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Company Uses DMCA To Take Down Second-Hand Software

Posted by Soulskill on from the what-i-sold-you-is-still-mine dept.

dreemteem writes "A judge Tuesday heard arguments in a dispute over software sales that could potentially have repercussions on the secondhand sale of virtually any copyrighted material. The suit was filed by Timothy Vernor, a seller on eBay, after Autodesk, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, asked eBay to remove some of its software products that Vernor had listed for sale there, and later to ban him from the site. Vernor had not illegally copied the software but was selling legitimate CDs of the products secondhand. For that reason, he argued, he was not infringing Autodesk's copyright. Autodesk countered that because it licenses the software, rather than selling it outright, a licensee does not have the right to resell its products."

3 of 488 comments (clear)

  1. Autodesk will lose by TheSpoom · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Vernor absolutely has the right to resell his CD, due to a well-known section of copyright law known as first-sale doctrine. If you legally possess a copyrighted work, you can resell it, as long as a new copy is not created. I don't think this case will last very long.

    Now, the DMCA would allow Autodesk to, say, validate a CD key online once only and then deny future installs on other hardware, since any attempt to get past that would be a circumvention attempt prohibited by the DMCA. But it's not Vernor's fault that Autodesk didn't do that. (Of course, just maybe they know that if they did, customers would be more reluctant to buy their software since most people don't like DRM.)

    I am not a laywer.

    --
    It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
    - E. Debs
    1. Re:Autodesk will lose by commodore64_love · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I had a stupid shithead company do that to me when I tried to sell my DVD of "Hunt for Red October". For some reason they kept telling Ebay I was selling an illegal copy, even though it was clearly storebought. Ebay stupidly listens to these companies, so I eventually moved my selling over to Amazon. Way to shoot yourself in the foot ebay.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    2. Re:Autodesk will lose by modemboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You do realize that the case that established the first sale doctrine was exactly what you describe, a book publisher attempting to control resale price of their book through a license page. It's even linked from the wiki article you posted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobbs-Merrill_Co._v._Straus

      It blows my mind the legal gyrations they must go through to rationalize why this is not acceptable for books but a-ok for software.