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Comment by derefr | Hacker News Reader

What does the European ruling imply for services like Steam, that will sell you a game license-key, but in a way where that key is bound to your particular Steam account? Does it force such keys to be transferrable in Europe? Or force the licensing server to have a "transfer of ownership" API such that it will revoke one key and generate another for the new owner?

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I think that this is the big question! I actually started an auction site based on allowing EU users to resell their Steam games (and ios/google play apps) b/c I think due to the Oracle v UsedSoft ruling Steam users should be able to resell their Steam game keys. However, b/c there is no mechanism to transfer keys (or ios apps) between users, there wasn't much my startup could do.

There was an attempt in Germany to sue Steam to allow users to resell their entire Steam account(1). However, that effort failed. I think they should have pursued a case that focused on allowing Steam users to resell individual games. There may still be a court case that could be won that focuses on reselling the individual games keys between users.

I think in the EU though there could be some debate about whether games are considered "software". Only software is covered by Oracle v UsedSoft as I recall.

(1) https://theundisciplined.com/2014/03/20/losing-steam-is-used...

I think you may be reading too much into all of this.

Oracle sued alleging copyright violation. The ECJ ruled that what UsedSoft was doing was not a copyright violation.

Applying that to Steam, it would imply that if I sold someone my Steam key for a game I had purchased I would not be violating copyright. It does not necessarily imply that Steam has to make or allow the key to work for the buyer. That's out of scope for copyright law.

The UsedSoft v Oracle case is specifically about and whether or not a licensee can resell the software they have purchased.

"On 3 July 2012, the ECJ handed down its landmark decision in UsedSoft GmbH v Oracle International Corp (C-128/11), ruling that the owner of copyright in software cannot prevent a perpetual licensee who has downloaded the software from the internet from selling his ‘used’ licence. This decision has significant implications for the software and other digital industries." [1]

[1] http://www.linklaters.com/Insights/Publication1403Newsletter...

Yes, the copyright owner cannot prevent the licensee from selling the license, but the copyright owner also does not have any obligation to continue hosting a cloud service, to authenticate the existing license on a different account using their cloud service, or to otherwise assist the licensee in transferring the license.

But they might be under an obligation to not build licensing infrastructure into their software that bound licenses to accounts in the first place, in a way that technically prevented users from transferring them. That could be seen as a form of DRM restricting users from reselling something they're legally able to re-sell, and the courts would Not Like That, for the same reason they don't like things like warranties not transferring on resale.

In principle it could. It depends on how much of this is followed by governments or interested third parties (through courts).

For example many countries started to require that mobile phone numbers should be transferable between carriers and mandated the carriers to build an infrastructure for this.

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