeli copyright law is different than the US.
It is illegal to SELL copyrighted works without permission, but it is not
illegal to own or obtain them.

This is because our copyright thieves were much better than most, they were
able to produce products identical to the original Microsoft ones, down to
the hollograms and other methods of identifying a genuine product.

In plain English there was no way that a buyer could tell if they were buying
a legal copy of Windows or not. 

Videotapes were worse, since they were dubbed or subtitled in relatively small
quantities, the packaging was cheap and poorly done. Sometimes the Russian
bootlegs were packaged closer to the original than the legal ones.

The same with DVD's, which are often just the movie with no special features.

The remedies in law are limited to actual damages, so if you were caught
selling 5 copies of Windows at $200 each, the most you could be sued or
prosecuted for was $1000. 

So as far as I can see, and I am not a lawyer, selling the keys would be
copyright infringment, if they are copyrighted. Combining them to
receive signals, would be theft of service, but whom are you stealing them
from?

If for example, you were to do it with the local cable company (called HOT)
or the DBS company (called YES) then they could go to the police and file
a criminal complaint. 

However if you were to do it with signals from outside of the country,
for example BBC Prime, the BBC would have to do it themselves. Since the BBC
charges 80 UKP per customer per year for a single user license (and decoder
card), the most they could go after per person is 80 UKP, and they would have
to convince a judge (we don't have jury trials here) that it was a deliberate
theft, not the innocent purchase of a stolen or bootleg product.

If the seller of the keys has 1000 receivers in play, then it becomes 80,000
UKP and worth it, but so far no one has bothered to do so.

Geoff.
-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM