First sale doctrine doesn't enter into it. First sale doctrine applies to the data, not the license to use it. I'm violating my EULA if I sell you my World of Warcraft account, but Blizzard doesn't mind if I sell you my CDs. I don't see why that should be otherwise; Blizzard owns the game, and if I was worried about selling my account, I wouldn't have agreed to their terms of service, and thus wouldn't have bought the game.
Not a valid example. WoW is an MMORPG and the game is inseparable from the online service it is coupled with. I have no objection to license terms restricting what you're allowed to do with a game under those circumstances, as doing things like selling your account can affect the experience of other players.
What I'm talking about is single-player games. If I pay for a game, it's my property. License agreements are unconscionable contracts and I'd be VERY interested to see the "you're not buying a product, you're buying a license to use it" argument play out in court. The closest analog I can think of is a recent case where the RIAA sued a DJ for reselling a promo CD -- can't find the link offhand, but it was probably in the Copyright thread. The judge decided in the DJ's favor; the disc was his property and the RIAA's attempt to restrict its use was invalid.
Now, Steam IS different, and Rico hit on the reason why: because it's simply a data transfer and not the transfer of physical property. That distinction might be enough to hold up in court, or it might not -- no way of telling without actually testing it.
But the "you're not buying a game, you're buying a license" argument is still horseshit.
The only reason we say that we've "bought" a game is because it's much simpler than saying that we've "purchased a transferable data disc and nontrasferable indefinite-duration conditional usage license." If that's an important distinction, somebody can set up a wordfilter.
What WE say isn't the issue. What THEY say is. If the seller refers to it as the purchase of a game, and does not actually sell us a game, then that's false advertising.
Brentai complains about Thad getting on his case for semantic mistakes and misuses the word "theory" in the same post.
I can't tell if that's irony or not.
...I don't think he misused "theory". He used it in its informal conversational sense rather than its technical scientific sense, but that's not misuse -- saying "Evolution is only a theory" is misuse because it conflates the two.
I'm in agreeance with Bongo Bill though. I'm okay with the service Steam provides, but mostly on account that nothing better exists to date.
That's actually pretty much my opinion too, it's just that I think it could still be better. The overwhelming view in the thread seems to be "Eh, it's the best we're ever going to get, so there's no sense bitching about it." I disagree; there's room for improvement, and it can happen with sufficient pressure.
