European Union court: Consumers have the right to re-sell their Digitally Distributed games

[NJ5]

wfz said:
This is...worrisome news. At first it sounds amazing for consumers, but I'm sure there are going to be serious reprimands from publishers who do not appreciate this ruling.

I'm not sure of the exact legal differences between holding a digital license and a physical copy, but one thing I do know is that digital licenses never wear down or expire. You could have the same copy sold 200 years from now if someone wanted it, and it'd be just like brand new. That kind of destroys the sales of digital goods, don't you think?

Does this apply to games only, or would someone be able to sell their iTunes music?

You have that quite backwards. The fact that digital copies don't wear out is a plus for their value, and therefore is a plus for the publishers who sell them.

Now the publishers that sell titles which lose their replay value after a few hours of play, they should worry, because people might realize quicker that those titles don't have much monetary value. But that's the way it should be, and those publishers should not be protected from this reality...

Laurel Aitken said:
Yeah, publishers will find an easy loophole. Maybe you can pass the software, but not a personal code that gives you acces to it. They always find a way to screw us =)

In the eyes of the law that personal code will probably be seen as a license by any judge who has a brain.