Federal Ruling Challenges Validity of Used Software Sales

[shadow skill]

But let's ignore books: why couldn't the licensing stunt work for your computer monitor? Your stereo system? Your desk? Being able to force people to buy new every time is a wet dream to any supplier.

There'd be more ways around that than anyone could imagine. The only times you can force people to buy new is when you control distribution or the primary markets. Even if large retailers could no longer carry used games, flea markets, yard sales, street vendors, and ebay are all but outside the scope of liability or law.

Also, that licensing scheme you talk about is already employed by film's interactions with rental chains. The chains have a choice between handing over a large portion of the proceeds or buying rental licenses at something around $100 per copy. The video game industry can't negotiate something like that, because no matter how much money they'd make from selling rental licenses or getting a portion of rental proceeds, if blockbuster had [game] out before it was available for purchase, they'd only sell fewer copies. ... er, tangent.

As for my monitor, I've got an old trinitron CRT sitting on my desk. Its been demoted to secondary because it takes several days for the tubes to initialize if it so much as goes into standby mode. I'm seriously considering buying a new monitor as most CRTs are dead and old LCDs are beyond worthless.

If you store written works properly they can last for thousands of years. Anyone who tells you that digital storage media does not degrade is mistaken. Solid state drives wear out faster than standard magnetic drives, and standard drives are usually rated at around ten years time before failure.

Yea yea yea, I've seen you go through this before, according to you, digital media degrades the instant it touches air and is worthless within months.(warning, the aforementioned contains snarky amounts of hyperbole) Fact is, digital media degrades independent of use if not handled by eight year olds or complete morons. Which does make it unique.

But I'll say one thing, the definition of "proper storage" of written text is "vacuum sealed box, never to be read or handled."

If the storage medium fails the data stored on the device is gone. It really is a fact of life that you can store written records for millennia if you do it properly. Fact is you don't know what you are talking about. http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/Linux-For-Devices-Articles/Opening-the-door-for-the-latest-NAND-flash-in-open-source-mobile-platforms/


http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9112065/Solid_state_disk_lackluster_for_laptops_PCs?taxonomyId=19&pageNumber=1&taxonomyName=Storage


Some older magnetic hard drives have problems if they have not been powered on for a long period of time. Though this is less of a problem with modern drives. In most cases a standard magnetic drive will just up and die. With SSD's you actually start to lose addressable space over time. (Because of read/write operations.)

Oh and one could just laminate paper to help it last longer and still have the text readable without having to store it in a sealed box.

 

[Grimrider6]

-snip-

Suing the individual seller != suing ebay

So suing individual sellers at flea markets and yard sales would also work?

 

[Grimrider6]

Heh, find me a single boycott that has worked.

http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/Boycotts/successfulboycotts.aspx

Do any of these count?

 

[Roander]

Ok. So he's not selling the software, he's just selling the disks that the software is on. Problem solved.

 

[Signa]

It's almost like the videogame/software industry WANTS people to pirate their products. . . .

For sure. It's like they want us to choose between buying a worthless product, or just stealing it. I don't know what planet they grew up on, but where I come from, when you buy something, the product you bought is still worth the money you paid for it. With this ruling, you may as well as flush your money down the toilet, because that's about all you are getting for it.

 

[samsonguy920]

I dare publishers to try to "license" games. They will end up tied up in court cases until Bobby Kotick sees the light and gives away games for free to orphans. (For those who are new here, that would be a very very very very very^1000*takes breath* long time)

 

[Signa]

Heh, find me a single boycott that has worked.

http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/Boycotts/successfulboycotts.aspx

Do any of these count?

I wouldn't call them valid. Not because they didn't work, but because of the context of them. Almost all of them are regarding the treatment of other humans in the production of the product, or abuse of nature in general. Another bit I noticed is that a lot of them were focused on high life consumers. Diamonds and cruise ships are not something the average consumer can hope to affect, because they are 1 in several million, and not 1 in 1,000. If you ran a cruise ship company, just losing Bill Gates and his friends is going to be a lot more damaging to your business than if you were running a game company and ten times that number of people were whining on an internet forum about a $60 game purchase.

 

[cerebus23]

well considering this case was about autocad, apps are a bit diffent than games, and old ones even more than games.

apps particularly a few years back had no drm, you got a disk and serial # and you could install it. no disk checks no nada, but some did check over your local network, if you had a limited license to see if any other instances of the software were running with the same serial number, if so it would only launch on one computer, but there was technically no limit on how many computers you could install it on just how many instances would run in a given office. but many apps did not even do that, i am going off adobe apps a few years back not that familiar with autocad.

but this guy find a version of autocad at a garage sale, maybe it was open maybe someone bought it never used it and wanted to get rid of it in a hurry, but either way he finds it buys it i am sure dirt cheap, goes on the internet sees autocad selling for a few 100 or 1000 new and says to himself well i dunno how to use this stuff and i can make a tidy profit on it so ebay here i come.

but the person that sold it if they opened it could have put it on their pc and then turned around sold the disk, hey noone is going to know either way, this guy could have bought it installed it sold it and kept it working on his pc, then sells it to another that does the same thing.

applications bottom line are a way different breed than games, they are many times more expensive, and unless we are talking newer applications they had little or no real drm to speak of. applications have always been based off licenses, you buy a license to use said software in the way the license describes. the cost of the software is based on the license you want a single copy license or a office wide with x clients license and so on.

now autocad may or may not be different but thats the basics of how adobe software license worked. now days adobe has at lest much stricter drm and i am sure other apps do also, but i can hardly fault this guy for selling something he probably did not now how to use, audocad is a pretty technical heavy program not for noobs.

but i am sure with this door open game publishers will look to get in through the cracks and take advantage.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Uh last time I checked, a "license" had to be renewed after a set period of time, whereas a "sale" was a one time cash payment in return for product or service. Since the purchasing of software clearly falls under the latter category, I fail to see how this claim is valid.

SHUSH! don't give them ideas =(

Don't give who ideas? I'm saying that stuff about it only being a license not a sale is bullshit. ...oh I see what you mean, right.

Still according to Webster's New World Dictionary the the definition of a License is
1. a formal permission to do something; esp. authorization by law to do some specified thing

And the definition of a Sale is
1. the act of selling; exchange of property of any kind, or of services, for an agreed sum of money or other valuable consideration

I'm still pretty damn sure software purchases fall under the "Sale" category.

 

[poiuppx]

The day my collection effectively becomes worthless because- in spite of evidence to the contrary -I don't 'own' any of it is the day I start working through the backlog, and old favorites, and classic games from older consoles... for life. I have no interest in supporting an industry that feels not only do I not have ownership of the physical media I purchase, but that I subsequently don't even have the right to sell or trade it. Or more accurately, one that feels that way and has convinced the law to go along with them. I still won't pirate- a man has to have his standards and stand by them, I feel, and two wrongs aren't going to make a damn thing even close to right -but I will no longer be an ongoing customer.

OT, AutoCAD and the like do belong to a very different subsect of programs that are commonly limited-licensed and tightly controlled where possible. And while this is a sad blow to consumer rights to ownership in the digital age, it's not that grave a strike. What it does do, however, is open the door if not fought and fought hard.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Did he buy the box and disc and content of such disk? Yes? Then he can do whatever he likes with said physical objects, including sell them, because they are HIS.

 

[Aurgelmir]

At the least, reselling certain kinds of used software may just have gotten a lot tougher, but we'll have to wait and see if other software developers and publishers are able to incorporate the "licensing" argument in their products to go against the first-sale doctrine.

Still the problem with this, is that licensed software is insanely expensive and often region specific. (I am looking at you Adobe Photoshop).

As for licensed videogames... well we are sort of already moving there, with games like StarCraft 2 and Ubisoft's games, where you always need ot register your game in order to even play it.
That said I think it is a bad move of any games developer to make their games into "licences" instead of actual games.

 

[BboyTeddyBear]

This will throw another wrench into the classic games being sold out there. Hey what if I have my SNES...and I feel like going back to the classics cuz SNES is so awesome. So i want to play some Mario kart and Donkey Kong on it, but wait i dont own it yet so i have to go get it, BUT wait even more! i can't buy it because nintendo doesn't sell them anymore. So I sit there pondering what to do.

Now point being is that consoles aren't going to be support forever. And some consoles have a legacy of being a love from our childhoods and by this law of anti-used games means we won't be able to relive it so either piracy ensues or emulators (which is piracy) grows rapidly for our classic games. And as the generations go so does what games being pirated.

PS: i'm not picking on nintendo but my SNES is nearby and it was the first thing i saw that isn't supported anymore these days and still holds an dear spot in my heart over those hours of Legend of Zelda Link to the past when i was like...7

 

[BloodRed Pixel]

My answer to that is clear since I entered the AppStore/ Steam world:




If I cannot sell it annymore I am going to pay a WHOLE LOT LESS for new software in the first place.




$1 to $10 is appropriate, depending. In now way more than for a none 3D movie in the cinema.

 

[Narcogen]

Sigh.

This ruling does no such thing. Please read it.

The ruling states that under certain circumstances, EULAs may be considered valid. Not that they are never considered valid. Not that they are always considered valid. They do not make it impossible to sell software used. They have no effect on most software sales, which will still be deemed sales, because those transactions and those products do not meet the guidelines set down in this ruling.

In this particular case, these copies were invalidated under the EULA prior to being sold. The publisher licenses, not sells the software, and the transaction is found to be a licensing agreement and not a sale because of the way it was written and the way in which the publisher enforced the terms.

Saying that one instance of a court upholding one EULA "challenges validity" of used software sales as a principle is just about as ridiculous as saying it's impossible for any software company anywhere to license any of their software because once you've given them money and received a disc in a box the transaction is now a "sale".

This is not how things work.

 

[ItsAPaul]

This is old news. The ruling only applies to the western 9 states and theres a history of appeals from rulings coming out of this court. I'm pretty sure non-Activision gaming companies are all about you owning your copies of the game.

 

[matrix3509]

Every day the free market dies just a little bit more. Curse you, Keynesian economics! Where's F. A. Hayek when you need him?

...Eh? What does Keynesianism have to do with anything?

Because Keynesian economic model advocates government intervention in the private sector, whether its good or bad for the consumer isn't regarded as important.

Every economic model, save anarchy, advocates government intervention in the private sector, where government intervention is protection of contractual terms. A license is just another form of contract. Your libertarian fantasies won't get you out of this one.

Libertarianism has nothing to with with the fact that contracts shoved in your face after a sale has taken place are completely and utterly unenforceable. Though Keynesianism (and the tards who back it; 9th Circuit Court included) certainly makes bullshit lawsuits like this one possible.