Software EULA's; Private Resale and the law

An important court ruling in the United States has much wider implications for users then they know; if you think buying that old copy of software such as an older version of Adobe Photoshop from an auction or because a company is going out of business think again.  The US court as passed a ruling which could change everything.  The case is Vernor v. Autodesk is what set the president.  Autodesk was trying to keep Vernor from reselling software he got from a an architects office sale.  So for those of you selling software you purchased on Kijiji, EBay and Craigslist read this carefully!  In the Software EULA's such as in Autodesk and Electronic Arts's you can not transfer the software license, even if you physically own the disk and have a ligament serial number.

This ruling will probably have the following effect in the future:

1. specifies that the user is granted a license or life time subscription
2. significantly restricts the user’s ability to transfer the software or digital media
3. imposes notable use restrictions

With this ruling I think you will start seeing a lot more EULA's and more notably digital media EULA's more emphasizing the purchaser as the licensee.  In essence this will end any ownership of digital media and software unless your the one holding the copyright to said item.  What does this mean for reselling computers?  Do you have to format that old windows 2000 machine or iMac and install linux if you want to sell it? (Ok that's not such a bad thing - I am referring to the installing LINUX folks!)  So what we have to do now is lobby our governments to allow for the transfer of these digital licensed.  For example if you father has a huge iTunes library and dies, you would not be allowed to take those songs any of them you wanted you would have to re-buy them; where if they were a physical disk they would be yours to do with as you wished.  What if someone bought a private company do you have to re-buy all the software because the software is technically licensed under the former owner?

I would like to think our governments can be trusted to handle these kind of issues, but based on their track records with copyright laws such as the DMCA in the US and Bill C-32 here in Canada and the ACTA Treaty I don't have much faith.  Write your elected representative, and let's make sure that our consumer writes are being protected because right now there not.

Read Arstechnica article

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Governments and Software

I came across an interesting issue yesterday. Did you know that if you wanted to apply for a position in the Government or a government agency like Alberta Health Services you have to be on a computer running Internet Explorer and Windows. The requested file format for resumes is Word Document Format ".doc". This in my opinion is just wrong for three reasons.

1) Not everyone can afford Microsoft Office and Not Everyone has it.  With the crackdown on pirated software and the cost involved for purchasing a retail license of Microsoft Office is $150.00.  That is alot of money.

2) Not everyone has Windows. There are a lot of people out their that don't use Windows. Windows may have the most market share for operating systems but it should be a requirement to apply for a job online not with Today's Technology.

3) Internet Explorer.  Internet Explorer doesn't comply with web standards and restricting people to an insecure, obsolete browser is not safe and is bad technology policy.

I believe Governments should be using open source software such as Ubuntu, Suse, Fedeora, and other varieties of Linux and BSD/Unix technologies.  For one reason it keeps the cost down, you don't have the huge licensing issues of running Windows or Mac OS. With everything being moved to server (cloud) based applications, all you need is a browser. Most of the Free Operating Systems come with Open Office Pre-Installed so you don't have to purchase Microsoft Office and 99% of the time Open Office is compatible with Microsoft Office Formats.

Now I'm not being Anti-Microsoft here, there are some things Windows will have to be used for, such as some cad programs, graphics, etc, but for word processing and spread sheets Open Office should be able to handle most if not all the work load.  As for the thing that set off this little blog post of mine the Job Submission for Alberta Health Services, I will be trying to get in touch with someone to get that fixed.  They are discriminating against anyone that doesn't use a Windows based machine and that's just wrong.

Posted via email from The OptionKey Blog