• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.

Should you be selling that software? Maybe/Maybe not!

95Viper

Super Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Oct 12, 2008
Messages
12,645 (2.24/day)
Before you post (in B/S/T forum) that really good deal on that software, read your EULA, you might be doing something illegal.

IMO, the decision is a bunch of BS, but the legal system trumps my thoughts on whether it is or not.

Guess What, You Don’t Own That Software You Bought
Story by By David Kravets @ www.wired.com
September 10, 2010 | 2:01 pm

Quote from story:

"The appeals court reversed a lower court judge that said the first-sale doctrine applied whenever the consumer is entitled to keep the copy of the work, entitling consumers to resell their purchased software at will.

The case concerns Autodesk’s AutoCAD Release 14, which was for sale on eBay. Autodesk, invoking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, demanded eBay remove the item from the site, and it promptly did in 2007.

Timothy Vernor, the seller, who purchased at least four copies of the software from a company that was required to dispose of the software under a licensing agreement, re-posted the sale and his eBay account was terminated after Autodesk complained. Litigation ensued.

Autodesk, of San Rafael, California, imposed a significant number of transfer restrictions: it stated that the software could not be transferred or leased without Autodesk’s written consent, and the software could not be transferred outside the Western Hemisphere.

The first-sale doctrine of 1909, in its current form, allows the “owner of a particular copy” of a copyrighted work to sell or dispose of his copy without the copyright owner’s authorization. “The first sale doctrine does not apply to a person who possesses a copy of the copyrighted work without owning it, such as a licensee,” the court ruled."

Read the story, first, please, then post any...
Thoughts on this news?
:)
 
Last edited:

FordGT90Concept

"I go fast!1!11!1!"
Joined
Oct 13, 2008
Messages
26,259 (4.65/day)
Location
IA, USA
System Name BY-2021
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 5800X (65w eco profile)
Motherboard MSI B550 Gaming Plus
Cooling Scythe Mugen (rev 5)
Memory 2 x Kingston HyperX DDR4-3200 32 GiB
Video Card(s) AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT
Storage Samsung 980 Pro, Seagate Exos X20 TB 7200 RPM
Display(s) Nixeus NX-EDG274K (3840x2160@144 DP) + Samsung SyncMaster 906BW (1440x900@60 HDMI-DVI)
Case Coolermaster HAF 932 w/ USB 3.0 5.25" bay + USB 3.2 (A+C) 3.5" bay
Audio Device(s) Realtek ALC1150, Micca OriGen+
Power Supply Enermax Platimax 850w
Mouse Nixeus REVEL-X
Keyboard Tesoro Excalibur
Software Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Benchmark Scores Faster than the tortoise; slower than the hare.
The works is copyrighted the moment it copied. A licensee paid for that copy and there's no reason the first-sale doctrine shouldn't apply. Digital or otherwise, you own that copy of that product and you should be free to transfer it to someone else so long as (as per the first-sale doctrine) what is being transfered isn't a copy of the purchased copyrighted content.

It's more of the same:
1) Make everything digital.
2) Make sure you have zero-rights to digital content.
3) Rape and pilage those that try.

Consumers be damned in the digital world.
 
Joined
Oct 2, 2004
Messages
13,791 (1.94/day)
I only found this problematic if you also keep the sold copy. But companies just blindly assume that once you buy something you can be the only owner. Right.
 

Kreij

Senior Monkey Moderator
Joined
Feb 6, 2007
Messages
13,817 (2.21/day)
Location
Cheeseland (Wisconsin, USA)
This type of mess is going to continue until the US patent and copyright laws are rewritten to facilitate digital media, and not just "interpreted" by the courts.

For instance, the "click wrap license" if challenge is almost unenforcable. If you click this button, you agree to the license. So ... uh ... who exaclty clicked the button? When you buy a home, you sign the paperwork that binds you to the contract. Not so in the case of software. Anyone could have clicked the button and the burden of proof (should) lie with the party claiming breach of contract. What a mess. Soon we will probaly have to have personal digital signatures to purchase items online.

Oh well, this ruling only applies to the 7 western states, so send me your games and I will resell them ... when I'm done playing them. :D
 
Joined
Oct 2, 2004
Messages
13,791 (1.94/day)
I also don't get the point of EULA document. Or, i in fact do. Either it's there just to confuse users with 363557547 pages of pure nonsense or they could narrow it down to 10 lines of text that someone would actually bother to read. Because if you install 10 programs and you want to read entire EULA of all 10 programs, you might want to take a vacation just to do that. That's why no one reads that crap and just clicks accept. Imagine reading a Bible over and over each time before you step into the church. It's not much different here... at least as far as the page count is concerned (and similar)...
 

95Viper

Super Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Oct 12, 2008
Messages
12,645 (2.24/day)
This type of thing will continue, until the consumer stands up for him\herself, with their vote, pocket book\wallet, letters to the government(basically useless), news stories about consumer abuse(targeted at the offending companies) and letters to the offending companies.

Just imagine, if... this were to spill over to other products like cellphones, video games & consoles, automobiles, or anything that came with this type of EULA.
It might be stretching it a bit, but, then again, the courts are not packed the people who really understand the ramifications of their un-knowledgeable, un-thought through decisions on modern day digital technology ( hard or soft ).

I agree with Kreij, in that, the US patent & copyright laws need to be re-written to protect, not just the producer or holder, but the user, too. And, it needs to be in black and white, not have the courts system twist them, to one or few people's interpretation of them. The courts should uphold the law, not write or re-write it.

Fair is Fair-not one sided.
This is all, just, an opinion...mine:)
 
Joined
Apr 4, 2008
Messages
4,686 (0.80/day)
System Name Obelisc
Processor i7 3770k @ 4.8 GHz
Motherboard Asus P8Z77-V
Cooling H110
Memory 16GB(4x4) @ 2400 MHz 9-11-11-31
Video Card(s) GTX 780 Ti
Storage 850 EVO 1TB, 2x 5TB Toshiba
Case T81
Audio Device(s) X-Fi Titanium HD
Power Supply EVGA 850 T2 80+ TITANIUM
Software Win10 64bit
I miss the days when EULAs were considered a joke by the courts, and not actual legal agreements. I suppose all it took was a lot of expensive layers and a bunch of ill-informed judges to set that unfortunate precedent.
 

qamulek

New Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2008
Messages
184 (0.03/day)
This judgement seems to make the resale value zero, so imagine the savings that could be had by buying it used(implying more pirates and less buyers) D:
 
Top