[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: Bits are Bits
>* Software: OK to resell if license allows it, if original is destroyed, if
>no copies are kept, blah blah blah. (Very complicated.) Not legal to rent
>software since around the mid-80s, when software rental stores stopped.
...
>-- rental of videos is allowed. (Why videos but not CDs? What about books
>on tape? What about books on CD, either audio or CD-ROM?)
Another weird twist in this topic is the "distinction" that is made between
video games for consoles and the same games for computers. It is legal to
rent a PSX title such as Tomb Raider but the same title ported to the PC is
not legal to rent. I read about this a few years ago in an article by Trip
Hawkins, CEO of 3DO, so maybe this information is out of date. But I have
not yet seen CD-ROMs for rent or even available to check out for home use
from the public library. I think this distinction is sometimes confused
because a publisher can choose to allow a CD-ROM title to be rentable but
has to explicitly sanction that. But a publisher of game console CD's
cannot prevent its products from being rented.
Steve Bryan
Vendorsystems International
email: [email protected]
icq: 5263678
pgp fingerprint: D758 183C 8B79 B28E 6D4C 2653 E476 82E6 DA7C 9AC5