Very diverse.
Official website
It is mainly a talking shop because national governments want to minimise its power, but it does come up with sensible ideas from time to time.
A company makes a product (physical or digital) and sells it with the understanding that there will be certain ongoing costs, and that they can control those costs as part of the sale. For example they can include support, or not, and free upgrades, or not. They can set limits on patching, like Microsoft does for example, or set limits on the number of simultaneous connections to an online service from a single copy of the product. The local laws that allow markets to function may place additional restrictions, such as inherent warranty of usefulness for advertised purpose, or whatever, but those are the known costs of doing business in a well regulated market.
If I resell a product Iāve purchased to a third party, the cost for the original producer does not go up. Not in the real world. Not even if I sell it after I broke it. Once the original producer has sold a few hundred copies, differences in users will inevitably average out.
But digital products have a starkly limited lifespan. I have rather a lot of physical tools, and many of them are very old. Some well over a hundred years old, and still working perfectly (Iām not a collector, I use my tools). But I donāt have any computer software from even 35 years ago that still works, and most proprietary, closed-source software from ten years ago is useless now. Yet I have tools from several vendors that are over 50 years old that carry a 100% satisfaction guaranteeā¦ I broke a Craftsman socket wrench that I got from my father, who got it from his grandfather, and Sears replaced it with a slightly better one, no questions asked. Itās one of the costs involved in selling high end tools.
This idea that resale of software objects with inherently limited usefulness and lifespan is somehow a special case that should not be allowed by the law seems fundamentally absurd and anti-human to me. I mean, I understand the reasons for (very limited) copyrights, but I donāt understand how anyone can be against the doctrine of first sale.
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No.Ā
this shortening to life and 50 years thing and how it relates to the Beatles? Is it Stu Sutcliffe weāre talking about here?!?
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