Calling all KVR lawyers, pro or amateur, about license transfer within EU

[IncarnateX]

.....

Hink please understand that I do not own FL studio but only a bunch of VSTis and I am not putting anything for sale until I am sure myself tha it is all right. That is the main reason for seeking advice with lawyers. What Ben do is secondary but I certainly do not agree with you on this. Of course it is Ben call to "respect" any illegal EULA he wants to just like it is his call to host warez if he wanted to, but that is just a fact and not a justification. If it is legal to resell within EU and KVR does not allow it, e.g. lock up the thread as if the sellers were selling warez, then KVR has lost it in my book. What I need is a lawyer to convince me otherwise.

You are welcome to discuss it, but it is not the discussion I am looking for.

[Hink]

.....

Hink please understand that I do not own FL studio but only a bunch of VSTis and I am not putting anything for sale until I am sure myself tha it is all right. That is the main reason for seeking advice with lawyers. What Ben do is secondary but I certainly do not agree with you on this. Of course it is Ben call to "respect" any illegal EULA he wants to just like it is his call to host warez if he wanted to, but that is just a fact and not a justification. If it is legal to resell within EU and KVR does not allow it, e.g. lock up the thread as if the sellers were selling warez, then KVR has lost it in my book. What I need is a lawyer to convince me otherwise.

You are welcome to discuss it, but it is not the discussion I am looking for.

apologies

[IncarnateX]

apologies

No problem Mate. At least you show some concern and that is much appreciated.

[tony tony chopper]

I doubt their annual turnover is 6 figures let alone their legal budget Laughing

It's well known that we wipe our asses with 100eur bills.

I'd like to know about the law too, because I'd like to resell most of the iPad crap that I bought without any demo to try out first.
This is Apple we're talking of, they do have armies of lawyers & will certainly know better.

Anyone has found related articles? If there is such a law it should be a pretty big deal to them. I only found this:
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/07/europe ... tal-games/
What's sure is that if there was such a law out there, it would be well known, because it would affect giant distribution platforms, at a much much bigger scale than audio software. But I'm not seeing it discussed anywhere. If such a law exists in europe, I doubt it's specific to audio software (or software at all, as it should apply to music & books as well).

[chokehold]

Well, I'm not a lawyer or law student, so I apologize for partaking right away.

I am a German (and thereby EU) citizen though, and the 'case' is clear:

The already ruling EU law says, not quoted directly: by buying a personalized license, the right to re-sell this personal license to someone else is not lapsed/dead/extinct. (whatever the right word is)

So by buying a license that's person-specific, like just about everything that's licensed to user's accounts at developer websites, you as a buyer DO get the right to re-sell the software license to someone else at least once.

It is completely irrelevant what the developers claim in their EULA, because buyer-seller contracts cannot stand above ruling law.

Remember how it is with OEM software ... KVR claims that selling/buying OEM software is illegal. The fact is: here in Germany it's not, because ruling law says (again, not quoted) that software MUST NOT be made exclusive to a specific set of hardware.

That means: your license of Windows 7 MUST NOT be made exclusively usable on this one CPU, mainboard and GFX card combo you might have going on, but you MUST have the right to sell the license and use it on another set of hardware. Not at the same time, but after an upgrade, for instance.

Windows calls it "activating", that means it phones home to MS to tell them what CPU serial, HDD serial, GFX card serial etc. it is being activated on.

I myself have bought an OEM version (I think the correct name was System Builder) of Windows 7 here in Germany, installed it on my old system and used it for a year or two, and then upgraded my system to better hardware.

As the license was "bundled" to my old system by activating it on it, of course it didn't activate on the new set of hardware I had. I contacted Microsoft, they told me "everything's fine ... contact the one you bought it from, he is forced to issue you a new license". So I did contact the guy who sold me this OEM version, and he did issue me a new OEM license to use on my new hardware.

Also, this ruling "OEM law" makes it LEGAL in Germany to install OSX on non-Apple hardware, even though Apple request otherwise in their EULA. Building and using a so-called "Hackintosh" is NOT ILLEGAL in Germany.

And why?
Because the law says so.
It is completely irrelevant that the DVD has some "not licensed for resale" blurb printed on it and that the Win7 and OSX EULA state otherwise.



So, back to topic, where the fact is:
We have an active and ruling EU law, that explicitly rules personal licensing inside the EU, granting at least first-buyers to re-sell their licenses.

I haven't checked, but I'm sure the legal text has been linked here or in the other thread. If not, tell me, I'll dig it out (multi-language) for you.

In other words:
I as a European citizen have the LEGAL RIGHT to sell my personalized licences for software that comes from companies residing in Europe, such as -for example- Image Line who sit in Belgium, if I'm informed correctly.

Cakewalk and Apple for example are U.S. companies, so I'm pretty sure this EU law doesn't concern them because, well, the U.S. is not the EU.

But it's completely irrelevant what Image Line may say in their EULA, or however their support or people around KVR (always thought 'tony tony chopper' was IL?) might campaign it.

Image Line (just for example, all other EU-based companies as well) have to obey this ruling EU law and let their customers sell their personalized licenses at least once.

This also gets very interesting when it comes to things like Valve's Steam service.

The thing is: they don't want to let us sell our licenses.
Of course.
Letting people sell their unwanted stuff makes fewer new sales.

So I'm pretty sure that unless some EU citizen like myself goes the official route by 1) requesting permission to sell at IL, 2) receiving denial from IL and 3) contacting a lawyer to go before court with this case ... absolutely nothing is going to happen.
Nada, zilch, naught.

Anyone feel like the chosen one...?




Another big factor is that KVR is a U.S. based website, yes, but its users come from all around the world. I and a lot of others I've come across here over the years live inside the EU, not the U.S.

U.S. laws do not apply to us.
EU laws do.

Plainly going by "EU citizens can't sell their licenses for software of EU-based companies because the companies might say so in their EULA" and locking threads with the justification of "dunno." isn't the right approach.

After all, if I as a EU citizen wish to sell my license for a product of a EU-based company to another EU citizen ... then that is my legal right - inside the EU.
No need to lock or ban or "administer" otherwise - inside the EU.
Don't know how that relates to "EU transactions over U.S. website" though.

Maybe it's possible for KVR to say "no EU transfers on our U.S. based website". // EDIT: transfers = sales
Maybe it's not.
Maybe KVR have to allow EU transfers and deal with them.
Maybe they don't.
...
I don't know.

I think this matter of "EU transactions over a U.S. website" should be discussed between KVR and their lawyers, as I don't want to make assumptions here.

Just to be clear: I'm not suggesting KVR and their admins/mods are doing anything wrong, and especially not doing it deliberately!
I'm just saying KVR should be law-wise secured in this international legal mix-up, so in our collective interest... "guys behind KVR", please clarify what's the right thing for you to do.

[whyterabbyt]

Remember how it is with OEM software ... KVR claims that selling/buying OEM software is illegal.

no it doesnt.

[tony tony chopper]

I am a German (and thereby EU) citizen though, and the 'case' is clear:

so how do you resell iTunes stuff in germany?

[chokehold]

Remember how it is with OEM software ... KVR claims that selling/buying OEM software is illegal.

no it doesnt.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=246502

[chokehold]

I am a German (and thereby EU) citizen though, and the 'case' is clear:

so how do you resell iTunes stuff in germany?

I don't use iTunes.

EDIT:
Please be aware that I only use Image Line as a prime example. There are other European companies and services as well who are either not aware or in denial of this law. I'm not pointing a finger in one direction, just giving an example as 1) others have named Image Line in their rants before and 2) I'm personally affected by having [EDIT: legally owning] IL software.

[Kriminal]

I don't use iTunes.

[ostfront]

Maybe it's possible for KVR to say "no EU transfers on our U.S. based website". // EDIT: transfers = sales
Maybe it's not.
Maybe KVR have to allow EU transfers and deal with them.
Maybe they don't.
...
I don't know.

Well, obviously, kvr is under US jurisdiction, i.e. under US law. Besides, kvr has no way to check whether any potential buyers or sellers are from the EU or not. So...

[whyterabbyt]

Remember how it is with OEM software ... KVR claims that selling/buying OEM software is illegal.

no it doesnt.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=246502

See who started that thread? I think I know what I was saying. And nowhere do I say 'its illegal to buy/sell OEM software'. Noone does, its a straw man. The thread was a warning about websites selling fake 'OEM versions', and explicitly says so.

So for the second time in a week, I'll direct someone to read the following, which is in the first post of that thread, for someone who's trying to use that thread as a straw man:

EDIT (for those who would rather miss the point than think a little bit about why this is referring to links to 'OEM' versions of full software like Logic or Cubase)

This post pertains to the allegedly 'OEM' versions of current, fully-featured full-version software that folk find being sold for ridiculously low prices online, on sites which sell nothing else. In other words, to sites selling warez.

Not that you werent told that first time around in the original thread.

[ostfront]

Not that you werent told that first time around in the original thread.

You can't expect that everyone will read everything that's being posted here. No need to get so involved and emotional! It's a legal mess - people constantly inventing rules and other people constantly finding ways to break or circumvent them - and no amount of forum hostility is going to solve this.

[whyterabbyt]

Not that you werent told that first time around in the original thread.

You can't expect that everyone will read everything that's being posted here.

chokehold posted in that thread when that was active three years ago. he's being deliberately disingenuous by referring to it here, because he knows that it was talking about something else entirely.
in fact, he made the deliberate misrepresentations in the thread, attributing quotes to me that were from someone else.

No need to get so involved and emotional!

Its neither. Someone was deliberately mispresenting what I said in an attempt to manipulate this thread. Since, as you say, 'you can't expect that everyone will read everything that's being posted here', people were likely to take that misrepresentation at face value. I interjected to prevent that.

What chokehold asserted was false, and the basis for it was a deliberate misrepresentation of something he had already had corrected. Take from that what you will.

It's a legal mess - people constantly inventing rules and other people constantly finding ways to break or circumvent them - and no amount of forum hostility is going to solve this.

Frustration isnt hostility. But this is the second time in a week that someone has tried to pass off that same thread in that manner. Im not going to read someone deliberately misrepresenting me and not do anything about it, thanks.

[kmonkey]

I'd like to know about the law too, because I'd like to resell most of the iPad crap that I bought without any demo to try out first.

Knowing your nature and attitude, and by seeing how many times you pissed on your customers because they bought your product without trying it first - i am finding above statement a bit bold and ironic..