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[JEMC]

vivster said:

JEMC said:

The second hand market is legal and, unlike piracy, actually provides an economic benefit to all parts involved in the transaction.

I honestly don't see how the videogames used market is any different from the one for movies, music (back then cassettes, CDs, etc were a thing) or even things like cars or houses, and I don't recall Ford or BMW bashing the second hand market even during bad times when their profits fall like a rock.

Because it is socially acceptable. Some things have existed so long thjat people are treating it as tradition and would never let go. 2nd hand market is inherently harmful to businesses but it has always existed, so it stays. Something being legal does not represent its morality.

Compare it with smoking. If smoking didn't exist and someone would introduce it today, it would be immediately banned because it is inherently harmful to everything. But smoking is legal despite its harmfulness just because it has been around for so long and as such is socially accepable.

You could argue that 2nd hand is accepted because it's pro-consumer but that's bull. Nobody cares about consumer protection or things would be different around here.

Second  hand or used market exist because of common sense. If I purchase a product that product becomes mine (the product, not the tech, IPs not anything like that), and as such I can do whatever I want with it. And selling a product I no longer use or want is one of the many things I can do with it.

And don't use the license card on this because its futile. The EU Court of justice said that you can do it in 2012. Of course, that's here, in the US things are different, but that's their problem.

And let's not compare it with smoking, please, because that's a very complicated subject that's anything but as simple as you may it look like. For example, here in Spain, tobacco was already considered illegal shortly after its introduction and people were condemned for smoking, yet that had little to no effect on its use, so they had to overrule it. And we're talking about a time when the Spanish Inquisition was in charge of those kinds of crimes...

Nowadays, banning tobacco is impossible. Not only would drug dealers be more than happy to add tobacco to they rich, and deadly, catalog of substances, but taxes on tobacco (and alcohol) play such an important role on our countries income, that they can't really do without them.