

No, you don't own it: Court upholds EULAs, threatens digital resale - timwiseman
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/the-end-of-used-major-ruling-upholds-tough-software-licenses.ars

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jhghjnmmn
Isn't this going to upset the IRS slightly?

Are they going to demand the money back from everybody that wrote off software
as a depreciation?

Alternatively are people now going to be able to write off software as a cost
rather than an asset?

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jrockway
What's the legal basis for this? Under what circumstances can a contract I
never even saw apply to me?

(Why not just sell the disks and serial numbers, then? You can't use the
software, wink wink nudge nudge, but the disk does have the software and the
serial number _will_ activate it.)

Also, that Amazon EULA is quite strange. You aren't allowed to "synchronize"
the music file you bought? You can't have the music on your computer and on
your mp3 player.

There's a rule that 0 of their customers follow...

~~~
mattmanser
The problem is more that he bought the licence off someone who had seen the
contract, albiet a nominal sight. Remember those 'you must accept this 10000
word agreement' every time you install anything on your computer?

There's a lot of dodginess going on in EULAs issued by software companies, for
example I was forced to accept a 55 page legal document just to download a
free app on iTunes the other day (the iTunes terms of service). I cannot
believe that more than a tiny percentage of people have ever read those terms
(and they know it).

Forced is a strong word, but how else could I use the phone I bought? It's a
major selling point of the phone and yet there's a 55 page agreement to use
it? Nonsense.

While I realise it's a 'legal' document, there's something very wrong with a
legal system that essentially relinquishes basic consumer protection because
they've made it impossible to use your purchase without relinquishing
significant rights.

Courts shouldn't uphold these extremely complicated EULAs which basically say
'screw you'. In the end, a digital good which was never used should be able to
be resold.

As others have said, we can only hope this is overturned as it does have
massive implications for the future of digital goods.

~~~
_delirium
It's also not clear to me what distinguishes this from the book EULAs that
were held unenforceable in the original 1908 case. Publishers there printed
purported "licenses" on the copyright page of their books, including terms
like "you may not resell this book for less than $1.00". But those were held
not to be enforceable, because it was held that the contractual relationship
between publisher and bookbuyer is terminated when the sale is completed, at
least in the normal case of books sold at retail (books provided under
privately negotiated contracts, like documentation provided under an NDA, can
still be enforced).

Could something like that be upheld today if the publisher were a bit more
careful with its legal fictions? Perhaps something like: _You are granted a
single, non-transferable, non-exclusive license to read this book. For your
convenience, a hardcopy, which remains the sole property of Publishing Co.,
has been provided for your use. You may retain this copy so long as you remain
in compliance with this license, but may not transfer it to any other party._

~~~
Natsu
This sort of nonsense got me to look up free software CAD programs. Sadly, the
big one is BRL-CAD and the documentation for it is downright depressing.

Their FAQ ( <http://brlcad.org/wiki/FAQ> ) tells me that the silly thing can't
even print out a drawing normally! Essentially, you render your current view
to a BLR-CAD format, use a command line tool to turn that into a PNG, then
print that via some other program, not supplied.

Does nobody using it print enough things to want a normal print dialog? If
anyone wants to see what I mean, look for the question "How do I get a hard
copy of what I'm looking at in MGED?" (MGED is the geometry editor for BRL-
CAD.)

To be fair, their list of priorities DOES list UI improvement. I'll have to
see if I can find some ways to help... assuming I figure out how to use this
thing.

~~~
_delirium
Yeah, it's an unfortunate niche. I think it's the sort of thing where there
are companies that would be happy to contribute back code, but _only if_ a CAD
program were already at 80% of their needs. But without commercial support,
the hobbyist-CAD community is way too small to get a system to that 80% to
begin with. Lots of industry doesn't really enjoy paying large per-seat
license fees for the dominant CAD systems, so I think they'd be willing to
work on an open-source one and contribute back, the way embedded-systems
companies do with Linux, but they aren't willing to take a leap onto something
that isn't there yet

BRL-CAD's particular problems are because it's sort of a time-capsule project,
I think. It's an Army project from the 1980s that was open-sourced in 2004,
but is still very "1980s Unix workstation" in a lot of ways, and the ratio of
interested developers to giant crufty codebase has meant that modernizing it
is slow.

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RiderOfGiraffes
Same story, but from Wired: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1679906>

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troymc
The article says this ruling came from US Court of Appeals for the Ninth
Circuit. Can the case still be appealed, e.g. to the Supreme Court, or what?
(I'm not a lawyer.)

~~~
btilly
It was heard by a 3 judge panel. As I understand it the next step is an appeal
to the full court, and then to the Supreme Court.

I hope it gets appealed and this ruling is overturned.

~~~
hga
And the 9th is notorious for being overturned.

That said, if CamperBob at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1680416> is
correct in that " _It involved a user who sold copies that were contractually
supposed to be destroyed (or at least not reinstalled) after an upgrade_ "
then the copies were never legit to begin with and the First-sale doctrine is
not necessarily in jeopardy.

~~~
irons
The 9th is by far the largest circuit, so its rates of being successfully
appealed and overturned are proportionately greater.

Conventional wisdom says that the 9th gets overturned when its decisions skew
too liberal. The Roberts court is far less likely to overturn a decision
perceived as skewing "business-friendly". Nothing's more business-friendly
than enforcing contracts, right? Personal responsibility and all that.

------
Qz
_So, to recap: EULAs are binding, they can control just about everything you
might dream up, and only Congress can change the situation._

Huge leap. From what I can tell, the ruling only applies to resale, and can't
reliably be construed to imply that you can barter for people's souls in a
EULA or what have you.

