Legal use of VNC

[Albert Crosby]

On Tue, 29 Jun 1999, Kevin Cousins wrote:

> David A. Jablonski, "David>", wrote:
> 
> David> I am concerned about the legalities of using VNC to give people
> David> access to my NT box.  If I let someone run an app like MSWord
> David> or Visio on my machine via VNC, am I violating the liscence or
> David> copyright for that app?  What if several people connect to my
> David> machine throughout the day?  Do I need site-liscenses for all
> David> my software even though it is only running for one user at a
> David> time on one machine?  Do the same rules apply to Macs and Sun
> David> boxes?
> 
> David> Just tryin' to stay legal...
> 
> Perhaps it's appropriate to ask whether Microsoft's (Apple's, SUN's)
> shrink-wrap licences are really legitimate in the first place.
> 

Let's not.

Until someone successfully challenges the license agreement in court, and
has that decision upheld, we have to assume they apply.  Besides, David
didn't say that he was concerned with a 'shrink-wrap license.  He may be
covered by an explicit license agreement, such as the Microsoft Open
Licensing Program (MOLP).

My reading, which may be entirely wrong, is that in most cases the
application itself is OK, since with VNC only one user is able to use the
application at a time, and it is literally running on the licensed CPU.

However, if I recall correctly from a previous thread, the Windows 95 and
NT licensing agreements actually prohibit this kind of access.  Strange,
but that was the conclusion that several people came to from reading the
EULA.  That doesn't stop people from selling commercial products that do
the same thing, however, so I think we're pretty safe.

My gut feeling on the licensing issue is that running the software over
VNC is no different than allowing someone else to sit down at the keyboard
and monitor.  After all, it just extends that concept.  So it's OK,  
unless the software product is licensed to a single, specific user as well
as a CPU.  Bibliography and reference software are examples of packages
that sometimes have that kind of license.

Albert


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