I can understand the argument behind the EULA, I, however, think that if one purchases a product, one should not be held to have to keep it if one does not want it. In my case, I bought a copy od Counter Strike Source recently. It comes with extra games and needs to be activated via the Steam software in order to use it. Turns out I did not find this game or the extras that came with it as appealing as Call of Duty 2 and 4. Now I am stuck with a $20 piece of software I will never use again because I can not seel it or maybe even give it to someone else because it's registered to my name. Now, to be fair I am not truly sure if Steam would allow me to transfer the serial key to someone else, but considering it can't be done in most cases and the paid that it is to activate it at all, I don't see why they would let me do it.

So, I'm out $20 on a useless piece of software, useless to me that is. Maybe someone here could help me on this.

There is no good way to track what is a secondary sale and what is a pirated copy.

Neither is there a way for a developer/publisher to make money on any support on teh secondary sale.  Most of the support calls that a game gets in on install and first use by one user.  Those costs are built into the game.  If it's resold . . support may incur those costs and not recoup.

As long as the secondary user doesn't expect support, sell or buy all you want.

But especially for lower priced games, it's just not worth it to have a license transfer system.

At some pont a system will be created where transfering license is cheap enough (for the developer/publisher) and seamless enough for the buyer and seller to make it worthwhile.   I wouldn't mind a sytem where the transfer of license had a fee attached to it so that it could eat the support and invest in development, but what would be a marketable and profitable amount?

The Political Machine sells for what?  $19.99US.  What could the first user sell it for?  Whould they have to dislose that it was unsupported to the secondary buyer?  What if they didn't?  Then teh secondary emails support and support say "You don't own the game (according to our records).  NO SUPPORT FOR YOU!!  Buy the game!"  Now secondary buyer is pissed at support and post hate mail on every forum and developer goes out of business, right?  Or maybe they are cool . .  say they want to do a license transfer between them and the primary.  Does support contact the primary to revoke the license?  Dunno.

They should also ban the secondary market in auto, homes and sports equipment.  All second hand clothing stores should be immediately boarded up.  The reason they prohibit the secondary market in software is because they have legally denied to you that you have any property interest in your purchase that's related to these valuable copyrighted materials.  From the software makers standpoint why should they allow you to resell your licensed copy to someone for $10 if it means they won't get $20 or more from that customer.

So they write into the license whatever suits they're own interests.  It's a single non-transferable license to use the copyrighted materials in most cases that's purchased.  In fact the software companies became so effective at making it impossible for a purchaser of used software to actually use it, the secondary market died.

But, is what has been done legal?  IMO no.  Property was always traditionally deemed to be fully transfered to a purchaser including the full right to resale.  How many times have you heard people gush on Antiques Road Show about the yard sale, estate sale or flea market find of a rare masters painting, book or pottery.  Should the original owner be able to kill the sale of such a thing?  It's never been held to be the case.

The reason the situation exsists is because of complacent and cooperative courts and legislators who go with the campaign contributions.  Sure the software companies can stipulate whatever they want in their license "agreements" it's only a $20 to $50 game software.  Well maybe magazines, baseball cards, and music cd makers and all the rest should learn from this bad act and start insisting they to can sock it to the consumer and just sell the non-transferable right to read the magazine, look at the baseball card and just listen to the music to the consumer.  the consumer should be prohibited from reselling any copyrighted material at all.

The comparison between games (software) and normal physical property is common, but inherently flawed and cannot be logically used.

If you re-sell a piece of physical property, you can no longer use it. You physically pass it on to another person.

If you re-sell software, guess what - you can keep it on your drive, and you can keep it working. Even if the serial is stripped from your account denying you access to patches, it still won't deny you access from launching the game.

In the case of physical property, the manufacturer is impacted much less because for any one purchase, only one "consumer" at a time has permanent possession of said property. Likewise, for any physical property, things break and the consumers have to go buy new ones. They have to pay to have their cars serviced, houses repaired, replacement parts, so on so forth.

In the case of software, because of its inherent nature, the above no longer holds true. There is no way to guarantee that a re-sale is a complete resale, as in the original buyer is denied all access to the software. Even if there's authentication on game launch, there are still cracks to bypass it. As such, it's not a true re-sale and the developer/publisher is essentially jipped because whereas for a physical product any two people have two buy two of them for use at the same time, for software only one person now has to buy it and two can use it at the same time. As Zubas also points out, support for games is free for the consumer, but costly for the developer/publisher. Game sales offset that cost. You don't pay to get a patch for the game. You don't pay for upkeep of Impulse or game servers (unless it's an MMO). You pay a one-time fee, and that's it. With Stardock's system, you never even have to pay twice, ever, in case something happens to your original disc.

This is why physical property and software are so inherently different that such a comparison and rationale has absolutely no place in the argument.

So no, at least with Stardock's system, re-sale of software should not be allowed.

"The comparison between games (software) and normal physical property is common, but inherently flawed and cannot be logically used.

If you re-sell a piece of physical property, you can no longer use it. You physically pass it on to another person.

If you re-sell software, guess what - you can keep it on your drive, and you can keep it working. Even if the serial is stripped from your account denying you access to patches, it still won't deny you access from launching the game."

Not sure I buy into your comparison.  Music CD's are in fact a direct comparison, the copyrighted material on the CD, I don't own either.  But, I can resell it and I could make a copy of it first before re-selling. All these objections you raise for my other examples don't hold for music CD's which you've ignored.

My point was this if the software industry can do this why can't the magazine industry do this also.  Put a great big old license agreement just behind the front cover and say I've purchased a single non-transferable license to read the magazine.  Same thing with the music CD put a license agreement on it and say I've purchased a single non-tranferable license to listen to the music.

This entire legal concept of non-transferable licensing is new and got it's stride in the 1980's and 1990's.  In fact there were secondary markets for the resale of software that died because of these attempts to impose further restrictions on consumers.

If I purchase the license to use a copyrighted material that is still within the definition of the law a property I own.  The fact that the software industry has imposed prohibitions on my legal right to re-sell this property interest in my opinion is illegal.

Furthermore, to use the arguement that a person could illegally still make use of that which they sold as a justification for outright prohibiting the sale has never been upheld by courts as overiding someone's property interest rights.

I could make a copy of a VCR based movie and sell the original.  The secondary market in original Hollywood VCR movies was never crushed like this just because someone could do such a thing.  Same thing has been true of records and tapes.

This idea that the seller can force what is transfered to the buyer to be non-transferable has never before existed in the law.  The reason this situation exists is because my rights within America's traditional property laws have been swept aside in favor of what the software industry have gotten from its lobbying of the Congress.

The point is understandable and completely makes sense. Still, I think it's unfair that one should have to keep it forever simply because such a product can be reproduced in an illegal manner by the person who owns it or someone who is able to do it for them. Again, it's understandable, but at the same time unfair that in the end only the seller gets the benefits while the consumer gets stuck. Of couse, one always has the option of avoiding the product all together but that to me is not a solution, simply a lame argument that fixes nothing.

In the end, it's all about how much money the producer of the product can make, one way or another. It's never really about the consumer.

Sure, you can look at it from the one sided view. But then, you can also put it in perspective, and consider both the benefits and the drawback's of Stardock's system, rather than just the drawbacks. There are quite a few things you can do with Stardock's system that you can't do with others that do allow you to re-sell games easier.

For example, if you buy a non-digitally distributed game, if you ever lose the disc or cd key you have to buy a new one. Not so with Stardock, since you can just re-download as many times as you like. This is all at no cost to you, but at a cost to Stardock.

So you decide if it's worth the trade off. Lifetime assurance that you'll never have to worry about losing a cd key/disc, combined with better-than-most update support versus not being able to re-sell. It isn't as if Stardock does the exact same as any other publisher, but adds this restriction on top of it. No, they offer you a perk, and a drawback. They spend extra money on support, and in light of it want to make sure that they know where that support goes.

How 'unfair' that is depends on each individual.

Not really. If you had installation issues, they spent money helping you fix them. If you had patching issues, they spent money getting it fixed.

If the new owner has installation issues, they now have to spend money on the same support that you already got. It's not like they're simply transferred, there's a liability. A risk that they re-incur the same expenses with the new owner that they already had with you.

It may not seem like much, but look at the big picture. Between all of their products, and judging by forum registrations, let's say they have 3 million product users. Even if it costs $5 per person on support, imagine if all 3 million users at one point or another resold their stuff. All the money that Stardock spent on support for the original 3 million now have a chance to be re-incurred with the new 3 million - with no extra revenue to compensate.

Extreme example, yes, but designed to show that even relatively small amounts of money mean a lot with a sufficiently large user base, and they do have to budget for it.

---

This kind of thing doesn't exist anywhere else. As I said above, music, movies don't have any support costs. The studios make them and sell them, and wash their hands of it. There are no costs to maintain it. For electronics, tools, cars, houses, whatever you always pay insurance/warranty. You buy a new shiny TV and want some guarantee of getting a replacement if it breaks within a year or two? You buy a warranty. The manufacturers can afford this from the fact that fewer people need replacements/fixes than the number that pay for the warranty. It's the same in the insurance business. But game publishers have no such system. They have constant out of pocket expenses on support, and the only way to recoup them is original game sales.

You have to look at the whole picture here, not pick out only what's convenient

Isn't material.  Traditionally all property that is transferred to me through sale has been legally held to be fully transfered including the right to resale.  Prior exceptions had typically been made with respect to liens for mortgages and autos and the like. Which must be removed once the loan which is the subject of the lien has been satisfied.

Annatar what I'm referring to is a traditional legal standard within the property law.  A software company can only incur maintenance costs if they choose to do so.  It's voluntary on their part as far as the law is concerned.  No court would uphold that has having any legal preference to negate my property interest that was transferred at the time of the sale.

If what you were saying was legally sufficient they wouldn't need the legal device of limiting the software license to be a single non-transferable license.  Furthermore, in contracts due consideration must exchange hands and there has to be a genuine meeting of the minds between the parties.  I'm surprised noone has brought a class action lawsuit on the software industry over this.

In essence the software industry from a property law point of view has managed to go beyond copyright law and enforce through this licensing mechanism all real property interests to remain with them including everthing that is transfered to me.  In essence even my license to use the software ends up remaining the property of the software company.  It outrageous.  I should have the same right with respect to the money I paid.

Huh???  Ya right.

How so? Stardock only supports the registered copy. The pirated  copies cannot be registered with the same CD key. This is the reason why they can sell their retail games with no DRM.

Annatar: you're talking about extended warranties. Products you buy (such as cars, electronics, etc. already have a warranty attached. You don't need to buy it separate. And you could easily look at support and patches as warranties for software).

As well, yes, your example is extreme, but using extremes is a poor way to argue your point, IMO. The reality is this wouldn't happen in every case and likely in very few (where the specific patching problems and support would be required both for the former user and the new one). I think there's also just as much chance that being able to resell the software would lead to more revenue for Stardock as I noted in my previous posts.

You forgot something I was specifically mentioning this langauge in many software licensing agreements which attempts to claim through the edict of these things the specific llimitation of "non-transferable" license to use.  Just read Microsoft's license agreement I'm pretty sure it has this language.

Furthermore,  I should have the same legal right they've secured for themselves.  Namely slip a license agreement in with my cash that says they have received from me a single non-transferable right to hold my money until I'm done with their software at which time they must either destroy it or return it to me.  It's the same game they've been playing all this time.  Microsoft's and some other company's billions have purchased these laws and made them what they are.

Zyxpsilon, I don't know why you're preaching to the choir here. I never in any way suggested pirates should get support. I'm talking about the ability to sell your game to someone else. All of what you say is well and good, but has nothing to do with selling your copy to another user and they being able to get support for the game.

To break it down: you de-register your copy of the game and sell it to someone else. They buy it, with your old serial key and register it. If you do that, they get support. You don't. If you don't de-register, then they cannot register, so they don't get support.

I fail to see why you're quoting me and then going on about pirates, the price of fuel, banks, and the capitalist system. I have zero sympathy for pirates. That's not at all what I was talking about.