European Court of Justice rules: You can resell digitally purchased software.

[Tamas]

All in all, this is fuckin' interventionalism again.

I know about at least one distributor offering the chance to sell back your games, Greenman Gaming. People still haven't flocked there. Why? Because most doesn't give a fuck.

When this becomes an issue, place like Steam will change or go out of business.

Right?  What kind of crazy, liberal, interventionist agenda would it take for a court to rule that one actually owns something that one bought and paid for?

And as for your stupid Blue-Ray examples, the problem is that the cinema or rental shop is violating the license that was transfered to them in the re-sale.

Do I like that I can't re-sell my digital games? No. Would I prefer to be able to? hell yeah. It's a retarded policy to ban this.

Did I accept a contract which forbid it for me to re-sell it when I purchased the game? Yes. Was I forced to? No.

It might be just me, but once I agree to something I don't go crying over it when I change my mind.

[Neil]

What about games sites like GOG.com?

No DRM, and thus no problem.

Irrelevant.

No, that's exactly the point.

[Razgovory]

What is? 

[Zanza]

Do I like that I can't re-sell my digital games? No. Would I prefer to be able to? hell yeah. It's a retarded policy to ban this.

Did I accept a contract which forbid it for me to re-sell it when I purchased the game? Yes. Was I forced to? No.

It might be just me, but once I agree to something I don't go crying over it when I change my mind.

Must be just you. The rest of us live under the rule of law and here contractual freedom is not unlimited. If there is something in the terms & conditions of a product you buy that is against the law, that clause is invalid, no matter whether you voluntarily agreed to it or not.

[Tamas]

Do I like that I can't re-sell my digital games? No. Would I prefer to be able to? hell yeah. It's a retarded policy to ban this.

Did I accept a contract which forbid it for me to re-sell it when I purchased the game? Yes. Was I forced to? No.

It might be just me, but once I agree to something I don't go crying over it when I change my mind.

Must be just you. The rest of us live under the rule of law and here contractual freedom is not unlimited. If there is something in the terms & conditions of a product you buy that is against the law, that clause is invalid, no matter whether you voluntarily agreed to it or not.

Well, if a law banned that condition at the time when the contract was signed, then of course I withdraw everything I said. But banning something after the fact, is what our government does, not civilized ones.

[The Brain]

Without thinking this over very much what wouldn't seem extremely unreasonable to me would be if they instead made vendors use a different word than "buy [a game]" about what you do as a customer when the rights that come with the purchase are very limited. Saying that you "buy" a game could possibly be seen as misleading.

Generally speaking if you don't like the terms that are offered then simply don't buy the product.

[Zanza]

Well, if a law banned that condition at the time when the contract was signed, then of course I withdraw everything I said. But banning something after the fact, is what our government does, not civilized ones.

So do you allege that the ECJ did do that here? A post facto change of the law?

[Zanza]

Generally speaking if you don't like the terms that are offered then simply don't buy the product.

Generally speaking, if the terms that come with the product violate the law, buy the product anyway and ignore the terms.

[dps]

Do I like that I can't re-sell my digital games? No. Would I prefer to be able to? hell yeah. It's a retarded policy to ban this.

Did I accept a contract which forbid it for me to re-sell it when I purchased the game? Yes. Was I forced to? No.

It might be just me, but once I agree to something I don't go crying over it when I change my mind.

Must be just you. The rest of us live under the rule of law and here contractual freedom is not unlimited. If there is something in the terms & conditions of a product you buy that is against the law, that clause is invalid, no matter whether you voluntarily agreed to it or not.

Well, if a law banned that condition at the time when the contract was signed, then of course I withdraw everything I said. But banning something after the fact, is what our government does, not civilized ones.

Technology is ahead of the law on this, though.  The government can't reasonably be expected to legislate in advance on every potential practice that emerging technologies might make possible.

[The Brain]

Generally speaking if you don't like the terms that are offered then simply don't buy the product.

Generally speaking, if the terms that come with the product violate the law, buy the product anyway and ignore the terms.

You do business with criminals? Good to know.

[Zanza]

I am pretty sure most invalid terms & conditions do not actually constitute a crime by the vendor, they just aren't judicially enforceable by him.

[sbr]

All in all, this is fuckin' interventionalism again.

I know about at least one distributor offering the chance to sell back your games, Greenman Gaming. People still haven't flocked there. Why? Because most doesn't give a fuck.

When this becomes an issue, place like Steam will change or go out of business.

Right?  What kind of crazy, liberal, interventionist agenda would it take for a court to rule that one actually owns something that one bought and paid for?

And as for your stupid Blue-Ray examples, the problem is that the cinema or rental shop is violating the license that was transfered to them in the re-sale.

Did you actually buy all rights to the game?

Nope, not usually. 

Digital distribution of software (or anything) is so new that the real world is so far ahead of the law that things need to be re-defined one way or another.  That is usually where courts come in and that is what was being decided in the case in the OP.

So that court says you have a lot more rights in regards to the game/software than previously thought.

[The Brain]

I am pretty sure most invalid terms & conditions do not actually constitute a crime by the vendor, they just aren't judicially enforceable by him.

Well that settles it then.

[Tamas]

Well, if a law banned that condition at the time when the contract was signed, then of course I withdraw everything I said. But banning something after the fact, is what our government does, not civilized ones.

So do you allege that the ECJ did do that here? A post facto change of the law?

I honestly have no idea. I skimmed through the article and couldnt find any specifics about which already existing EU law they based their decision on.

But reading the article did raise some interesting points. Like, you are supposed to remove the product from your computer after selling it, but the distributor is not allowed to stop your buyer from copying it over to his computer, so by effect, copy-protection schemes are from today banned in the EU.
Which might sound as a great idea, but trust me, those had their effects. Not enough effect to make it wortwhile fucking with legal customer, maybe, but they did. I have spent enough time pirating games to know how much more comfortable it is to buy legal copies. That's over.
There will be no distinguishable difference between using a pirated version, or a legal one. Any incentive to actually a buy a software product is now lost.

Also, the original lawsuit, as I read, was about a German company re-selling it's Oracle license. Does it make sense to re-sell your mass-license for an application and the developer remaining be obliged to support that version? Yes I think so. But I recon it is going to be a huge financial hit for the industry.

[Neil]

That the scarcity is not a function of the limitation of the ability to copy, but a function of the codes used for DRM.  Because GOG is selling old games that they've been allowed to sell without DRM, they can sell as much as they want.