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Court Rules For Software Ownership Over Licensing
valderost writes "Out-law.com reports on a finding of the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, in favor of an individual reselling Autodesk's AutoCAD software in 'his claim that he owned the software and had the right to sell it on.' The decision hinges on some technicalities in the Autodesk license and conflicting precedents involving a Vanessa Redgrave film, but it's good news for the idea that a software purchase is just that. 'The Court said that it had to follow [the film] case's precedent because it was older than another conflicting ruling, and that it could not choose a precedent based on the most desirable policy. "The court's decision today is not based on any policy judgment. Congress is both constitutionally and institutionally suited to render judgments on policy; courts generally are not," the Court ruled. "Precedent binds the court regardless of whether it would be good policy to ignore it."'"
You can't own software, man.
So the court, by mentioning the dictates of precedent in the first place, is implying that it thinks licensing is the preferred policy? How on earth is that pro-precedent and policy-neutral?
Why congress?
Is it not up to the states to decide what rights are transferred when something is being sold at the store?
Contracts and the purchase/sale of goods are generally distinctly state issues...
I really own it? Great!
Sweet! Now maybe we can affirm that we actually own things we purchase, and companies like Nintendo will stop stuffing up things like homebrew.
He should send a thank you note to Vanessa Redgrave :-)
Oh no they didn't.
Eat sleep die
... welcome the overlords who licenced us and now pwn.
Musicians don't die. They just decompose.
Not that this will ever happen, but, if the ramifications of this decision are taken to the next level, it could enforce the consumers' right to resell the license to a given software application.
This, in turn, could mean that one could exchange and resell licenses of downloaded games and other media. Of course, the industry will likely pay off any relevant political actors in the interests of piracy prevention long before this occurs.
Then again, software companies are much more open to this type of idea than they were ten years ago. Well, we can always hope.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
My understanding is that in this particular case Autodesk was essentially marketing the software exactly like a product instead of something that is licensed, thereby they couldn't claim that the product was in effect being licensed. Does this have any effect on shrink-wrap licenses and/or regular software?
Do not have mod points, but this comment deserves up mods.
Dog is my co-pilot.
This is already European Law (which must be implemented in local laws in al member states). Once sold whithin the EU, you're free to resell your license.
The problem is in the details: if you buy software (i.e. a license to use it), you normally also get a bunch of other rights, like access to updates, maybe even the right to call someone. The law doesn't say that these rights are also transferrable (or transferred). So in most licenses, there's still plenty of "you cannot do this and that (resell, for example), or you will loose the right to such and so".
But the resale of the license to plainly use the software cannot be forbidden by contract in the EU.
my other sig is a 500 page novel
Has Nintendo legally gone after anyone for homebrew?
Naw, last I heard they keep their lawyers super busy going after people who mention their favorite Nintendo games in their online profiles.
coding is life
sdfsdfasdf
Autodesk are Â/Â&Â&'s. Really. I had an AutoCAD licesne that i sold eventually with the hardware dongle years ago. They really stink. 4,000 for a single license is crazy
Sweet! Now, instead of merely licensing Linux (and having to abide by the terms of the GPL) - I can actually own it. That pesky lawyer-talk always did sound like communism, I'm glad that software creators can no longer decide what rights users have over their stuff.
Anyway, thanks for trying to crush commercial software and killing OSS instead, you heartless bastards! /Because that's what this will lead to if all software licenses are broken.
So what if I want to give my used license to a friend for free? I can still be sued by the software company and lose, right? What if I resell it for a token price of $1? $0.01? Or just give it away?
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
If there are conflicting precedents, the oldest one overrides? Does this automatically overturn the latter, conflicting precedent rulings as invalid? Does this also mean that once a precedent is set, the courts cannot ever rule differently no matter what, only congress can overwrite?
... that he didn't use the software himself, and therefore was not bound by the shrink-wrap license? He purchased them for resale only.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
"Precedent binds the court regardless of whether it would be good policy to ignore it."
Why would they say that if they didn't want a different outcome? If that were the case, "Precedent binds the court" would be enough.
"The Court said that it had to follow [the film] case's precedent because it was older than another conflicting ruling, and that it could not choose a precedent based on the most desirable policy"
it couldn't choose a precedent based on the most desirable policy, therefore the precedent they followed was not the one that leads to the most desirable policy.
It's pretty cut-and-dried, kid.
Therefore you recieve no consideration for this contracted restriction. therefore there IS no contracted restriction.
You don't even need a license to install and use a program. In the US this is EXPLICIT. Actual use of the program is not covered by copyright. In the UK, personal use was not legal but there was no damages and such breech was a strict tort problem and therefore you could only ask for damages: nil.
So there's no need to have a license, and clicking "I agree" doesn't agree to anything for software.
Additionally, especially in the UK, but it is generally true, a contract or restriction has a cooling-off period. One or two weeks in many US states, 28 days statutory minimum in the UK. You can agree, then disagree and get a full refund and stop using the product.
If the EULA "I Agree" button was a genuine legal contract, you would get this cooling off period too.
This is good. There is much to be said for and against an "ownership society" but I can't recall publicly advocating our transformation into a "licensure society."
I have no doubt that the same people who are trying to outlaw analog recording devices are planning a campaign behind closed doors for the eradication of "ownership" as a concept in U. S. culture, but they would never dare to say it in public.
Software licensing made sense when software was a semi-custom low-volume craft product; when there were small numbers of transactions and actual negotiations took place on every purchase; where the amounts of money involved were in six figures, and both parties had lawyers on retainer.
Today it makes no more sense than to say "this T-shirt is licensed, not sold" or "these skis are licensed, not sold."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
You said you may only make 'a' copy.
Don't read too much into the word 'a'. It appears Congress wanted to limit the number of copies to however many are reasonably necessary for "an essential step in the utilization" or "for archival purposes". If it wanted to limit the number more specifically, it would have used the long form of the article: "one copy", and 117(b) would have begun with "The exact copy", not "Any exact copies".
This, copyright ownership, is what people usually mean when they talk about owning the software.
But do people usually mean copyright ownership when they talk about owning a book? I don't think so. If not, where did the difference come from.
mac os x on any systems and this ruling?
Does this make even more legal to BUY mac os x and put it on any system? vs real black area that it is in now?
Does this help psystar computer in there case?
How about other software where they try to take away the right of first sale and try stop you from selling / moving software that you pay for to others?
I don't mean distributing, like Psystar does, I just mean building their own system. What would the BSA do if they came upon a Hackintosh?
Ha! So that's the "older' precedent? How about this? I walk into a grocery store, anonymously give cash to the cashier and walk out with a loaf of bread without having made any agreement at all, other than "I want the bread, here's some money." Retail software sales use the exact same transaction -- identical in every single way -- to what people have been doing for thousands of years. Thousands. And in all that time, Congress never bothered to pass a law that pulls a switcharoo on us and creates a difference between those transactions.
(Congress has passed some laws that creates some differences between what a person is allowed to do with a loaf of bread, versus a movie or software. But the sale itself, or giving rights to the original seller to demand it back? Nope. Some judges have created some new laws that treat the transactions differently, but Congress has kept out of that, so far.)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Slashdot. News for nerds. Six months late.
I hope that the courts, while considering themselves "bound by precedent", do not forget that they are also bound by statute.
If some high muckety muck court decides to be crazy and make a precedent by legislating some outlandish ruling from the bench, what recourse does a lower court have if neither party appeals it high enough for the error to be fixed?
PDF: http://www.eff.org/files/gov.uscourts.vernor.opinion.pdf
Related article at eff.org: http://www.eff.org/files/gov.uscourts.vernor.opinion.pdf
Fair enough.
And then some it cannot remove.
So the EULA, because it only removes rights, MUST be a contract.
It grants no rights you do not already have by the very act of purchasing the software, so there is no grant to use the software from the EULA.
I have Half Life 2 on a laptop that I've never connected to Steam since I put it on there. More than a year and a half ago.
just show the bsa the paper work that you paid for the mac os cd at the apple store.