How so? Stardock only supports the registered copy. The pirated  copies cannot be registered with the same CD key. This is the reason why they can sell their retail games with no DRM.

Annatar: you're talking about extended warranties. Products you buy (such as cars, electronics, etc. already have a warranty attached. You don't need to buy it separate. And you could easily look at support and patches as warranties for software).

As well, yes, your example is extreme, but using extremes is a poor way to argue your point, IMO. The reality is this wouldn't happen in every case and likely in very few (where the specific patching problems and support would be required both for the former user and the new one). I think there's also just as much chance that being able to resell the software would lead to more revenue for Stardock as I noted in my previous posts.

ZubaZ needs to refresh this page more offten.

You forgot something I was specifically mentioning this langauge in many software licensing agreements which attempts to claim through the edict of these things the specific llimitation of "non-transferable" license to use.  Just read Microsoft's license agreement I'm pretty sure it has this language.

Furthermore,  I should have the same legal right they've secured for themselves.  Namely slip a license agreement in with my cash that says they have received from me a single non-transferable right to hold my money until I'm done with their software at which time they must either destroy it or return it to me.  It's the same game they've been playing all this time.  Microsoft's and some other company's billions have purchased these laws and made them what they are.

Yes... but, that WAS the whole reasoning behind such an argument.

SD is in no obligation to provide support to any other than those who actually paid for the stuff - as to when a pirated copy gets transfered (or even re-sold bootlegged or by any other means - making the practice ILLEGAL if not highly corruptive to the entire economic schema expected from a *manufacturer* standpoint) to a second 'buyer' (ad-infinitum, btw) - that specific person is NOT entitled to receive proper support since they didn't BUY that right or privilege.

Hence, pirated copies are not allowed to be supported (i doubt anyone would deny this fact *other* than those making a gain from such situations).

BUT illegal copies erode the potential profits of SD and, indirectly, ruin any future perspectives for deserved support to those honest people who bought a single legal copy.

Forget the 'registration' principles here for a moment and try to think in abstract terms; sales are lost, money is wasted and the criminals steal property DIRECTLY from my hopes of getting SD to develop better and enhanced software which i would purchase if i ever decide or need to.

Now, in common LAW - theft is punishable because it is the right thing to do.

Why should a game (on CD or otherwise) be any different?

Once again, i have no choice but to blame the whole 'Capitalism agenda' and its free-market companion for the essence of what criminality does.

Checked the price of fuel, lately?

What about your bank account fees?

Or the latest US plan to rescue 'failing' investment schemas out of tax-payers money?

Where were we when the big fat & ugly banks (8 majors in Canada alone, btw) were declaring billions worth of *profit* every three months for how many years.

And i shouldn't be condemning any pirate for illegally copying the very game(s) i bought upfront in hard-earned cash from SD!

Gimme a break.

Zyxpsilon, I don't know why you're preaching to the choir here. I never in any way suggested pirates should get support. I'm talking about the ability to sell your game to someone else. All of what you say is well and good, but has nothing to do with selling your copy to another user and they being able to get support for the game.

To break it down: you de-register your copy of the game and sell it to someone else. They buy it, with your old serial key and register it. If you do that, they get support. You don't. If you don't de-register, then they cannot register, so they don't get support.

I fail to see why you're quoting me and then going on about pirates, the price of fuel, banks, and the capitalist system. I have zero sympathy for pirates. That's not at all what I was talking about.

How's that any different than the support the original user might need installing the legal copy on a new system? This "new owners incur expenses that old owners don't" thing doesn't really make sense to me.

Installing issues usually ouccur only once per user.

Also you dont download all the patches more than a few times.

So if the new user has installing issues and downloads all the patches, SD has to pay for additional support.

Also you have another one downloading and using impusle whitout paying aynthing.

Not to mention that nothing stops you from keeping a fully patched copy of the game somewhere.

Reselling of software simply fails for practical reason.

SD could implement a system to transfer license. But i do not see how this could be done cost effective.

And a big difference between software and music cd is that you dont need to make copies of the music to play it and there is no way to make the user to sign an eula. Which means the most users of music cds dont even make copies that they could keep after selling the original one.

Depending on what you're playing it on, yes, you do make copies. Remember, loading something from hard drive to RAM is copying for copyright purposes, so playing music at all on a computer requires copying. So do most mp3 players. I don't know about you, but I have portions of nearly every CD I own ripped onto my computer. So I could easily sell the CD and keep the copy.

Holding a customer's hand through the process of 'support' is something the CUSTOMER may be entitled to.

The person the on-seller sells his copy to is NOT a customer and thus cannot expect support.

Games/software is definitely NOT the first comodity that has non-transferable warranty.

About the only 'reasonable' way the second buyer could garner support would be to have the customer/seller request it as the 'registered purchaser'.

The only alternative to this is to have separate 'costs'.

Buy the game for $10....and be required to purchase updates/patches AND assistance as required.....then it'd matter little exactly who was seeking [and paying for] support....so then and ONLY then no-one loses, not even the software co. ....

I see this all the time, it's crap.

This is an argument for Stardock to have non-transferable user accounts so that they only provide support to the original purchaser.  It is not an argument for resale to be illegal.  It is also not an argument for patches to be secured so they don't leak out.  Stardock incurs no costs in patching resales if those patches are taken off third party file servers that make money by selling advertising space.  Stardock incurs cost only if Stardock directly does something for a specific user.

Because something can be abused, something should be illegal.  What in life doesn't that cover?  I can murder people with a toaster.  A toaster is heavy, I can put it in a sack and bludgeon people to death.  I can plug it in and drop it in someone's bath.  A toaster can start fires, even trigger explosions.  I can disconnect gas lines, put a piece of paper in the toaster and blow up their house.  Toasters are lethal in multiple ways, capable of massive destruction with little effort.  Compared to the paltry excuses against resale of software, why aren't toasters illegal?

Furthermore, the difference between a chair and a piece of software isn't that you have to pay to fix your chair when you break it.  It's that your chair isn't broken when you buy it.

Just because you choose to ignore the fundamental differences between software and other commodities doesn't mean the gibberish you posted has any relevance to the discussion, or any relation to what you quoted.

For one thing, nothing you quoted (or anything I posted in this thread) had any references to the legality of transferring keys and, in fact, discusses why a standardized (as in, formally offered by Stardock) system for transfers is not a fit for Stardock's system.

Overgeneralizations don't help you much either. If you buy a game which does not work and support is unable to get it to work, you are allowed to return it and you'll even get refunded the retail price (so Stardock eats a loss, if you bought it retail). Now, having a bug does not constitute a "broken" game, so that no longer holds.

Perhaps you should read your post again?  You specifically said resale should not be allowed.  The topic is whether or not resale should be allowed.  I said your post doesn't make an argument against resale and indirect support availability, only against transferring accounts so Stardock directly deals with the costs.

The arrogance of the software industry, it's systemic and I can't blame the individual developers but it's still bullshit.  Either something is broken, or it isn't.  There is no inbetween.  If Sins occasionally crashes, it's broken.  If it were a car, Stardock would have four chances to fix Sins, if I had more than four problems, the same problem four times, or any combination thereof, I would be entitled to a new, perfectly functioning copy, or a full refund.  If an actual car occasionally stopped working, it would cost the car company millions every time it caused a wreck.

The industry has refused to set and abide by standards to keep things simple.  They are, in effect, designed to be broken.  Instead of solving that, hopefully in the opposite direction Mac took, they decided to write licensing agreements that excuse them from any liability for all the defects they so rarely manage to clean up before sale.  Why do you think those caveats are in there, just to look nice?  Most companies try to excuse themselves from you being a complete moron and doing something really stupid, like putting your head in the vice or playing your radio in the bathtub.  Software companies tend to excuse themselves from everything, and then gift you with whatever quality of support they deem you worthy of.

Oh, but i do get the whole thing -don't worry.

It's just that to me, there's a very thin line between someone *selling* out their copy to another person when that opportunity is lost for SD to receive "new dollars" input from the freshly registered extra copy when anyone would really buy it from them instead of you - or getting it all free from a Pirated copy.

I sure have a knack for exaggeration though, i'll admit.

True. If you have installation issues on a previous computer  for a legal copy, you know/remember how it was resolved. If you have again installation issue on a new computer for the same legal copy, there are lots of chances that you will first try what was useful for fixing the previous issues before needing to contact the support. 

I don't need to re-read my posts, but you do. There's a big difference between Stardock not allowing transfer of serials (the only limitation they put on re-sale) and all software re-sales being illegal, as you went off trying to create some non-sensical argument about toasters

Why is it that everyone always pulls out something convenient for them and always ignores everything else? This comparison is flawed in many ways. A more valid comparison is between a highway and a PC. A single car depends only on its own parts to work. A game depends on many things to "work" - including other software that the developer has no control over, and other hardware that the developer has no control over. Already, a direct comparison between a car and a game is not possible. Enter the highway. If you're driving on the highway and another car hits you and you crash, does that mean your car was "broken" to begin with because it has a chance of crashing? No, it crashes because something influenced it. Same with games. They run on PCs which have many hardware configurations, many apps and services running at the same time, and much as a single driver on the highway has no control of what other cars do, games have no control over what other software (including Windows) does. The game can run absolutely flawlessly on several developer systems (in essense, using its own parts), but drop it in the middle of a highway (thousands of other PC configurations) and just like driving a car on a highway, crashes become a possibility.

The vast majority of PC game crashes are various driver conflicts, Windows goofs, or weird device conflicts. This doesn't happen with console games, is it because Console developers are somehow more blessed than PC developers? No, it's because they're developing for a system that does ONE thing and one thing only - run their game. And all such systems are the same. If all PC software and hardware becomes standardized (as in, you can only get one "PC" and everyone's PC is the same), you will see this with PC games as well, because it eliminates everything the developers have no control over.

I am in the camp of people that believe software should be just like books. I can let my friend borrow my book and read it, but I can't copy it and give it away or sell it, but I can sell the original to somebody else if I no longer want it. Why shouldn't software be the same way?

The reason has already been told: transfering the game does not bring any profit to the company. There may be this possibility, but it would require changes in the shopping system. You can not transfer the account, because you may have more licences  than the game you want to sell. To modify the whole system would cost money. And someone would had to pay for that. The result would be more expensive games for everyone - even if only few people really would use this option.

While this is all true, I would argue that horneraa's scenario actually is currently an accurate model for software. If you give your friend your retail copy of Sins, he can install and play it on his computer. He gets exactly what you got when you bought it (again with the obvious exception of the ability to register and update). By the same token, if you give him your copy of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, he gets to read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Books are not generally updated or patched, so he won't get to read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe unless you choose to give him your copy of that too.

I believe that there are good arguments for not reselling software but let me take it one step more.

If you like a game, don't you want to reward the company so that they make more games?  Reselling a game you liked instead of forcing a new sale distorts the metrics that go into the question of "Do we make more things like X or do we have to close up shop?"

Right, I think what most people forget (in relation to Stardock) is that the only thing they limit is the support. They don't care if you re-sell your disc. And it will work just fine. But they offer support only to the original owner (or whoever first registers, if it's not the original owner, which can happen).

In essense, they're making sure that they are servicing one person per one copy of the game sold - which I do not believe is at all unreasonable, especially considering the various perks of Stardock's system in general.