Which is it?

Ed Foster makes an interesting point about the software industry vis-a-vis the license/ownership question:

If software is actually licensed, not sold, then the customer's right to use it remains despite damaged media, crashed drives, or malfunctioning DRM. If software transactions are actually an ordinary sale of goods (as many legal experts believe, by the way), then customers' fair use rights must remain intact. One way or the other, software publishers at least should be consistent.

I would have to agree with Ed here - we do try to have it both ways in this business. The nastiness over DRM in the music and movie industry is coming from an attempt by the RIAA and the MPAA to institute software style controls over an industry that really hasn't worked that way before. Something for us to chew on, I think...