CDs and the rights thereto

From: Mike Ford <mikeford_at_socal.rr.com>
Date: Tue Feb 11 05:56:00 2003

>In the US? If so, you bought them, and you have a legal right to sell
>them. This isn't even subject to any sort of license; the ownership



>However, you (or any party to whom you sell the media) might or might
>not have any right to *use* the software. This hinges on whether you
>can run the software from CD or must first copy it to a hard drive,


>[*] The prohibition on software rental was strongly pushed by the
>publishers of video game cartridges. The law was passed, but
>ironically video game cartridges are exempted and may be rented!

This rental thing always puzzled me, I mean whats to stop me from selling
something with a no questions asked return with say a $3 restocking fee. It
isn't called rental, but I don't see 10 cents difference, or how it could
be prohibited.

As far as games go, the rights can be weird. I was looking to put up a
couple internet game joints, with like 50 high end PCs and a fast
connection etc. Turns out you have license the games AS WELL AS BUY THEM,
and it aint cheap, ie Blizzard chardges about $5,000 a year for what I
planned to do.

Regarding the CDs I can say flat out for sure the intellectual property
owner can shut down any sales and get pretty nasty along with it. Case in
point a CD plant goes belly up and somebody buys a pallet of CDs. Turns out
in the pallet of misc there are several hundred Apple Dealer Service CDs
with diagnostic software and fully installable OS for all recent machines.
Shortly after some bozo bought one and tried to register it with Apple, the
Apple Lawyers were all over the poor guy selling them.

Auctions make for some weird issues. Leased equipment gets sold, all sorts
of snafu.
Received on Tue Feb 11 2003 - 05:56:00 GMT