European court declares resale of used software licenses legal, not matter where and
ngon master
http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,16069323,00.html
I remember hearing cases and stories about people being unable to sell autodesk and other software licenses due to their terms of use, this should be some good news to some people in the industry.
I remember hearing cases and stories about people being unable to sell autodesk and other software licenses due to their terms of use, this should be some good news to some people in the industry.
Replies
Yes, but now someone can buy a commercial license on the cheap from someone who's done with it, so if a developer provides free updates to their software, or cheap upgrades, it reduces their profitability.
And, smaller developers who create very specialized software packages (i.e Marmoset Toolbag or Crazybump) which occupy a very small market, lose many sales to companies that simply buy up licenses/facilitate the trading of licenses.
Then there's the fact that many companies have systems built into the software to prevent/control the trading of license, and these aren't easy to tear out. Then there's the cost of hiring people to confirm transfers on the company's side.
In other words : the ruling does NOT say that every software vendor out there is supposed to allow license transfers. It simply clarifies that in the case of software only bound to a serial number kind of protection, the software vendor has no reason to bitch and whine if the customer wants to pass over a license to someone else.
Now I might be getting things wrong but that's how I read it...
What surprises me the most is not the ruling itself - it's the fact that Oracle used such an antiquated system in the first place! Try to do that with Photoshop - you can sure give or sell your serial to someone else, that won't bypass the user ID login and the fact that in Adobe's database, you are the owner of the license and that other person is not. Even the smallest programs and plugins out there (Topogun, many 3DSMax plugins, and so on) use hardware authentification now. Not that I necessarily agree with that in all cases, mind you - but this is not what is being ruled in court in the current case.
I never liked this obsessive control that some companies have over digital products which are never really yours. A step in the right direction imho.
This ruling changes nothing about the sale of software as such. You can still sell a license to your customer. The only difference is that you cannot forbid people to re-sell these license (aka usage rights) to others. Many software publishers allow license re-sales and some even help with license transfers. This is nothing new.
In the last years however, publishers tried to force people, by legal (EULA) and/or technical means (non transferrable accounts), to buy new software every time.
On the other hand if you're a software developer who likes to lock their users in, I'd say it's your greed and your own fault and not the government's which is to blame.
(About Steam: should be no problem at all. DRM just checks your account. I don't see how changing this info causes a problem. Gift or sell a game to someone else, it gets bound to their account, removed from yours. All achievements or other cloud info is deleted - voila. Works for 99% of the games).
Just make software license separate from the support and upgrades account which is non-transferable. Then people can buy the used software license, but not get the support.
Isn't that the same scam some companies are already doing to coerce users to buy new products? If it's been paid for, it should be transferable.
If I buy a laptop and have warranty/support and I sell it to someone else and give them the original bill they'll enjoy all the benefits I as original buyer had.
I just don't see why software makers should have special privileges over the resale of their goods versus manufacturers of physical goods.
That's a fair point. Then I suppose software developers shouldn't try to sell such a weak product when they could sell a valuable service (i.e. making software people want) or just accept that people are going to resell it. All they'll accomplish by trying to stop people from doing it is earn some bad publicity.
The only deal is, again, if you have a proper history or not exchanging everything you buy and if it's within the week you got the game.
Also, I'm not exactly sure what this law will do in the long run, we all know the digital medium is a wild west as of now, and EA only got in on the deal to avoid such issues, I would be really surprised if the EU law doesn't become just that, an EU law, and the America's have to deal the usual issues we have now.
Also, we're in the year 2012, you can get a decent server for hosting at a nickle and dime count by the end of the year, seems hardly the issues the publishers will have.
Also, about the 'dropping DRM' part, seriously, we're still going to talk about that? I mean c'mon...
pretty much this.
ultimately, if the service a company offers is good enough, then they will get unique sales anyway. if it's not then people will buy their product once, and sell it one when they realise it's not good enough.
i can see companies like Autodesk allowing resale of their product licenses (due to this new judgement), but charging a nominal fee to transfer all the products services from one person to the next.
for example:
Matthiew has purchased 3ds-max, it's all registered in his name/email details etc. he has full access to the Autodesk support forums and customer support.
Matthiew wants to sell on his license key for the product to John. John pays Matthiew roughly 60% of the original price for the license, Matthiew is happy... Autodesk still thinks the license key is in Matthiews name. when John calls Autodesk support with a problem, he can't be helped.
to resolve this issue, Autodesk contact Matthiew, confirming that he has sold on the license key. they then contact John, and tell him that the product is now his, however the services attached to that product can only be transferred to him after he pays them $150.
John can then decide whether the future services attached to the product are worth $150, or not. either way the license itself has been transferred over to him, however the services he receives are not the same as if he had purchased a "new" copy until he pays the fee.
Adobe is now offering the subscription service on their software. Did they see this coming?
I personally would much prefer to own my games. I would feel much more like I'm supporting individual developers.
So if a company wants to stop resale in some other way (like DRM) they can do it.
It dosnt look like this is intended to force steam or any similar digital download service to introduce a way of reselling into their current systems. All its doing is saying its legal, and cannot be stated as illegal.
I cant see how this will affect anyone too much. It s a ruling on digital downloads so those super cheap stores where you can buy keys for boxed games might be happy to have this law clarified.