It’s now illegal in Europe for companies to stop you selling used software, even if its distributed digitally only

Do we have a breakthrough here? I can’t believe what I’m reading right now. Check some parts of it:

An author of software cannot oppose the resale of his ‘used’ licences allowing the use of his programs downloaded from the internet.

And then:

By its judgment delivered today, the Court explains that the principle of exhaustion of the distribution right applies not only where the copyright holder markets copies of his software on a material medium (CD-ROM or DVD) but also where he distributes them by means of downloads from his website.

Where the copyright holder makes available to his customer a copy – tangible or intangible – and at the same time concludes, in return form payment of a fee, a licence agreement granting the customer the right to use that copy for an unlimited period, that rightholder sells the copy to the customer and thus exhausts his exclusive distribution right.

More of this at source: europa.eu via reddit

I wonder if that’s actually going to affect any of the downloading services in Europe. I guess we’ll see.

Posted

July 3, 2012

Entertainment, Games

stranded

Tags:

EU, gaming, illegal, itunes, Origin, software, steam

Comments

10 responses to “It’s now illegal in Europe for companies to stop you selling used software, even if its distributed digitally only”

Amaya Nagasawa

April 2, 2013

Hell yeah democracy is real

Reply
Zero1

July 5, 2012

We will find out what Steam think about this when someone tells Steam that they wish to sell some of their games.
I’m sure it will only be a matter of time now.

Reply
mik0

July 4, 2012

@ryuga81
Exactly, they can but they don’t want to. So they must be punished for opposing that if they persist.
There’s no legitimate technical issue that prevent detaching a license from an account.

Reply
ryuga81

July 4, 2012

Stuff is not really “bound” to accounts. Information about licenses is mantained, i.e. you can see your license key on most games on Steam (it would probably be illegal to do otherwise).

Also, we know that Valve *can* detach and remove a game from your Steam account (i.e. when it is somehow illegally obtained), thus we know there must exist a tool for that.

Reply
mik0

July 4, 2012

@Faark
I disagree. stuff bound to accounts prevent the user to resale them, so a way to detatch the stuff from the account must be implemented.

Reply
Faark

July 4, 2012

Afaik this does not apply for stuff bound to accounts… so steam and origin will stay the same for now.

Reply
stranded

July 3, 2012

Lets hope they’ll apply it at all!

Reply
mik0

July 3, 2012

The issue is still that no service allow change of ownership for digital o retail games in 100% of the cases. This things could change ipotetically a lot of things.
Could force service to allow the deatch of a game from a account.
Could ban the concept of one time code for games or account bound dlc, because they are product too and this behaviour discourage resale in a negative way.

I wonder how they’ll apply it.

Reply
0cube

July 3, 2012

So…. any advantage we get in steam now? Dont really know much about law-influences on companies that originate from america.

Reply