by "Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
Published 05/20/2017 at 19:36
by "Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
Published 05/20/2017 at 19:36
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STARS: 0
At the Goodwill Outlet, everything is sold by the pound. Lots of people try to minimize the weight of their order by removing CDs and DVDs from the cases and leaving behind the cases and manuals. It sucks when you see something you want to buy but there isn’t a disc.
But what about software? The same people will buy just the discs and leave everything else behind, including the lightweight piece of paper that includes the serial number. In that case, if one person buys just the serial number and someone else just buys the disc, who is the legal owner? With games these days it’s quite easy just to enter the serial on Steam or Origin and then download the latest version from their website rather than having to install from the disc and then find the patches, etc.
So, if I have legally purchased the serial number to a program, do I own it even though I don’t have the physical media?
"TheHondaBro" (wwaveform)
05/20/2017 at 19:42, STARS: 0
The lizard people. They own everything.
"dogisbadob" (dogisbadob)
05/20/2017 at 19:49, STARS: 1
jokes on them if they have to activate it :p
"facw" (facw)
05/20/2017 at 19:50, STARS: 0
That’s a big mess. The person who owns the license owns the software (which is somewhat different from either the media or the key). And of course there’s not a ton of case law at this point. The defining case I think is the AutoCAD one:
AutoDesk argued that you couldn’t resell their licenses at all, but the court ruled the first sale doctrine applied, but the issue of what constitutes a license transfer is still not super clear.
"NJAnon" (NJAnon)
05/20/2017 at 20:07, STARS: 0
if they read the EULA then they would have kept the case & manual. (some real cheap people how much does disc case weigh cmon)
The other posts are in correct in the grey area of rules on it since it [owning/using software] hinges on responsibility.
But technically yes if you had the product key and use it, then you’re the current end user.