It is going to be so funny watching all the publisher butthurt that's inevitably incoming.

I am not sure but i believe in the courts satement they said that providers of digital content would have to supply a way to trasfer the title digitaly. So that aspect would be covered.

What would stop a publisher from selling the opening cinematic and giving away a non transferable 'free bonus game'?

This is a great step for consumers. Of course now we just need a way to actually sell digital games to each other.

If they give it away it's yours, so you can include in the sale I think. I mean, the spirit of the law is that, even if something just exists as SW and not a tangible item, you still own it and can do what you want with it.

Finally, a win for the consumer. It shouldn't matter what method I use to buy a product from them--if I buy it, it's mine to do what I want with. This is great news.

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 =)

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...

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

While the ability to buy and sell used games is a good thing, I don't like this. It's really rather unenforceable, but if attempts are made to enforce it, it will likely cause developers, especially independent developers, to flee Europe. Non-European companies won't go for it, at least until EU starts actively blocking their sites/services. (can they even do that? will they?) The U.S. would not do this, because the U.S. does not want to drive away business. Forcing developers (again, especially small ones!) to set up this kind of service is a burden that most won't do, or even be able to do. EA and Steam, sure, it's no problem for them (they won't do it), but what about tiny, one or two person developers that make very little money from their games, but make them because they love to do so? They could get hit with a lawsuit or fine because they are unable to comply with such a ruling.

This is a bad decision, unfortunately. It's as bad as American copyright and patent laws in stifling creativity and entrepreneurship. Hurts the little guys, and they're our best hope for great new ideas.

Fleeing a market that is as big, or bigger (for PC games at least) than the U.S. market? That could only happen if those publishers wanted to go bankrupt or get sued by shareholders by "destroying shareholder value". The vast majority of companies are already making slim to none profits, they would get completely wiped out if they lost 20-30% of their sales.

They can do it and they would (they can even do worse like seizing any business assets that are located in the E.U.), altough it would be a drastic last ditch measure. It would not get that far because fines could be imposed if the courts want to, and the mere threat of losing out on an important market would drive the sites to comply with the measures the courts decide on.

Look at antitrust lawsuits, Intel paid a fine of more than $1 billion some time ago in the E.U. for using illegal anti-competition measures against AMD. Did they exit the European market? Of course not, they would be stupid to do that...

To comply with this ruling, small developers that sell software directly to gamers (DRM-free or with serial keys) don't have to lift a finger. They just have to not interfere with people who resell their games (as long as the seller does not use the game after selling it).

Again, literally small developers do not have to do absolutely anything to comply.