New EU laws effect EA, Origin and further SWTOR?

I agree in principal on your points. However, we donot agree to a User Agreement when we buy a car. So it is also a matter of honor with yourself. Like a handshake.

For MMOs it's more like a lease though, I think the car company might get pissed if you went and sold your leased car

Piracy is illegally copying the game without paying for it. Selling a used game is selling a property you purchased to another party.

You are allowed to create a backup of digitally downloaded content. Before this ruling, you were not allowed to sell it. Basically, because it didn't have a physical representation game companies acted like it was their property that they allowed you to download and play for a price but attempted to retain all rights to it.

If you create a backup and sell it, but continue to play the game from your computer, you are now engaged in piracy.

The account, per most MMO EULA's, remains the property of the company. Now, however, you can transfer ownership of the game in the EU. This does NOT seem to give you the right to the account itself, however.

MMO's will be one of those "sticky wickets" that crop up when new laws are enacted. What will probably end up happening is that the physical game will be allowed to be resold, but the account attached to it will go away, but we will see when the attorneys finish battling it out.

From a technical standpoint of things, banning an account is exactly equivalent to telling someone they're no longer welcome in your store. If that's something that UK/EU courts can overrule in all occasions, then I think it should be obvious they've got a really ****ed up court system.

Agreed... In the Oracle case, i believe that they actually *most* of their money via the paid support facilities that they offer, and not the actual sale of said software.

I would also like to point out that there are strict rulings on handling peoples personal data as well which would have to be taken into consideration (which is why I feel that the selling of MMO accounts will NOT be allowed for the forseeable future, if at all).

Well, it's more that if with an MMO the thing you own is your account (which I think it must be following the logic of the EU ruling quoted in the article and basic UK property law) then it follows that you should be able to sell your account - just like you can sell your game.

If that's true then when the poster I quoted said "you'd only get damages" then I think he was wrong. I pointed out that in fact damages would be insufficient so you would instead ask for injunctive relief. You would ask the Court to make an order in the form of an injunction which would stop the developer banning or suspending the account.

You'd get an injunction on the basis that the ban would be an unfair fetter on onward sale (based on the EU case). I personally also think you'd get an injunction because you'd strike down the clause of the EULA which allowed (or purported to allow) the developer to ban the account - you'd do so under UCTA or Interfoto principles.

Now that system I describe of offering an injunction where damages are not a sufficient remedy is in the UK (that's my jurisdiction). BUT it is also in all common law jurisdictions (Canada, Oz etc etc) and it is in US law. I assume it is in the law of other European countries (I'm not good on the German BGB or the French civil code but I assume they have an equivalent)

I appreciate your view but I hope I've better explained what I think the position would be.

If we consider your analogy (the store owner) then I don't think you'd agree that a store owner could in ANY circumstances ban you from their store. For example I don't think you'd accept that they can just ban gay people or women or ban on racial grounds. But all in all I don't feel your analogy is helpful in any event (for the reasons I set out above).

Everything in the game belongs to EA. You own nothing. You can not sell your account. You want to sell the software? Go right ahead but the characters associated to the account do not belong to you and they can be seized, frozen, or erased at EA's discretion.

Which would be why I specifically mentioned discriminatory practices in the first post.

In any case, I can put things without a metaphor if you want; when a business has things set up so that customers can interact with other customers on the business's premises, then it's a pretty fundamental right for them to be able to not serve a customer who's deliberately making the experience worse for other people. If you want a different, more direct comparison, banning them from the game would also be directly equivalent to banning them from a discussion forum.

Or do you really want to be arguing for the "right" of a player to run around with the name "Pig ****er" screaming "n****** n****** n****** n******" 24 hours a day?

In any case, arguing over whose property the account is, Bioware's or the customer's, is pointless to begin with- the account isn't property at all. Access to the game is a service, and all your account is, is a record of your service history.

Didn't read 95% of replies, but regarding what the OP said [about EU laws allowing resale of game software]

If you're an active subscriber you know that the product code is everything. Not the CD, but the product code that was printed on a small sheet of paper together with your game. So, yeah sure, you could resell your software, but if the product code has been used, then you're basically selling useless software to the buyer.

Will SWTOR have a problem with you reselling your software? Guess not. But your buyer would.

I guess that's what makes subscription-based games different from, say, console games. You can buy a PlayStation game and play it, get tired of it, and sell it to someone else, who can then play it, get tired of it, then sell it, ad infinitum.

Don't know this new EU law and it's entirety, but I guess my question is, is the product code considered "part" of the software? i.e. If this was a graphic editing software such as PhotoShop, if you resell your product are you supposed to give the product key too?