Steam allows paid mods, then removes it right after

Remove all ads!

Well, for one, it can be freely copied. There is nothing to guarantee that you will sell your digital copy to another person and not keep a copy for yourself. Secondly, it doesn't degrade, which means a "used" digital product is just as good as a new one.

Physical products are something else entirely. In fact, used games on physical media can still be legally sold back to licensed retailers, I think, assuming they don't employ DRM that limit them to a single user.

 

It is called "First Sale Doctrine" or "Right of First Sale" and has been an important legal precedent and protection for over a century in the U.S..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

 

I know what the right of first sale is, but that wasn't the question. I asked why you feel entitled to the right to sell a software product even though you explicitly paid to use it and not to own it.

 

So could an album or cassette tape. What's the difference?

 

Of course they would.

And if the movie and music industry could make it stick, they'd love to be able to stop you from making a copy of your CD (for instance ripping a CD to mp3) or to stop you from giving a DVD to your friends. They've tried and are still trying to make it stick.

Because, I believe, most people (me included) don't pay explicitly to use the software, we feel like we pay to own (a copy of) it. That the small print says otherwise doesn't mean that we don't feel that we own it, especially since pretty much everything else we buy, we do own.

 

They're physical media, so they do degrade over time, and it's next to impossible to make a perfect copy without professional equipment.

It's not really small print though, you get licensing agreements shoved into your face pretty clearly.

 

Why didn't we get the same shrink-wrap agreements with tapes and CDs that we got with CD-ROMs?
What's so special about software that lets them get away with it?

 

The whole EULA thing is pretty disputable from a legal standpoint. The stuff in the agreement doesn't overrule simple law and as such as generally at least partially invalid from the word go.

Another point is that you get the EULA shoved in your face when you install the game, not when you buy the game. You have the option to refuse it, but then you have already bought it and returning it can be problematic.

 

Most stores, and I can say Best Buy is definitely one of them, have the attitude of "if you've opened the shrink-wrap on the DVD or otherwise broken the seal on it, you can't return the game even if you have the receipt".

I was given a game that is incompatible with my system at Christmas time, and that's as best I can remember the exact words they used. It might be a paraphrase.

So, this EULA is forcing you to sign a contract of adhesion changing the terms AFTER it is too late to get your money back.

Since you insist that my clicking "I agree" to that EULA is the big thing that makes it different from buying any other object including music CDs and video DVDs (that can be passed around and are virtually identical to CD-ROM's and DVD-ROM's)
What about if I copy the game onto writable media, and then alter the EULA that I have to click "I agree" on to say something I actually will agree to, then burn it back to DVD and install the game, agreeing to my own terms or just changing the text to "I reject the EULA and will not be bound to it. I see nothing wrong with modding what is written on something I bought any more than repainting over a logo or some words written on the body of my car."

Oh wait, that might be considered a violation of the DMCA's anti-circumvention of access controls section.

 

* * * Not snark * * *

I was just thinking about AppleWorks, when I saw this thread again.
There used to be at least two separate companies that sold the equivalent of mods to AppleWorks called "addons" or "extensions" back in the 1980's and 1990s. Piniform and Beagle Bros.
I don't think they were licensed. Maybe it was legal back then. I know that Central Point Software's "Copy II Plus" would now be illegal to sell under the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA for the same reason nobody sells software to make backup copies of copy protected software anymore or software to copy movie DVDs.

The interesting thing about that was when Claris went to update AppleWorks, they actually hired Beagle Bros to help write the code and incorporate one of their own addons, Timeout Quickspell.

I'm just wondering how that meshes with the statements above, or did the law change? I don't recall the DMCA having a clause that would have made TimeOut! illegal.

Some links on AppleWorks and TimeOut!
apple2history.org/history/ah19/
http://www.pcmuseum.ca/details.asp?id=38175&type=software
http://beagle.applearchives.com/the_software/the_timeout_series/
http://stevenf.com/beagle/contents.html