OSNews

That's not really an easy solution, and is what lead to the problem in the first place.

Software manufacturers generally loathe existing copyright laws, because they offer protections to the people that purchase their software, impacting their business model in the same way that other content providers have had to deal with for the last century or so. They don't want to be classified in the same category as media providers, such as book publishers or record companies, because the law is established in most jurisdictions with legal precedents. If you buy a book or a music CD, you can resell it. It's an argument that was settled back in the days of printing presses and phonographs, and they hate that.

Software companies believe that they should be allowed to rent software under their own conditions with a one-time perpetual rental fee. They don't want their content protected under copyright law, they want it protected under contract law, and frankly, the big guys are lobbying the try and merge the two.

The problem is that when laws were established, and precedents set decades ago, the digital age was far beyond what anyone could anticipate. Software companies are providing creative works that fall under the pervue of copyright law, no matter how they try to slice it. There is absolutely nothing that fundamentally differentiates a collection of code comprising an application, from a collection of words that comprises a book, or a collection of sounds that comprise a musical work.

If software companies want to license software with restrictions that bypass any provisions of copyright law, such as fair use, then they should just start charging a monthly fee for it and see how well that flies in the market place. If they want to charge a one-time fee for perpetual use, yet try to apply restrictions that bypass consumer rights in a given jurisdiction, then they'll need to deal with it in the courts.

Allowing them to decide for themselves what the condition of sale should be is a bit ridiculous. Autodesk tried to do that, and the court shot them down. The nice thing about legal rights is that the law generally prevents you from forfeiting them, regardless of the amount of legalese companies may try to apply in license agreements. For example, the right of first doctrine (the underlying precedent in this particular case) was originally established in a case involving a publisher including text in a book the forbade customers from reselling it, something like 100 years ago. A few more decisions like this in various jurisdictions will hopefully help settle this question once and for all...

Just my 2+ c....