There is an author I've been working with for a while. She is wanting to publish her recently deceased husband's curriculum. Unfortunately the copyright freedoms teachers have in an educational setting is not necessarily legal if you're trying to publish a book to be sold to the general public.

Among many other issues this poor lady had to work through, the curriculum included stock graphics from a drawing software. Most software allow you to use their stock graphics/photos for personal, educational, or non-profit uses. However, a published book that is for sale does not fall into any of those categories. (There are other restrictions such as they can't be used as logos, cannot be resold, etc. so the user agreement license should always be read to find out what the restrictions are before the artwork is used for any for-profit purposes. I had to do this when I went shopping for stock art collections for our work...it is very boring reading legal-ese in 4pt. font.)

Anyway, I asked this author to send me a copy of the user license agreement for the software package so we could check the terms of use. This morning I opened the packet she sent in the mail. It included two sheets of folded paper. Ah, I thought, the photocopies of her user license agreement. I unfolded the sheets. The first was a color screen shot of the serial number and software license key. The second was the instructions on how to install the software key.

Um... close, but no cigar.