#OLD HABITS DIE HARD MEANING SOFTWARE#
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The question is particularly significant in light of the latter Directive’s broad purpose of updating European intellectual property law and making it appropriate for the modern technological environment.

#OLD HABITS DIE HARD MEANING SOFTWARE#

The implications of the decision are potentially massive for the future of the second-hand trade in eBooks, computer games and other digital content, despite UsedSoft relating to the Software Directive, and other content generally being governed by the InfoSoc Directive. Many commentators welcomed the decision as the definitive establishment of a second-hand trade in download-only software.

#OLD HABITS DIE HARD MEANING DOWNLOAD#

The decision declared that those who download large-scale, enterprise-wide commercial software in fact own it, and thus its author’s distribution right under the Software Directive is “exhausted”. The Willis debacle brought such questions into the collective consciousness of a public who had until then been content to click “I agree” on licence agreements without any intention of ever reading or appreciating just what they were agreeing to.įor those in European legal and technical circles, such questions rose to the forefront of consideration in July 2012, when the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) issued its decision on UsedSoft GmbH v Oracle International Corp. While claims that the actor was suing Apple over his inability to bequeath his iTunes collection to his children were probably untrue (it was amusingly speculated that someone had misread “estates and wills” as “estates and Willis” ) the engrossing ownership questions remained. In September 2012, Bruce Willis unwittingly caused society to question the ownership status of their digital content, whether it was the music on their iPods or the eBooks on their Kindles. UsedSoft, Exhaustion and Equivalence – Old Habits Die Hard?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 UK: Scotland License.ġ. It is argued that if the likes of cloud-based distribution services such as Spotify become the norm, the existence of the very concept of second-hand may fade.Ĭite as: A Nicholson, “Old Habits Die Hard?: UsedSoft v Oracle”, (2013) 10:3 SCRIPTed 389 Download options However, the paper concludes speculatively, questioning the long term relevance of the decision. It is argued that, on this basis, it is clear that the Court was attempting to foster the legal framework necessary for such a second-hand market in digital content of any variety. This paper seeks to demonstrate that although perhaps not explicitly intended by the Court, the case is a clear example of the application of the continuing discussion of “online/offline equivalence”.

The decision and its implications are potentially pivotal for the future of the second-hand trade in eBooks, computer games and other digital content.

For those in European legal and technical circles, such questions rose to the forefront of consideration in July 2012, when the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union issued its decision on UsedSoft GmbH v Oracle International Corp. The ownership status of digital content – whether it be music on iTunes or eBooks on Kindles – is increasingly on the general public’s mind.

Old habits die hard meaning