Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 3rd Jul 2012 19:15 UTC, submitted by tupp
In the Used Soft GmbH v. Oracle International Corp. case, the Court of Justice of the EU ruled today that it is okay to resell software, regardless of clauses in the software license. This is a pretty big deal, and further affirms that a software license is not necessarily binding. Great news for European consumers.
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Member since:2005-11-10
The ruling is useless without enforcement. You can’t resell DLC from console stores for example, because it's all DRMed and tied to your account. All the console vendors are breaking this law, they know it, and they don’t have to do a thing about it. It wouldn’t be doable anyway, they’d have to remove all DRM to allow you to sell your purchases openly and that would "enable piracy" :|
Member since:2005-12-04
It wouldn’t be doable anyway, they’d have to remove all DRM to allow you to sell your purchases openly and that would "enable piracy" :|
I don't think that's true. Steam allows me to buy something and tie it to my account. It allows me to gift things to others. How hard is it really to remove something from my account and send it to others? The DRM could still be in place. Better yet, the provider could potentially charge a service fee for the resale.
Member since:2006-02-15
The ruling is useless without enforcement. You can’t resell DLC from console stores for example, because it's all DRMed and tied to your account. All the console vendors are breaking this law, they know it
You are confusing things. This ruling clearly states that it is all about EULAs: you cannot deny people the ability to sell the software after you're done with it simply by slapping such a clause in the EULA, it does absolutely not say that the software must be possible to be transferred to someone else. In other words if the DRM makes it impossible to sell the thing then you're still sh*t out of luck and there is nothing illegal with that, there is nothing to enforce!
Member since:2005-07-06
You've got it wrong (unfortunately, I must add). From the ruling:
Moreover, a copyright holder such as Oracle is entitled, in the event of the resale of a user licence entailing the resale of a copy of a computer program downloaded from his website, to ensure by all technical means at his disposal that the copy is made unusable.
In other words: the user of the software is entitled to sell the software without fear of violating the EULA (law trumps EULA), but the vendor on his turn is in his right to do everything possible to make this as difficult as possible, by technical means. This has NOT changed. What HAS changed is that vendors are no longer able to take the legal course and sue those that resell.
This ruling is analogue to the law (at least in Europe) that permits the reverse engineering of software. One can do everything they want to reverse engineer a piece of software for the sake of compatibility, but the vendor does not have to facilitate this by any means whatsoever.
Features
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/13/13 14:35 UTC
The third and final WWDC product I want to talk about is - of course - OS X 10.9 Mavericks. While iOS 7 was clearly the focus of this year's WWDC, its venerable desktop counterpart certainly wasn't left behind. Apple announced OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the first OS X release not to carry the name of a big cat.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/11/13 17:07 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/10/13 23:13 UTC
Apple held its big keynote event thing at WWDC earlier this evening, but since I was away with friends I've had to read up on it later in the evening. The company announced iOS 7, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and they gave a preview of the new Mac Pro. Especially the Mac Pro impressed me, and while iOS 7's new Holo/Metro-inspired theme looks messy and garish to me, I do commend Apple for finally breaking the mold. This news item will focus on iOS 7 - I'll dive into the Mac Pro and OS X 10.9 tomorrow (it's late here now).
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/04/13 12:45 UTC
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Member since:
2005-12-04
...will online distribution services have to be changed to allow for resale, or will they actively try to prevent it with technical measures? Somehow I'm suspecting the latter, so the question becomes how far the courts will go in really enforcing this ruling.