I'm surprised this guy is getting slammed. Quite frankly I agree with him in that it does cost developers money. Games should have non-transfer clauses just like other software.. and it's ironic that the same people attacking the OP would jump to the defense of any software company if some dude was trying to lets say.. resell their copy of Photoshop or 3ds Max.
For this practice to be allowed there has to be nothing in the game licensing itself that precludes transfer of that license. Calling it stealing is only true if they are indeed violating a no-transfer agreement.
Absolutely, and I don't know if you intended to include me with your comment about "slamming" the OP, but it certainly wasn't my intention to do so -- to my mind I presented a rational set of arguments detailing my opinion that
a) second-hand trade offers some benefit to developers, and
b) the approach to solving the "problem" of second-hand sales described in the OP might actually do more harm than good -- you'll note I listed quite a few alternatives. I'd also like to briefly note that the original post has been edited since I responded and was originally more sensational, mentioning amongst other things "sending an f&*% you letter to the owners of GameStop". If I were responding to the current, more reasonable-sounding version of the OP I would probably have chosen less strong wording -- phrases like calling the issue a "non problem" were specifically chosen to match the tone of the post I was responding to, and given a more reasonable post to respond to I might now have acknowledged that there is an issue, but that it may not be as extreme as is being presented.
I don't think anyone has questioned the idea that trade in second-hand titles costs developers money, and it would be pretty hard to dispute that it does. I don't however agree that you can equate what GameStop and similar retailers do to "stealing" though, and I do think it's notable that the second-hand trade does offer some benefit to developers; I wouldn't claim to have any metric as to the value of that benefit or if it outweighs the cost, but as long as the practice of trading second-hand remains legal I consider it somewhat foolish to sling insults at those traders and bemoan the loss of sales.
What is legally wrong is to cling to the belief that just because you have a disc and own it, that you ALWAYS have the ability to legally resell it. That isn't correct.. at least not in the United States. Publishers will lose out on money if consumers are buying their game second-hand. If they want to prevent this they need to license the product in a way that gives them a legal countermeasure to prevent reselling.
Absolutely, and were I offering an informed legal opinion I might have thought to include that as a big "#1" in my list of suggestions to reduce resales.
As things currently stand however, games
aren't generally licensed that way, and so once again we're back to the point that calling what second-hand retailers do "stealing" is incorrect. Perhaps games
should have that sort of licencing, although I for one sincerely hope that if such an approach is taken they take measures to make it clear on the
outside of the packaging that re-selling the product will not be allowed; it might be legal to enforce licencing conditions from a click-through agreement after the disk has been purchased, but in my personal opinion doing so without making it clear before the purchase is pretty dodgy morally.
