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

[SamuelRSmith]

NJ5 said:

SamuelRSmith said:

Depends.

If, when you exchange the property, you sign a contract stating that you must use the property in a certain way, then you must stick to that contract.

Also, if you buy a license (which most software is sold as), the software is still not your property. You may be able to sell the license, unless it is part of the agreement that you signed (clicking I Agree, or whatever).

You can't sign your rights away in a contract (even if you do so willingly and voluntarily). Companies like to pretend that what they write in these "license agreements" is gospel, but it's only gospel as far as it doesn't contradict the law.

First and foremost, you do not have a right to a specific piece of property, so you're not selling away anything. You have the right to obtain property, and you can't alleviate that through contract, but this is something different. This is how you use a specific piece of property, which, obviously must not contradict the law.

I'm saying this new law diminishes property rights because it reduces the amount of control that a producer has over their own property. Just because a game exists, and you have money, does not entitle you to that game. There must be a willing transaction, and the producer may have certain stipulations which they may want to enforce via contract. A law like the one being discussed reduces the stipulations that property owners can put on their property, and, thus, damages property rights.

To give the usual example if I sign a contract saying that you will torture me, that doesn't cease my right to live without being harmed by you.

I don't see the distinction between buying a "software" and a "license". Either I can re-sell the "software" to someone else or I can sell the "license". The effect is the same, after I sell it I can't use it and the other person can.

When you buy a piece of property, you own the property. When you buy a license, you do not. That's the distrinction.

When you buy a piece of property, you may sign a contract specifying what you can and can't do with the property (like, for example, when you buy a house in a gated community, they might have certain rules about noise pollution, pets, whatever), but the property is still yours. When you buy a license you're effectively buying access to somebody else's property. If the license states that it is non-transferable, then it is not transferable.

Obviously, the European Court (or whatever its proper name is) disagrees with me here, and is thinking about "consumer rights" (bollocks). Unfortunately, like many of the European political elite, they seem to forget that most consumers are also producers. So, when you damage producer rights, you're also indirectly damaging consumer rights. These sorts of deals should just be left to the market, with so many competing publishers, developers, distributors, alternatives, the markets will find the right balance between what's good for the particular producer, and what's good for the particular consumer.