which says that (re)selling used software is allowed.
Most software is very hard or downright impossible to resell, just like digital games today.
That’s interesting. I’m glad to see the consumer being taken care of here. I wonder how long it’ll be before companies are forced to update their systems to enable transferring licenses to other users?
I would think that sites like Steam could make the change easily, since they already have gifting… But Sony and MS are going to have a harder time since they’ve never implemented anything like that.
The seller is being taken care of, not the buyer. Let’s use unity as an example.
This does not affect the unity license because under this ruling:
-
you are not entitled to support - unity can ban that account from all updates or choose not to support you.
-
they can refuse to reset the license for the machine.
I am not saying unity will or will not do that, but it’s for example. All this ruling does, is harm consumers. All it means is more fraud. Because the ruling only does one thing: it lets you resell it. And most of the time reselling it will break it because everyone’s moving to an ongoing support license model.
This might be ok for selling games, for now. But it changes nothing in the big picture and in the case of apps, can even harm the buyer.
Sue them and it will be interesting to see how things turn out.
Unity has a shitty licence and just like with the update it’s sad that things aren’t dealt with in a reasonable and respectful way right from the start but maybe i’m just not thinking big enough.
Damn you, was about to post this T.T
But yeah, it will be interesting to see how software companies act once licenses start changing hands.
Reselling software… hmm, well… I feel compelled to weigh in on this one. Is a digital product a “real” product. I would answer yes. The discussion then seems to branch into 2 distinct parts:
- should associated services come with the product
and
- because we can do a thing (in this case, disable online registration/activation process), should we. (I say we, because this isn’t a big company thing, it’s an “anyone who makes digital products” thing).
My answer to 1 is, no. Support costs more than actual product creation, and re-selling a product doesn’t imply, in my mind, extending my support. Now, there are many “real world” models for this that aren’t “cut and dry”, like the automobile industry, many warranties are tied to the product, not the owner, and as such transferable. This model also creates a secondary business market, which can be good for many more people, like buying “after-market” service programs. Of course, as I think this through, that would be generally impractical in software, where “disassembling” software is illegal, but “modding” or extensions are possible…
Number 2 is a real mind turner. Games and end-user software are assumed to be “limited shelf-life”. Consumers demand more and new every year, generally… however, minecraft and all ‘retro’ games certainly challenge that notion. Unity v2, as an example, is a perfectly viable game engine (taumel, just go with me on this 
), so, if someone transfers v2 to someone else, and assuming that support is terminated in the transaction, what’s the big deal? Nothing, as such, unless someone buys a earlier version just to get the discount on the latest version. Or is that a problem? A person did pay for the earlier version, and the new owner did pay Unity for the latest version, so Unity hasn’t incurred any lost. So where’s the problem?
I think all these issues come back to 2 things:
-
pirating
-
perception of lost revenue
A disturbing number of people have historically perceived pirating as a “victimless crime”. Since copying can be done by very non-technical people in seconds, how can this be stealing? It is, period. If a hacker, with considerable experience in computer security, decides to access your bank accounts and take your “digital” currency, which you don’t have in physical form, because they can, based solely on the premise that they can and the added “ethics” of the bank’s insurance policy may cover your losses (to a point), would you feel “put out” for the time you spent without your money? The police and courts in every country I can think of certainly don’t think the later example is “ambiguous” in any way.
On the other hand, there’s the perception of lost revenue. The entertainment industry leads this charge, with games (a sub-industry of entertainment) and retail software in general closely following. The idea is all this software is extremely expensive to create. Support is even more expensive (I’ll leave my opinions about the $#%@ excuse for support most game/entertainment industry companies have done over the years out of this for now, but I will say MMO is the great equalizer for game development… support is the game ). So, from a certain point of view, everyone who uses my software without paying me is costing me “potential” revenue.
The idea that a software company should be entitled to a piece or whole revenue on for a resale is … ridiculous! Trying to “close the door” on “down stream” economies is just plain stupid! The largest software companies on earth have figured out that the more people that use your software, the more people will use your software! Don’t believe me? Go spend a year writing a game in UDK, or on your custom game engine, then pull trigger on switching to Unity. If you’d been paying for a full staff, who’d need to be re-trained or replaced, you, my friend, will have experienced the reason people don’t “switch” for fun.
Ok, I’m rambling a bit here, so where am I going? Well… the answer to these problems isn’t that hard. The courts and law makers might get lucky and actually make some rules that actually protect customers… it seems unlikely but you never know 
No the answer is reading this post. You. Think about it. Why is Unity here? Torque was (and sort of is) around for years without ever disrupting the industry giants one bit. The same can be said of all the other game engines out there. So, what is different about Unity? Is/was Unity’s game engine light years ahead of Unreal or Cryengine at release? (ok Taumel, now unload ) As much as I like Unity, no. Good, yes, but v1 didn’t rock the game engine world.
In fact, “back in the day” Unity did something insane (actually a couple things). It was a Mac only editor!?!! And, it incorporated Mono???!!?! It was and is easy to use and affordable by mere mortals. Unity has an awesome community, and better support than it’s original competitors. What separated Unity from the others was the business strategy (combined with great product strategy). It wasn’t $300K to get started, and it wasn’t $100 with RTFC support.
What’s that got to do with you (and me)? IF you don’t like DRM, Unity’s license model, etc… then you’re probably not alone. So, don’t follow them. Make something great, and do it different. If you’re right, then the others will either follow your lead, or fade away. The Casual games market is full of examples of innovators, some with good plans, some without Go have a look. Apple’s publishing model may seem harsh, but that just means you don’t understand what was there before. Consoles, EA games (now going fully digital download), etc… All changing because someone said I won’t (or can’t) follow the old model.
Turns out roughly 8 yrs ago a couple 3 fellows hold up in a little office and and changed a lot about game development. At the time that “wasn’t possible”. Of course, Apple was dead, RIM owned smart phones and the housing market was “the safest bet” for investment. If you don’t like it… change it.
I think ‘associated services’ will depend on whether or not they were sold as part of the product. If you advertise ‘unlimited online play’, then that’s part of the product and not a separate service.
I think we’ll see a lot of changes related to online play, at least for companies who put a lot of load on their servers.
If you can be charged for stealing digital software, then that means it’s possible to “own” software, and you should be allowed to resell something you own.
That on its own is already a problem as shown especially through EA and Ubisoft that do not even support the online services required to play their games for long enough for the first hand market, even less the second hand.
So there the service problem has to be solved first before a transfer of an inexistant service can even be brought into the discussion.
A bit about games now. Isn’t the whole point of DRM is to prevent this? On consoles they don’t have such DRM so instead they give you a one use cdkey for some unlockable feature to prevent second hand games. Say you can trade games you own on steam. What if I buy a game, my friend buys a different game. We play through and then exchange the games. Then when we’re done we either sell the games or swap them for other games. See how I only bought 1 game but get to play 3 or more by exchanging them. The situation existed for a long time but with digital goods exchanging games is a trivial task, much easier than trading games in real life. Since steam has groups, I could just join “Game Swapper” group and exchange my single game with a lot of people. Though this obviously wouldn’t work with online games, but there is nothing stopping me from playing it for a week and then just passing it on.
I think this is much worse than piracy as this is not only 100% legal, it would also be very easy to do. But on the other hand I have over a hundred steam games I don’t play and wish I could swap them for something else.
I’m not sure that’s right. Straight from the court documents:
“Moreover, the exhaustion of the distribution right extends to the copy of the computer program sold as corrected and updated by the copyright holder. Even if the maintenance agreement is for a limited period, the functionalities corrected, altered or added on the basis of such an agreement form an integral part of the copy originally downloaded and can be used by the customer for an unlimited period.”
“In this context, the Court’s answer is that any subsequent acquirer of a copy for which the copyright holder’s distribution right is exhausted constitutes such a lawful acquirer. He can therefore download onto his computer the copy sold to him by the first acquirer. Such a download must be regarded as a reproduction of a computer program that is necessary to enable the new acquirer to use the program in accordance with its intended purpose.”
Therefore the new acquirer of the user licence, such as a customer of UsedSoft, may, as a lawful acquirer of the corrected and updated copy of the computer program concerned, download that copy from the copyright holder’s website."
http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2012-07/cp120094en.pdf
From the sound of it, Unity would have to treat you exactly as if you were a new purchaser.
So I’m entitled to resell my software. If the software prevents me from doing that, e.g. through licensing schemes or because it’s a digital download DRM-signed to my account, and the supplier doesn’t provide a way to relicense it, am I then allowed to reverse-engineer it and resell a hacked version with the DRM taken out?
That would be like selling pirated games. You can transfer the license, you can not copy it.
From the sound of the document I linked, the copyright holder is legally obligated to provide a way for a used purchaser to download the software: “Therefore the new acquirer of the user licence may, as a lawful acquirer of the corrected and updated copy of the computer program concerned, download that copy from the copyright holder’s website.”
Technically it’s not that difficult to allow transferring, even on Steam, the problem will arise when you will have people getting scammed and Valve (or similar provider) will have to deal with the retards.
This has also been done in America, Autodesk lost a case and it is now possible to re-sell your license
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_v._Autodesk,_Inc.
That is why Autodesk (and others) are pursuing the cloud model, in which they will offer the software as a Service and not as a Product.
Both roads have pros and cons, but my personal view is that I would not be able to rely on a Service. Games are not so important - to me, so I would accept that - but software in general? I don’t think so.
That implies that software makers are obligated to make all versions of their software “available” to anyone who holds a legal “proof of purchase”, including versions not currently for sale?
Now that’s a mess to implement, support… or even enforce! So, don’t buy anything made by a company that doesn’t currently exist! (what the h*ll would that mean for acquiring companies? So if I buy a company, that use to make software x, did I acquire the responsibility to make every version of that software available to all potential customers until I’m certain (via divination and/or ouija-board) no potential customer could ever legally obtain a license of a back copy?)
Like I said, the law makers might someday accidentally make a law that works… however unlikely!
That’s right. I stand corrected. Then, in this case, the ruling is much more fair on the buyer. However… nothing is stopping unity from making a disclaimer where no support is actually provided in their license agreement. In cases like this, unity aren’t entitled to support the first buyer (but do so regardless), and certainly not the second buyer.
This means in a worst case scenario, if hypothetically, this happens to unity, they would only be entitled to getting the copy running on one machine, one time. It can still be abused to the high heavens by the very nature of the original support agreement.
Note: I am using unity as an example, this is not how unity currently works, and I am not providing an opinion, merely an example for the sake of providing an example for further discussion.
The following IS my opinion however:
I personally feel that if you have paid money for something, and it is not on a subscription model, you should own it. It shouldn’t freaking matter if I want to put it on 10,000 machines, it should be licensed to ME to do with what I please (including selling it). I detest and loathe “per-machine” licenses, and hopefully the practise will become illegal at some point. A “seat” should represent a person. However many machines that person installs on, should be their business entirely.
But that’s just my opinion on it.
No
If a product is EOL it just is. It is for the old owner of the license as it is for the new owner.
That does not change with the ownership.
According to the link, Autodesk won the case on appeal, and vernor was guilty of copyright infringement for reselling. it’s the complete opposite.