Goblinright

by on August 22, 2007 · 4 comments

Over at the American, I’ve got a new piece up on the First Sale Doctrine, shrinkwrap licenses, and EFF’s new “promo CD” case. My favorite part was the part I didn’t write:

“Frankly, UMG’s argument reminds me of the one made by the goblin banker in the latest Harry Potter book—that somehow everything made by UMG remains their property forever, even after it is sold or given away,” von Lohmann says. “As readers of the book will recall, that’s not how the law works, not even in the fantasy world of J. K. Rowling.”

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About Tim Lee

Timothy B. Lee (Contributor, 2004-2009) is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He is currently a PhD student and a member of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. He contributes regularly to a variety of online publications, including Ars Technica, Techdirt, Cato @ Liberty, and The Angry Blog. He has been a Mac bigot since 1984, a Unix, vi, and Perl bigot since 1998, and a sworn enemy of HTML-formatted email for as long as certain companies have thought that was a good idea. You can reach him by email at leex1008@umn.edu.

Read more articles by Tim Lee.

  • Chandler

    Should EFF prevail in this case, I wonder if it will have any effect on eBay’s policies.

    My eBay account was suspended for listing Office XP (Student/Teacher Edition). eBay referred me to the following bit of info in their endless policy pages:

    Academic Software, Example:

    Janel purchased an academic version of Microsoft Word from her school bookstore when she was a student. Now, two years after graduation, she wants to sell her copy of Microsoft Word. Unless she verifies with Microsoft that she is allowed to resell her software, she may not list her copy of Word on eBay because it violates eBay’s academic software policy.

    So eBay seems to be of the opinion that I need to get in touch with Microsoft to see if Microsoft will allow me to sell.

  • Chandler

    Should EFF prevail in this case, I wonder if it will have any effect on eBay’s policies.

    My eBay account was suspended for listing Office XP (Student/Teacher Edition).

    eBay referred me to the following bit of info in their endless policy pages:



    Academic Software, Example:



    Janel purchased an academic version of Microsoft Word from her school bookstore when she was a student. Now, two years after graduation, she wants to sell her copy of Microsoft Word. Unless she verifies with Microsoft that she is allowed to resell her software, she may not list her copy of Word on eBay because it violates eBay’s academic software policy.



    So eBay seems to be of the opinion that I need to get in touch with Microsoft to see if Microsoft will allow me to sell.

  • http://weblog.ipcentral.info/ Noel

    Calling the sale of software a “license” is little more than a word game.

    Tim, licensing vs selling software has ramifications for FOSS. Did you consider how your arguments reflect on the effort to standardize licenses to reduce transaction costs for FOSS, and the debate on capturing the spirit of the FOSS community in the GPL.

  • http://weblog.ipcentral.info/ Noel

    Calling the sale of software a “license” is little more than a word game.

    Tim, licensing vs selling software has ramifications for FOSS. Did you consider how your arguments reflect on the effort to standardize licenses to reduce transaction costs for FOSS, and the debate on capturing the spirit of the FOSS community in the GPL.

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