[oclug] Ottawa Hospital getting their software Audited

[rod at giffinscientific.com]

 Brad Barnett <bbarnett at L8R.net> wrote:  
>On Thu, 14 Mar 2002 22:50:55 -0500
Chris Herrnberger <chris123 at magma.ca> wrote:

>> While your point is valid it is not necessarily correct. When you accept
>> the EULA from MS that imposes certain responsibilities on you vs care
>> and custody of the product and your rights as defined for usage. The
>> licensor (MS) has established many procedures mostly software based that
>> easily allow for monitoring of this EULA without ever entering your
>> facility. Physical presence on your premise in usually never required. A
>> simple letter from their corporate lawyer to yours is usually enough to
>> produce the request documents. And guess what, most  licensees don't
>> have the required docs.....never mind a software controll policy nor
>> supporting procedures.
[snip]
> 1) EULAs aren't legit.  I don't care what anyone says, their very nature
> is flawed.  Transfer of ownership is the only time a contract can occur,
> and nothing else about software (in law) states otherwise

Brad is right here.
Under US laws, EULA's are legitimate FYI, that has been tested in US courts.  However, we're not in the USA.  The thing that protects software manufacturers
from piracy in Canada is the Copyright act.  You don't need to even read
the EULA in order to be bound by the Copyright act, you only need to be in
Canada.

> 2) Even if you signed a EULA on transfer, there are privacy laws to take
> into account when it comes to monitoring

This is not strictly true.  It is legal (read: not criminal) if one of the parties knows and has consented to the monitoring ,or is actually the one 
doing the monitoring  There may be civil liability issues, depending on the
nature of the communications, and how the information was used.

> 3) Even if your privacy rights aren't breeched, the company doing the
> audit isn't the same company that you have an EULA with.  No EULA in the
> universe is going to open-ended assign rights to any company that wants to
> do audits.  Not going to happen.

The Canadian Copyright Act gives sweeping powers to named industry associations 
to sue offenders on behalf of the copyright holder.

Rod.