But you explicitly have a commercial activity you can do with that CD: you can resell it. You can resell it so much that there's even a special term for it: "first sale doctrine". No one has a problem with me re-selling my car or a treadmill or even a television. You should (and do) have that same right with a CD.
That's why the software people are so insistent that they're selling you a "license" and not the disc itself. My understanding is that the prevailing caselaw says that the industry's argument is bullshit in the most recent case to be decided, Autodesk v. Vernor: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/05/court-smacks...
(Again, there might be more recent caselaw than this, but I personally am not aware of anything more recent than Autodesk. Please note that Autodesk technically is only binding in the Western District of Washington state, including Seattle, but other federal courts may look to Autodesk for cases that involve similar fact patterns that may appear before their courts.)
That's why the software people are so insistent that they're selling you a "license" and not the disc itself. My understanding is that the prevailing caselaw says that the industry's argument is bullshit in the most recent case to be decided, Autodesk v. Vernor: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/05/court-smacks...
(Again, there might be more recent caselaw than this, but I personally am not aware of anything more recent than Autodesk. Please note that Autodesk technically is only binding in the Western District of Washington state, including Seattle, but other federal courts may look to Autodesk for cases that involve similar fact patterns that may appear before their courts.)