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Othran
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
209
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Posted - 2012.07.03 13:57:00 -
[1] - Quote
Patient 2428190 wrote:Your account isn't a software license.
It is actually in the context of the ruling.
The ruling is fairly clear and deals with software, not just games.
Oracle are the company who has been trying to block resale and from what I remember they tried to argue that "downloaded" software should have different resale rules to software installed from a physical medium (CD/DVD). The argument involved the use of an install mechanism which required an account with Oracle to download/install/activate the licenced software.
The court has disagreed with Oracle.
There are some salient points which most gamer sites will have missed - such as :
"Where the copyright holder makes available to his customer a copy GÇö tangible or intangible GÇö and at the same time concludes, in return [for] payment of a fee, a licence agreement granting the customer the right to use that copy for an unlimited period, that rightholder sells the copy to the customer and thus exhausts his exclusive distribution right. Such a transaction involves a transfer of the right of ownership of the copy,"
As far as I'm aware CCP do not provide a licence agreement to use for an unlimited period. There is a recurring monthly fee. I suspect that means you can in fact sell an entire account but not a character from an account. This might in fact stop character transfers within the EU but allow account transfers.
Parasite (lawyer) heaven  |
Othran
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
209
|
Posted - 2012.07.03 14:58:00 -
[2] - Quote
Nirnias Stirrum wrote:
And the owner of the license (i.e. CCP), reserve the right to revoke your license agreement for any reason, since thats what you agreed to when you pressed accept on the TOS and the EULA:
Such as say, selling your account for real money :P
National laws > EULA. Oracle's EULA says you can't sell software. Court says you can. Oracle lose.
Software developers can put whatever they like in the EULA, it isn't going to make any difference if a court says otherwise in an area they sell the product. CCP quote the laws of Iceland, which is part of the EEA so they have to comply with EU court decisions if they wish to sell products within the EU.
EULAs aren't worth the paper they're written on in anywhere other than the USA, and even there its increasingly dodgy. |
Othran
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
209
|
Posted - 2012.07.03 15:46:00 -
[3] - Quote
I think the point to bear in mind is that the court ruling does not appear to apply to licences where there is a recurring fee to use the software. It only applies to software where a licence is granted for an "unlimited period".
That means (for example) Steam have a problem* as there's no recurring fee. CCP don't have a problem on Eve (but may have on Dust) as there is a recurring fee associated with Eve.
*the game companies have more of a problem than Steam does - Steam will simply charge a small admin fee to transfer a game from one account to another. Steam still makes some money, games company will not. Interesting to see how that pans out. |
Othran
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
209
|
Posted - 2012.07.03 16:01:00 -
[4] - Quote
Messoroz wrote:
On the other side, I'm pretty sure they will be sending the EU a bill for all the time spent recovering games from hacked accounts.
I doubt it.
The EU Commission recently did a cost/benefit analysis for business of operating within a EU member state. They calculated that the benefits were around Gé¼15bn and the cost of compliance with directives was Gé¼60bn.
The EU benefits two countries and Steam isn't from either of them :D |
Othran
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
209
|
Posted - 2012.07.03 16:18:00 -
[5] - Quote
Tippia wrote:This is where the ruling steps in and says that you are allowed to resell that physical box you bought from the store and neither Atari nor CCP can come after you. If you try to sell the client download, they'll do nasty things to you because you'll have a very hard time proving that each download was a license you had bought and then resold.
No that was already established. This ruling (from an Oracle appeal) clarifies that it doesn't matter whether there was physical media or not, you have an absolute right to resell the software if you were granted a licence for an unlimited period.
Prior to the ruling you could only resell software which had physical install media. Now you can resell software which has no physical install media.
That's what this case was all about Tippia.
EA et al are in a world of trouble on this as online multiplayer games with no recurring fee most definitely ARE covered by the ruling. |
Othran
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
209
|
Posted - 2012.07.03 16:36:00 -
[6] - Quote
Hannott Thanos wrote:
Indeed. I can see why a recurring fee model might not apply, but anything else? I should be allowed to sell it to anyone.
Eve has a recurring fee. That appears to exempt CCP from the ruling, although I haven't read all of it.
However Dust is a different matter as there is no recurring fee (there is a setup fee AIUI) and would be covered by the ruling. The account could be sold as the setup fee is for the software and account.
There's loads of weasel words to come on this I reckon.
The good news is that ******** game companies who've been lobbying to stop resale of single-player/standalone games have now been screwed by possibly the greediest IT company on the planet - Oracle  What goes around etc :) |
Othran
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
210
|
Posted - 2012.07.03 16:48:00 -
[7] - Quote
Tippia wrote:Othran wrote:However Dust is a different matter as there is no recurring fee (there is a setup fee AIUI) and would be covered by the ruling. The account could be sold as the setup fee is for the software and account. Nah, Dust will fall into the same pattern as EVE: yes, you need a license to run the software, but you won't be able to actually play without a (non-transferable) service contract. Here, the ruling rather means that, should you be able to extract the software from your PS3's hard drive, you can give it to someone else and they're allowed to run it (although I imagine that Sony will be slightly upset if you do for various other reasons). But here, too, it will be largely pointless to do such a transfer since anyone is free to download and use the software anyway. The kind of transfers the ruling allows is immensely more work than just creating a license of your own.
Nope, not unless the setup fee disappears and CCP can't afford that. If the setup fee has any relationship with the account then the account becomes part of the software licence. No recurring fee = no service contract in this instance.
You can already resell console games with physical media, this just means the "setup fee" will have to disappear for Dust.
Edit - and Sony will have to make "extracting the software" possible. |
Othran
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
211
|
Posted - 2012.07.03 16:59:00 -
[8] - Quote
Tippia wrote:Othran wrote:Nope, not unless the setup fee disappears and CCP can't afford that. If the setup fee has any relationship with the account then the account becomes part of the software licence. Will there be a setup fee? Will it be part of the license? What kind of relationship are envisioning? Again, you're entirely free to download and run the software (and, with this ruling, resell those rights) GÇö the service contract is a separate entity from the (re)sale of the (free) downloaded software.
If the software requires online authentication to run or to access all features and that authentication does not have a recurring fee then its covered.
I suggest you look at what Oracle was appealing. |
Othran
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
212
|
Posted - 2012.07.04 18:04:00 -
[9] - Quote
that beast wrote:
The password is not software and isn't a license, and so won't be covered by the rulings.
Wrong.
The ruling is clear - if the software requires an online account/authentication/activation to fully function then that forms part of the sale. If the authentication/whatever cannot be separated from the software and the s/w manufacturer is unwilling to provide a new method of authentication then the account IS part of the software licence. That was one of the things Oracle wanted to establish but it backfired spectacularly on them.
Eve isn't affected unless it goes FTP in which case all bets are off. For now its quite clear that software with a recurring charge (ie a subscription) is not covered by the ruling. |
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