Digitally downloaded software can be resold rules top EU court

MOnk

MOnk

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EU Rules You Can Resell Downloaded Games

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/07/03/crikey-eu-rules-you-can-resell-downloaded-games/

The preliminary ruling states,

“The first sale in the EU of a copy of a computer program by the copyright holder or with his consent exhausts the right of distribution of that copy in the EU. A rightholder who has marketed a copy in the territory of a Member State of the EU thus loses the right to rely on his monopoly of exploitation in order to oppose the resale of that copy… The principle of exhaustion of the distribution right applies not only where the copyright holder markets copies of his software on a material medium (CD-ROM or DVD) but also where he distributes them by means of downloads from his website.”
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“Such a transaction involves a transfer of the right of ownership of the copy.”
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This is some really interesting and potentially very important stuff going down here. This is probably one of the first rulings I've seen where they have declared that by purchasing software even if done digitally means you own that software which in turn means that places like Origin or Steam can't just ban you from accessing games you've purchased and thus own. Will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

That sentence is a really massive deal. It’s the very first time there has been any official sense of ownership via digital distribution, and if it gets implemented by courts, it’s going to change a great deal. From our having the legal right to sell games in our Origin accounts, right down to surely taking away the ability for companies like Valve and EA to block customers’ access to their purchased games for other infractions.
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The implications for the game industry are potentially significant. Although Valve operates out of America and Steam may (or may not) therefore be subject to local law there
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If you have significant interaction with people from that country then you are subject to the laws of that country when it comes to those interactions. That's how the USA arrested the MegaUpload guys who were in New Zealand.
 
I wouldn't mind if was able to sell some of my Steam games with a total playtime of less than 1 hour. Games that I bought based on good ratings, then tried the game out, hated it and haven't touched it since. Or at least, being able to trade it. That said, doing that will probably open the system up for abuse... so although I would like it, it's probably not a good idea.
 
While I fully support the idea of owning your games/software I'm not so certain about being able to resell your games.

I separate games and other software mostly because I see other software as tools, so if you sell your tool you no longer have access to its services. If you sell MS Office, you can no longer make or read excel documents, so you are losing something by selling it. With a game (this also applied to movies and books) you are buying the experience, they aren't tools, so once you have finished a game you've gained all you can from that product and lose basically nothing from selling it.

I know many people are on the other side of this debate and I understand their points of view, especially when you point to things like books and movies and see that they haven't really been harmed by second hand sales. The thing is with books especially they degrade over time and even second hand DVD's they too degrade over time and multiple owners but once you start going into the digital era a single copy of a product can pass through millions of hands without any adverse affect. So if this ruling does have a wider effect and as more and more products go fully digital will this have a real negative effect on entertainment products which sell experiences rather than tools.

Your product sales are essentially limited to the maximum number of concurrent owners since after first sale people will just buy from the 'pool' rather than from the source.
 
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