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EU: Software Vendors have no rights to block resale
Kaijin2k3
Member Posts: 558
While not immediately about gaming, we can all see how it will apply:
EA Court rules resale of used software licenses is legal -- even online
Thoughts?
Comments
Well used software sales have existed since I can remember so nothing here will change...
Where it changes is with the software where the license is per user, per seat and other such restrictions. This bodes very well for companies who otherwise would have had to buy new licenses for software during employees turnover.
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This should also mean that it should be legal and allowable to sell your digitally purchased games. Think Steam, Gog, etc. (since this is the general games section :P)
Well, at least for those that the court's jurisdiction falls on.
Good decision from EU court of justice. I hope that principle would some time in the future be used to protect consumer's rights by allowing the resale of all digital media. If I buy some physical object from store, I'm free to sell it forwards if I wish to. That same should apply also to computer games and programs.
Need this in North America now, never really made sense to me how software is only "licensed" beside the simply marketing aspect of making more money off customers.
Its a good ruling quite frankly, could really change the software world for the better.
Bah, the EU is just some kind of American province like Puerto Rico...
US went the other way back in 2010: Ars Technica: No, you don't own it
And now it's ruling on wether our first-sale doctrine applies to foreign goods or not. If it goes "no," we will no longer be able to legally resale anything that was produced outside of the US (physically or not). Which is nearly, you know, everything: Supreme Court will Hear Case Over...
eh.. not exactly. That is about profiting off imported intellectual properties and has a great deal more to do with the rights of companies to "zone" their goods. Yes it absurd that companies can charge different prices in different districts and block purchasers from bringing those goods accross the border but it really is an entirely different issue.
The question at hand there is not wether the goods fall under the copyright laws of the US or the foriegn district in which they were created.
Really its more of an economic issue then a legal one in the long run. Eventually some districts will alter the scope of domestic laws in order to produce goods that can then be exported the US, which will be the begining of the end for a great many current IP laws (thats a good thing, IP laws are general are absurd).
...you are the bankrupt independent colony of england. Actually a slave colony since you are all slaves of the Rockefellers and the Fed, but keep on dreaming the american dream, it's what they want you to do, dream and not see reality.
On topic. This is a decision that will change the situation dramatically for those companies that try to restrict reselling of their product. Either through the use of EULA's or through restricting used programs in content ( no online play etc).
Steam will have to offer a way to convert a game into a gift and make it tradeable again. This means that the now 5 million Steam subscribers will flood the market with games that they already played through and it will create a huge second market with cheap games. This could force STEAM and publishers to completely stop doing Sales on games.
I fully support the decision and it is about time that we get the full rights of physical products with our digital products.
All I'll say on this is, I hope you are 100% correct
Hmm I'm thinking subscriptions or micro transactions are going to definitely be the way of the future if this pushes through to the US one day. This could seriously cut into retail sales so the companies will have to find a way to make up for lost revenue with account specific purchases. Sure the software will be resellable but it's not like you would be able to sell an account of your personal information unless they design it that way.
Also when I'm talking about subscriptions or micro transactions I'm not talking specifically about the context of MMO's which already have these items. i'm talking about all software in general. In gaming DLC is definitely the route of microtransaction and things like Call of Duty Elite are already shifting the subscription route. I just think that it will come even more heavy handidly with this change.
Interesting take, but I tend to think that the opposite will happen. If you can sell games (including all relevent DLC or microtransaction effects with it), then that would dramatically lower the value of those games and services.
I would imagine that this will drive companies towards a access fee option as that access fee would be non transferable (beyond the scope of the access fee itself).
As for loss of sales, ehh, i wouldn't worry about it to much honestly. The entire software industry is so absurdly fat at the top its kind of obscene. Its the nature of the buisness, any industry that tends towards a massive initial costing for its products with very low per unit cost tends to get very very inefficent and anti competitive. This should help with both those issues.
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Was just on steam forums, apparently this won't affect steam due to various loopholes in the text. But the gist of it was that Valve is an US based company and only does business in EU whereas a company such as Oracle which is also US based has operations and many offices in EU and as such they will have to follow the rules while Valve won't. That said, no word officially from Valve yet.
About time EU caught up with the rest of the western civilized world.
I think people are reading far too much into this. Oracle sued Used Soft trying to get the courts to shut them down. The courts declined to do so, though they did place some restrictions on Used Soft's business model. If the courts ordered Oracle to do something to specifically facilitate Used Soft's business, I don't see any record of it.
The people that suffer most is game designers. So much money goes into making a game and yet they only see the profits on the initial sale of a game. It would be nice if there was at least something in play so the game developers (screw the publishers, greedy as they are) could get some of the cut. I personally avoid used games as much as possible since to me, its wrong a company should get so much profit off reselling a game. I wish there was a better system at play that both gave the game sellers more initial profit while also giving the game companies also a cut of the sales from 'reselling' at stores or possibly just selling new copies.
Software is moving towards services business anyway. There is a lot of that already. While boxed software will continue to exists, it will slowly dissapear as the digital purchases become the accepted standard. You are also likely to pay for the use rather than the license.
This ruling is good tho. I know that the distributors do not like resale of games.
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someones a little butthurt it seems
Yes I played SWTOR.