[QUOTE="JnWycliffe"][QUOTE="Royas"][QUOTE="JnWycliffe"][QUOTE="DudeDudeington"]A more accurate comparison would be if a store sold you a bike and it had a lock on it... you decided you wanted a break from the bike and needed more space.. but you could only lock it away with this lock.. unfortunatly this lock only came with 3 keys.. and one broke each time you undid the lock.
Furthermore, every ten days you would have to ride down to the bike store and go "hey guys.. It's me on the bike! don't worry noone else is riding it!"
Meanwhile down the street there is a dude passing out free bikes of the same brand with no lock and no need to ride by for comfirmation.
Royas
well, no, because different laws govern different types of property (you don't buy software in the strictest sense; it's not your property in the traditional sense of the legal definition; you can't sell it, for instance, like you could if you buy a tv), so that wouldn't be a more accurate comparison. the bottom line is that piracy = stealing, and ea has the right to protect their property. my analogy wasn't perfect (which is why i deleted it), but it's definitely more applicable than yours in this case.
Not exactly. Some courts in the USA have treated software as property, subject to the right of first sale just like the hypothetical bicycles in the previous example. They have also issued other, contradictory, judgements, depending on the district. Some countries don't treat the EULA's as having any validity as well. As I understand it, this specific method of DRM EA is using may be illegal in some countries they released in. On the Bioware forums, a fellow from Germany was saying that his reading of German consumer law made this system questionable at best. I can't speak to how accurate he is, of course, I don't know anything about German law.
So, this becomes a maybe topic, not an absolute. What you post is not the actual truth, nor is in really wrong either. Well, the part about piracy being stealing is almost always correct, but the part about EA having a right to protect their property? Yes, they do have a right, but they are going overboard. Right now, they are doing the equivalent of using a firearm to defend themselves from verbal assault. It's a disproportionate use of force. Actually, not a good analogy, it's more like they are using a hand grenade. While facing away from the target. They aren't likely to hurt the target, but anyone else around is sure as hell in danger. Still a disproportionate use of force, but now with an additional component of endangering the public. It's not acceptable, period.
i'd search myself, but that could take a while. do you know which cases? just asking, out of personal interest.
Heh, not going to catch me out like that. :P Seriously, Wikipedia has a good page on this. Softman v. Adobe (2001) is a commonly referred to case, as the decision explicitly defines software as a product. A later decision in Davison & Associates v. Internet Gateway Inc. (2004) contradicts this. A more recent decision in Washington state was Timothy S. Vernor v. Autodesk Inc. (2008 ) which supports the first sale doctrine regardless of the EULA.
The situation isn't all that well defined yet, to be honest. One law says one thing, another says differently, another makes exceptions, another cancels exceptions... it's a snake pit of laws. Add to that the fact that some states have defined the first sale doctrine in different ways, some are still UCC states, some are UCITA states (Virginia and Maryland only, I believe) and you have a real quagmire. I don't envy the IP lawyers today, it's gotta be hard to figure out the rules. There are a lot of contradictions, and it appears that your results will vary depending on the personal views of the judge you get.
It's a tough subject, but I keep going back to the purpose of IP. IP and copyright was not put in place to guarantee ultimate control to creators. It was actually put in place to give creators a fair chance to profit, while guaranteeing they would not control the items forever. IP is supposed to enter the public domain, eventually. Recent laws passed at the lobbying of Disney have gone against that purpose, but I think the original purpose is such that these cases need to be decided with eventual public ownership in mind.
i actually have no interest in catching you or whatever else you may think i'm trying to do. i'm a law student, and i've only taken the basic, mandatory property cIass so i have very limited knowledge on this matter. but you seemed to know something, so i asked you for cases, so i could read them (since i have access to lexisnexis and westlaw). like i wrote, just a personal interest. anyway, thanks. i'll look more into it! :)
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