EU court rules software transfer is a sale (2012)
bdkadvokati.com
bdkadvokati.com
I personally reject the license and install anyway. The only thing that says I can't do that is the license, so if I don't agree with it, then it doesn't apply. Right? No actually I've stopped doing that and switched to Free Software completely - no restrictions imposed by the ELUA there.
The license is what gives you legal permission to make copies in the process of installation; copying is otherwise an exclusive right of the copyright owner. So that’s very much an “if you win the argument on rejecting the license, you still lose” situation.
In France and Germany, you are allowed to copy copyrighted works, as long as it's for private use (including family and "private circles") and you don't sell it. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copie_priv%C3%A9e#Principes_g%...
Art. 23. Copyright
The scope of the work's own personal use
1.
Without the author's permission, you may use an already disseminated work for your own personal use free of charge. This provision does not authorize to build on the basis of someone else's architectural and urban planning work and to use electronic databases that meet the features of the work, unless it concerns own scientific use not related to profit-making purposes.
2.
The scope of personal use includes the use of single copies of works by the circle of persons remaining in a personal relationship, in particular kinship, affinity or social relationship.
but software is explicitly excluded by 77:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Polish_Copyright_Law#Chapter_...
Art. 77.[32]
Provisions of Article 16 subparagraphs 3-5, Articles 20, 23, 231, 27, 28, 30, 331-335, 49, paragraph 2, Articles 56, 60 and 62 shall not apply to computer programs.
For example, before fast internet connections, people would borrow music CDs from libraries and copy them.
In some countries, such acquisition of a copy is legal on its own.
Traffic inspection by ISPs (let alone sharing of collected data with third-party entities) in the EU is required to have a legal/technical basis and/or user consent, depending on what is being done and for what purpose [1]. Even attempts at blanket (meta)data retention for law enforcement agencies have pretty much been ruled illegal in the EU [2] and Germany [3].
What probably happened is your friends were torrenting, and some entity acting on behalf of copyright holders got their IP from public trackers/DHT. Then they came knocking to the ISP with a cour order, asking for information about the person behind that IP address, and the ISP gave them that [4]. Finally, the entity sent a C&D to your friends.
[1] - See the EU DPS' opinion on how the existing EU legal framework affets ISPs' data inspection abilities: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...
[2] - See Directive 2006/24/EC, tl;dr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention#European_Union
[3] - htps://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Sachgebiete/Telekommunikation/Unternehmen_Institutionen/Anbieterpflichten/OeffentlicheSicherheit/Umsetzung110TKG/VDS_113aTKG/VDS.html
[4] - https://blog.raychenon.com/file-sharing-violations-in-german...
I mean you can, we can do "anything" but there are repercussions for each action.
It’s literally just using the P2P nature of bittorrent to get peers’ IP addresses (you can do that too! Just start any torrent and look at the peers tab in your client), then using the legal tools to request data about a person breaking the law using such and such IP address.
If you extend this to everything you can have massive surveillance without cookies, MAC address of device, IP address for each package and you know who is accessing what kind of content on internet. So, why wait whenever someone reads article about class 1 drug just brake his door and arrest him, isn't it ?! I mean fork privacy, democracy, and judicial process, just lets immediately arrest everyone :/
Anyway, in German scenario how can you certify that someone was not hijacking your router?
(As per friends case, they had friend who was sleeping over and connected to their Wifi ...)
Some lawyers are even using sites similar to https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/
It probably costs less to pay the amount than fighting it in court. I think it's capped at 450 Euro or something? But I know some people who got scot free by merely having a lawyer send a response.
That is a big part of why companies try to claim they never sold you a copy in the first place, only licensed it.
In other words, if I click "send" on my resignation email to my employer, but later argue in court that I totally didn't mean to actually resign, but only to check if my email program works, I may have a challenging case.
I'm not a lawyer but I don't think software licensing is legally required to work in this way. These days, OEM Windows licences bind to the hardware, not to an individual.
- Big name software vendors will accelerate replacing one-time purchases with subscriptions
- Many small name software vendors will allow users to resell their software, and raise prices to compensate
- Special pricing e.g. for students will go away
- Code that checks for valid license keys will still be used to ensure that people aren't making new copies of the software and selling them
- The Appstore model will eventually have to change so that people can resell the apps they purchased
It is like the false dichotomy between paying for software vs paying with your data: developers can simply do both (and many are doing both). Or, in games, the idea that DLCs, microtransactions, etc are "necessary" due to the high costs of development when in reality this is just an excuse and they only exist because they provide extra money and the companies can get away with it.
So similarly to the above, subscriptions, higher prices, etc will happen not because the developers have to use them but because they are simply more profitable and since a response like "we did it because we wanted more money" isn't exactly PR friendly, they'll just put the blame in the vague and far away direction of EU and other similar scapegoats.
Unfortunately, courts have upheld the special protections that DRM measures are afforded. So while you may in theory be able to resell software, DRM may still prevent you from making use of that software. Afaik that is unfortunately still legal.
What is particularly unfortunate in these cases is that a lot of the worst copyright-related requirements aren't even set by national governments (or other quasi-democratic bodies like the EU) but rather in the back rooms of international conferences where there is then a big vote on some big international agreement that includes them. Then everyone gets to make a DMCA or EUCD or other local equivalent that does nasty things like adding DRM protections that effectively nullify half of the copyright bargain, and they can mutter something about "international law" or "treaty obligations" and point the finger at some nebulous, unaccountable international diplomacy exercise to deflect the blame.
That's why these cases end up being solved once consumer associations go to court in the name of their members. Eg UFC Que Choisir went against steam and won in the first court here in France, it was posted on HN a few months back. Now it needs to go all the way to a final decision.
If you're wondering "what can I do", either take them to court, or donate to your local consumer association and make sure your issues are known and heard by them.
Which is precisely what makes it toothless and a waste of tax payer money. If it costs impractical amount of time and money to assert your right, then does that right actually exist?
It does NOT costs impractical amount of time and money to assert your right. It's simply that EU citizen are much less used to go to court over what they consider trivial things, eg for a 20€ steam game.
> It's simply that EU citizen are much less used to go to court over what they consider trivial things, eg for a 20€ steam game.
If it takes few hours to find out where to lodge the case, fill the forms and all that then be anxious about the outcome for considerable amount of time, this is already way more expensive than 20€ even if the request itself is free. Even if you win, you'll lose.
Instead of sitting on their bottoms, the civil servants should be actively going after companies to make sure they are acting lawfully. I think much more sensible would be a complaint system that would trigger an investigation into a particular company and then solving it for all users instead of clogging the courts with individual claims that could go on forever (as in thousands customers lodging thousands requests for the same thing).
Maybe blockchain can make digital goods be transferable.
No downsides that I can see for the consumers.
Sadly we have since started seeing all big companies move to a SAAS subscription-based model so in practice it seems to become less relevant with time as it's only meaningful on software under perpetual licenses.
But at least Windows Server is still a big one that can save a lot of money -and that can also help struggling/downsizing companies by allowing them to sell licenses they no longer need.
However, maybe people will see the light and go with free software instead (as in freedom, not beer, etc).
Unfortunately, it doesn't necessarily work for "entertainment", because entertainment is consumable. You always want new music, new movies, new games, I don't think we've found a way to make those free (libre) yes.
Making something a lot of people want and charging them for it is an awesome feature of copyright law. I don't want it to go away.