The Software License Unveiled: How Legislation by License Controls Software Access

Nearly every use of a computer is subject not only to public intellectual property law, but also to the privately-written law of the software license. Although the United States has only one Copyright Act and one set of patent laws, there exist thousands of different licenses - to which millions of computer users legally bind themselves by the click of a mouse, usually without reading anything but the word "agree."

How do these proliferating but largely unread licenses affect access to software, one of the economy's most valuable resources? In The Software License Unveiled, visionary practitioner Doug Phillips aims to illuminate the unseen law of software to which the software license gives rise.

• First title to combine a practice-oriented survey of "clickwrap" law with a theoretical treatment of legal and economic theory
• Written by a visionary legal practitioner with extensive experience in software licensing
• Includes discussion of today's software licenses from both practical and conceptual vantage points, including analysis of license examples, discussion of key judicial decisions, and consideration of theoretical perspectives.
• Explains how the terms of "clickwrap" agreements and other software licenses give rise to a largely unread and unseen law of software, which often displaces intellectual property law
• Discusses digital rights management ("DRM") and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") and how these critical developments are and are not related to software licensing
• Discusses the new version 3 of the General Public License ("GPL"), which applies to Linux and other free software programs
• Includes a brilliant new perspective on the proliferation of open-source software licenses that will help to frame the ongoing debate within the free and open-source software communities.