Is Sharing Software Legal?

[Cyborg31]

If for instance I bought a legit PC game and installed it on my computer.

Then I let my friend borrow it and install it on his computer.

Would that technically be legal? I mean people do it anyways, but just wondering.

What if I had a 1000 friends and I shared that one copy to all of them to install on their computers?

What if I shared it with a million people? I'm not producing copies of my original and selling them, just letting other people install that one legit copy that I bought.

It's unlikely that those 1 million people would buy it but probably a significant portion would've bought it so the company that produced it could potentially lose a lot of money.

[LawResearcherMissy]

Would that technically be legal?

Depends.

Have you uninstalled it from your computer? In most cases, it's OK. (Some EULAs say no.)

It's still on your computer?

No. Not legal to share.

[jk]

I believe the intent of the question is they all have the software on their computer concurrently.

In that case, almost assuredly illegal.

Some software manuf. allow a small number of computers to utilize the same copy. In our office, we have a few programs that the provider allows to be installed on up to 3 computers.

I doubt any of the game producers allow multiple user installs.


The general rule is, you must remove it from your computer when you sell or give away the disc.

Music is the same way. You are allowed to make copies of those CD;s but if you were to give somebody else the original, youmust either destroy the copy or give it with the original CD.