Reselling Sonar...

I read that article too - very interesting.  To a large extent I have a lot of sympathy with the publishers working in the digital domain.  The relative ease with which illegal transfers can be made has a huge impact on revenue streams, and without a working control process the restrictions they are working with such as simply preventing any resale makes sense.

What I think is more interesting is the secondary question: if the technical challenges around piracy were removed, would the publishers still wish to prevent resale?  And I'm not sure that they would, because again it ultimately still reduces their revenue in the same way that physical media does.

It would be irritating, but we could be asked to authenticate software at some interval perhaps through a keygen or other online validation.  A quick ping to cakewalk and my Sonar is authenticated against my account for another month.  If I sell it on the new user takes the ID and licence, and when I next try to authenticate it fails.

For Cakewalk though they get my money only once, and they don't get anything for Mr New.  Plus, what happens when I decide I want to upgrade to Sonar X3?  At that point maybe I have to buy an entirely new copy at full retail, while lucky Mr New just pays the $100 for the upgrade.  But really, that's the same problem everyone has in the physical world with cars, tv's or anything else.

For music files, and possibly ebooks, the other alternative is to licence for a specific period of time (bit like the bbc iPlayer model).  At termination you either renew for a nominal fee or the file expires.

Either way it's going to be a long process to figure out, and as ever the legal teams will make the most!

mgh


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19842851 Although about the sale of digital copies of mp3, this could have implications for resales of ANY digital software,which of course is one of the Sonar bugbears. Interesting that this seems to have been legally allowed in Europe. I've always wondered why CW don't have a system of being able to pay to transfer a license, restricting cheaper upgrades for those licenses to make it fair.

The recent European court ruling brought up in a case between Oracle and UsedSoft found that not only could Oracle not oppose the sale they had no right to charge a fee to transfer the license either.
 
Moreover if the first person transfered everything to the new owner they would be entitled to exactly the same benefits bestowed on the first user.  IOW any updates bugfixes and anything else that constituted part of the first sale.
 
It means legally you can sell used software in Europe and have been able to since that case was found, the onus now is on the vendor to contest it.
 
Currently though a vendor may indeed refuse the transfer and then you'd have to take them to court.
 
Anyone wanna try it?...
 
 
Aside from the legal standpoint there is also a personal moral issue in that Sonar's license states that you agreed not to re-sell at install time.