It's not the first time it has already happened before (like Amazon did with 1984) and I am pretty sure it will happens more and more often in the future.

This is going nowhere. I'll be back in 30 day to say I told you so.

And I still have Colin Macrae Ralley 2005 on my shelf. Lucky me. :(

True, but if you already downloaded those extras, there's not a damn thing GOG can do to take them away from you. That's the main difference between DRM and DRM-Free.

Sorry to go a little O/T here, but in all fairness, could that have happened to a more appropriate novel?

As for the topic at hand... For some reason, the first thing I did was laugh at it all. Welcome to the future, peeps. Enjoy.

That might come back at them really fast. This trend isn't really troubling me, because the rights customers have, haven't changed the slightest in the recent years. Only the enforcement by the eg. rights holder is getting better. But the grwoing enforcement is standing on an pretty much unchanged legal basis.

Most licensing laws still have books and recors (not even cds) in mind and are only poorly usable today. With enough publicity and customer uproar, the laws themselves might actually change. In Germany a new party is steadily gaining approval with excactly those issues (the pirate party, I'm not kidding).

We are living in a transatory time, so we might get the blunt end more often, but the long term sign are (at least in the EU) already changing for the customer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle#Remote_content_removal

A european court though did decide that you own the access. The judge even said that the difference between selling software and selling the license to software was an "artificial distinction". This wasn't a binding decision, but it bodes well.

http://euobserver.com/871/116051

GOG discussion here:

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/no_ban_on_secondhand_software_says_eu_court

heh.

Well, I disagree. It's very different to have bought something perfectly legally as part of a package deal than to have acquired that same something through undeniably illegal means.

In Amazon case they made the "mistake" of saying that you buy a "permanent" copy, I have yet to see a single video game distributor EULA (or mobile application store) ever saying the same thing.

I'm pretty sure the users who got the game knowingly agreed to this.

The point isn't how you aquired it, the point is what you have. Something digital is nothing but a license. You can't hold on to it, your rights to it are fluent. As of this moment, many of us own digital artwork/music, etc to which we have no legal right to actually have it. We can still use it and nobody can charge us for doing so. But if we lose it, we have no right to get it back. If it would be possible to remove it externally, they could do it, because it is their right. They are the right holder, essentially your right to any digital protuct needs a "legal chain" back to the right holder to be "valid". The moment eg. GOG has no right to give us a song anymore that chain is broken and with it the legal right of you to have this.

That is, of course, a very sturdy chain and it is usually protected by airtight contracts and laws, but it can and has happened.

And in the end, it doesn't matter were or how you got that digital stuff, but only if the chain is still intact.

That is also the reason most (if not all) anti piracy law isn't aimed at the actual "having the software" but acquiring it. You can't punish people for having unlicensed stuff, because how should or could they now in many cases?
This is exactly why Steam has the "remove game" stuff in their EULA. Not because they want to remove games, but because they might have to and want avoid damages from consumers. You still get a refund, but not damages, which can make a whole lot of difference.

Well seeing that it's safe to talk about Apple related things here I like to ask an off-topic question: is itunes any good it has to be since the music is DRM-free from what I heard and can it work for Windows?

The legality of EULAs are questionable at best - especially since they are agreed to only after one has bought the game. European courts have already ruled that even if software are licensed rather than sold then license itself is still owned by the customer and not the seller and the seller's rights have been exhausted by the sale.

The judge even said that the difference between selling software and selling the license to software was an "artificial distinction". This wasn't a binding decision, but it bodes well.

http://euobserver.com/871/116051

GOG discussion here:

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/no_ban_on_secondhand_software_says_eu_court

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Plus every digital (and physical) store has a 'buy' button, not a 'rent' or 'license' button and somehow you don't have to click 'I agree' to a EULA before "buying" the software ... only afterwards. :)
iTunes has a Windows version.

All music sellers are DRM-free these days - I can't think of a single seller that isn't. Audiobooks are sold with DRM from every merchant still, but music is DRM-free everywhere.

I use iTunes but there are a lot of stores to buy music from - Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc ... so you may want to shop around to see what store gives you the best deal for how and what you want to buy.