@anotherusername said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
@topspin said in Right to repair sold to the highest bidder:
@anotherusername I don’t think you have actually disagreed with me there.
The part that I disagreed with was the part where you made it sound like some tractor company lawyers figured this stuff out recently.
Intellectual property licensing shenanigans have probably been around for nearly as long as intellectual property laws have.
They have. Waaaaaaay back in 1908, before computers were even a thing, a book publisher, Bobbs-Merrill Company, tried to put a EULA in one of their books placing restrictions on how it could and could not be resold and claiming that non-compliance with this policy would be treated as a copyright violation. Of course, that was a bunch of nonsense, and eventually the Supreme Court found it to be officially a bunch of nonsense, and the ruling in this case codified the First Sale Doctrine: copyright grants them the rights and protections explicitly granted by copyright law, but beyond that, once you've sold something you created, it's their property and ceases to be your property.
It's unfortunate that this incredibly important ruling has been weakened so much over the years. On the face of it, it makes any and all software EULAs and "shrinkwrap licenses" completely null and void, and that's a good thing. Unfortunately, the one appeals court ruling I'm aware of didn't see it that way, and it never went to the Supreme Court to get straightened out, so we're stuck with the current mess.