First sale doctrine gets tossed

[thewayne]

This really sucks. Once upon a time a guy tried to sell some copies of AutoCad on eBay. They had been legally purchased. They were no longer being used on the computers that they had been bought for. You'd think there's no problem with this, right?

Wrong.

It used to be that we had something called First Sale Doctrine. Basically: you buy something from me, and you now own it, and I have no say what you subsequently do after I'm paid. It applies to books, movies, cars, whatever. The maker of AutoCad, Autodesk, sued. And now, unless this gets overturned by a higher court, you may never be able to buy used copies of software, music, movies, etc. Heck, this could affect used book stores.

And yet another bizarre aspect of this is the concept of shrinkwrap click-through licenses. The guy who was trying to sell them had never opened or installed the software, therefore had never agreed to any sort of contract with Autodesk.

This sucks. The ruling directly applies to computer software but could easily be applied to other media.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/first-sale-doctrine/

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/09/10/210243/Court-Says-First-Sale-Doctrine-Doesnt-Apply-To-Licensed-Software

Comments

[silveradept]

The key distinction they're making in this case is that the EULA of AutoCAD says that you can't resell it, and so whomever those copies were first sold to was bound by that license, since, as we all know, nobody actually owns software, they're all just licensees for use. So the first person committed a license violation and so the second person has no standing to do what he did.

That's their argument, anyway, and that will probably hold up, considering the precedent is that no matter how restrictive or stupid the EULA is, it's enforceable.

It shouldn't affect physical media, that is, unless book publishers and The Cabals decide that you're just licensees when you buy books and discs or digital files from iTunes.