Thursday, October 06, 2011
Supreme Court Won't Hear Case Saying That You Have No First Sale Rights With Software
Techdirt: We had just mentioned the infamous decision in the Vernor v. Autodesk case last week, in discussing the Psystar decision. If you don't recall, the court in the Vernor case effectively decimated the concept of "first sale" in software, making it questionable if you could ever resell software that you'd bought.
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3 comments:
This idea really bugs me. Not only does it bother me that someone can charge me over $1000 for a piece of software but then tell me that, not only is it not actually mine but now I can't use it again until I upgrade/update/whatever and, oh, THAT will cost me another $xx.
It's very heavily reminiscent of the DRM problems from only recently. Online gaming and shopping [for music, etc] is great; but if I PURCHASE or BUY on something if should be mine, right? No one would think to buy a dvd and think it's okay to then give it back unless you're calling it a RENTAL.
If the trend here is going to be so two-faced to tell me it's okay to charge well over $1000 for something that I don't actually get to call mine, I fervently agree with the author and hope there're more appeals until the Supreme Court does listen.
THe first sale doctrine doesn't let you do anything you want, but it does say that the seller can't put restrictions on a later sale. Copyright law takes care of illicit duplication, so all first sale really did was say that you could resell, give away, throw away, or do whatever you wanted to items you bought. I find it interesting that the supreme court is discounting first sale in the case of software since the doctrine is well known in the case of selling books, and when you look into the matter the price of a book isn't for the paper and printing so much as for the content, making book sales the original software sales. I wonder how the contradiction will be resolved.
Because of the controversy here, the supreme court should get involved. This matter has come up numerous times as cited in this article, and it would not were the law more clear. The supreme court tends to take cases that pertain to making new law as opposed to interpreting existing laws, but this is such an instance.
To software makers' credit, many do use the terminology "purchase a license," which I believe supports the idea that you can't resell; you are purchasing a license to their IP rather than the IP itself.
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