A European court ruling today has confirmed that end users are legally allowed to sell on second hand digitally downloaded videogames. The court has decided that an author of a piece of software can no longer oppose the resale of the license once used. In short: it’s against the law for a company to stop you selling on digitally distributed software.
“The exclusive right of distribution of a copy of a computer program covered by such a licence is exhausted on its first sale,” says the new ruling, which also states that end-user license agreements that oppose the law are null and void – “even if the licence agreement prohibits a further transfer, the rightholder can no longer oppose the resale of that copy.”
Naturally, this affects the likes of Steam and, importantly, the PSN.
How the infrastructure for such transfers will manifest themselves is anyone’s guess – presumably there’ll need to be some way to change the owner of a game digitally, so that the title no longer works on your machine but will on someone else’s. And of course, the service to make such a transfer could be chargeable by the license holder.
Via lo-ping.
HoboCastro
A nail in the coffin of Online Passes? Good.
ron_mcphatty
More muddying of the legal waters, sigh. And I’d rather not be able to transfer my Steam or PSN games to another account, it’s just another opportunity for account hacking crims to jump on.
hol
So essentially you’d be selling your online ID? Be it on psn, live or steam? Sod that! I worked hard fit those trophies ;)
hol
*for* doh!
hazelam
i saw or read something somewhere that apparently it was technically illegal to pass on downloads after your death.
i think it was in relation to ebooks but i’m sure it applied to other downloads.
i guess now you can legally inherit downloads after somebody dies.
Izorpo
actually, passwords are now the big thing to be given in wills as people have accrued an awful lot of wealth with digital merchandise – so all the apps, mp3s, games etc bought on all devices (phones, tablets, mp3 players etc), some people have spent upwards of £30,000 or more – which is wealth that can be passed on towards your nearest and dearest
at least according to the BBC – Click program I think
hazelam
that might have been where i saw the thing about passing on downloads now i think about it.
before this ruling though, leaving your account to somebody in your will might not have been strictly legal.
now there should be no problem, though it would have had to have been a heartless company to try to take away content from a grieving friend or relative anyway
a company like ea maybe. >_>
hazelam
what about physical media though?
are there already laws regarding that or has this just set a precedent that could affect that?
it could make all those “you are not allowed to resell this software” notices unenforceable, assuming they’re not already.
anyway, this proves what i’ve been saying, any part of the “license agreement” that invalidates the users rights is worthless.
Nickboss1
Ok.
fattyuk
With the future of digital content only, yes let’s kill it already with this thus company’s closing.
Roll on oO
hazelam
yes, because putting users rights ahead of big corporations is such a bad thing to do.
what a sense of entitlement gamers have, expecting to own the things they buy, the sheer cheek of it.
it’s funny, none of the other industries that are having trouble, after a worldwide recession that gaming weathered better than most other industries, feel the need to combat preowned sales of their products to survive.
ignorbert
Finally I can sell Games from my old PSN account to my New and same for my old iOS store account get rid of the empty accounts..
Waiting for the procedure to start TransFarring ;-) (I know will never happen..) #Dreaming.