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eBay Seller Sues Autodesk for $10 Million
Miasik.Net writes "A lawsuit has been filed in Federal Court (US District Court for the Western Washington District C07-1189 JLR) that alleges Autodesk, Inc maker of the industry standard AutoCAD software and their attorney Andrew S. Mackay have devised an illegal scheme to have used copies of their software removed from the eBay site using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Finally someone decided that non-transferable licenses must be stopped." While proving $10 million in damages might prove difficult, the reasoning behind the case is pretty sound.
Which is it:
1) Does the seller have the "burden of proof" to prove that he uninstalled his copy and is not violating his license or
2) Is the seller to be given the "benefit of the doubt" and assumed to have uninstalled his copy, unless information is found to indicate otherwise?
note: I am probably using legal terms like "burden of proof" incorrectly. but you get my question.
Interesting how similar this story is to this one, from a while back, about restricting the sale of used CDs. In both cases you have the manufacturer wanting to restrict the first sale doctrine's rights in order to sell more of their product.
Actually, now that I think about it, I use some high-priced manufacturing software that, IIRC, states much the same thing: you don't own the software (nor the hardware dongle required to run it); it is all property of the manufacturer. There was even a clause in there about selling used software - they stated that you were allowed to do it, but it had to be for a specified amount, and they got a fee out of it. It all sounds fairly bogus to me.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
You know, that's a battle of Windows' addon software too.
I think one of the main features of Norton Ghost that keeps it selling to IT departments is that it can copy Windows so that it will run on (slightly different) hardware. Windows has a copy protection feature that ties an installation to a specific hard drive adapter. Ghost overwrites that info with the info of the machine that restores the backup.
Now this means that you can't restore from backup on one machine and then plug that drive into another machine, even if the second machine was the original.
You will find this information nowhere in Ghost's documentation. They don't risk mentioning that they're breaking some of Window's copy protection.
Microsoft's solution? Vista comes with backup software. They're hoping you won't buy Ghost.
Similar problem with virtual machines. Running a virtual machine, you CAN just move an installation of Windows from hardware to hardware.
Microsoft's solution? Vista won't run under virtualization.
I've always thought this was a bit fishy...if I call and ask for an AD product, the vendor takes my CC# and sends me a box. Why should I be prohibited from reselling it if I don't want it. Hell, even if I install it and then switch to Bentley, why can't I then sell my unused SW? Supposedly, the only way to sell your license in AD's good graces is to sell your entire business (or your immortal soul, if you personally registered it, I suppose).
Now, AutoCAD does have the potential seller by the short hairs, since they can deny any future upgrade pricing, but since I know lots of shops who upgrade every 4-5 years, and AD phases out any upgrade discount by then (you can pay $800/yr for maintenance, or $800 x n years since your last version to upgrade; sweet, huh?).
I just know that at this point, I've got a $4000 piece of software in which I only use $800 worth of functionality. How do I know? Because the rest of my licenses are ACAD LT, and they work just as well for what we do as the Architecture.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
A friend of mine who I work with who has a legit version of AutoCAD, but he never installed it and downloads the cracked versions from P2P or Bittorrent (the ones that also doesn't require the dongle, even though he has a legit one.) While it seems obvious that many people won't pay for this software simply because it is very expensive, you can't help but think that practices like this, that don't allow you to resell you software that you don't use anymore, only contribute to people pirating software. I mean, what if he got it for a company he worked for and then the company tanked a few months later? It's a completely unrealistic expectation. Unfortunately, we have another program requiring dongle keys that is even more expensive that isn't widespread enough for hackers to worry about, so we have to bother calling the company every 6 months to get our extra keys reactivated, as well as being locked into the software, because it was too expensive to abandon, but the learning curve is too high on this type of designing software to switch to another without a major drop in productivity and a huge initial investment.
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Or installed it on a laptop that roams.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
In the real world, outside of software, there are plenty of non-transferable licenses. Buy a "lifetime" membership at your local gym, and then try selling it someone else - it isn't allowed since it is stated in the contract at the time of sale. Same thing with Autodesk's software. If someone doesn't like Autodesk's licensing terms they are free not to buy Autodesk software.
If I am not mistaken, AutoCAD is one of those softwares that requires a dongle to use... at least at some point it did. I remember the nightmare of admining a few workstations where we had to keep such things in check. Had a dongle not work anymore. That was a real treat.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
> There was even a clause in there about selling used software - they stated that you were allowed to do it,
> but it had to be for a specified amount, and they got a fee out of it.
Not really, sound pretty fair. You see, you ARE allowed to resell software and AutoDesk is going to get smacked in court but support and upgrades aren't part of the First Sale Doctrine. By your vendor specifying a procedure and fee to transfer ownership of the license along with the title to the copyrighted work it means the buyer gets upgrades, bug fixes and the same level of tech suport you have now. If the fee is reasonable it would be very fair, especially when dealing with specialized software that needs support.
Democrat delenda est
Reminds me of when I called Nevada DMV and asked if this rumor was true that there was no tax on used vehicles. They plainly said, "we already collected tax on that car when it was first sold, why would we need it again?".
Aww fuck I though, I should have left California a long time ago.
it comes to the visual effects industry this is common practice, they love dongles and locking you into support contracts. Most of the companies who supply software for this industry make it either impossible or a pain in the ass to obtain previous versions.
:D.
Take film archival for instance, there have been a small number of films which were stored on a "new at the time" format "disk, tape, etc.." that the storage company went out of business not to long afterwards. The studios had no way of retrieving the archived film from backups since only a handful of storage read/write units were ever produced. It got to the point some places now vault the reading/writing machines so that in the future they could rest easy that they would have a method of obtaining archive material. Don't even mention the fact will anyone know how the to run the damn things anyways, hope they included a manual
Take a major film today and how many FX shots it has, all that data that gets archived and stored away in a vault. Todays film archives not only store the final images but all that 3d data, scripts, custom tools, and so much other data I could bore you to death but I won't. Just as with the troubles of having a storage medium tank you have the same thing with all this data. Will a studio be able to retrieve the data and open scene 01602 shot 50 sequence 9 in the future? Sure they can archive the software but as I said dongles are LOVED in this industry, good luck opening your archived version of Maya 5.0 scene in the year 2050 when it is licensed to a dongle.
I'm really tired of all this you don't own the software your borrowing it from us. Not only does this piss me off in the present time but your jeopardizing the future as well.
...and wins big. The same thing happened to me. I tried to sell a legitimate, legal, uncopied, in-the-box copy of ACAD2000 and had the sale pulled by Ebay. Ebay threatened to pull my account if I ever tried listing AutoDesk software for sale again. I thought about auctioning a drafting pencil and giving away a copy of ACAD2000, but never did it.
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
My father sold me a used car for a dollar. The DMV stuck me with a hefty tax bill. They didn't care if it was a junker, they wanted real money for the legislature's booze and hookers fund.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
It's a pity you posted AC. Who ever you are, you've obviously never been hit with the wrong end of a law suite. (It ain't fun) If you had, you'd know beyond any doubt that no amount of self delusional geek greatness makes you more intelligent than a trained lawyer at home in their profession. Legal work is not just a bunch of books filled with simple 'if then' statements - logic be damned, the legal system is artistic, creative, and deeply complex, logical it is not - comparing the two fields is not only apples to oranges, it is also absurd and makes me think you are a fool. Being on the receiving end of a subpoena is scary, stressful, gut wrenching, and costly. I hope you never have to experience it, though if you do, and then manage to pass on through and in to the light at the other end, I also hope you find yourself with new found respect for the profession.
Not all lawyers are greedy scumbags, just the same as not all computer programmers are self absorbed retards that think they are infinitely superior to mere '(l)users'
I'm a geek, not a lawyer, I do like to think I know when to shut my mouth and let others speak on my behalf.
You're right. We don't live in a democracy or anything where the citizens are expected to know about their government and the laws. We live in aristocratic society where only people who can afford powdered wigs and armani suits are allowed to think or make legal decisions.
with regards to my previous statement:
what I meant to also say is that if eBay takes down an item *under the premise of VeRO* and eBay is then shown the item does not violate their VeRO policy, then the seller should have the right to have it reposted without having to pay any extra fees.
eBay, as a private internet auction house, is free to refuse to sell whatever they like, but if they engage in a pattern of discriminatory refusals to post certain auctions (e.g. because certain big companies complain about individuals who happen to be re-selling their stuff), then eBay might have some explaining to do.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power