This, if GG goes your installers cease to work even if you have them backed up offline, unless you've used the workaround, which is not as intended.

I'm not sure I follow. You said:

In fact your laws stipulate that the owner provide "proof" that they've destroyed all backup copies. Unless the solemn word of the reseller is considered proof, the only way to do that is to submit to a search of everything you own right up until the anal probing starts. Now which do you think treats you less like a criminal? A simple license which when transferred transfers the ability to play the game regardless of backup copies or a program that sweeps your computer and asks you to submit to an audit of your hard drives, thumb drives, or other recordable media because unless proof has another definition in Canadian legalese, that's what would constitute submitting proof that you don't have a backup copy. Personally I'd go with a license for resell.

I'm not saying US copyright law is great, far from it, but your Canadian law is not as consumer friendly as you seem to think. You're not even allowed to have multiple backup copies for a DRM-free product under Canadian copyright. Again, maybe proof means something different, but they're asking you to prove you're not a thief when reselling, so I would argue that the Canadian law most definitely treats you as a potential criminal when selling copyrighted digital material. Now the full letter of the law may not be enforced, but that's the way it's written.

As for piracy, GOG is in fact concerned with it, they ask abandonware sites to take down games when they become available on GOG and to their credit, many sites not only do that but provide links to GOG. Their method to combat piracy is to make buying the product and attractive proposition, not to use DRM schemes. That's the way it should be. As for right-to-resell, GOG doesn't offer that for presumably all the reasons given: 1) it violates the copyright of some of the nations where they operate and would like to continue to do so, 2) the publishers won't let them, 3) right-to-resell is in fact non-trivial with DRM-free products.

You're actually conflating copyright on presentation with copyright on a creative work (presentation being creative). The train schedule is still not copyrighted, you can put the times in a HTML table if you want and serve it on your website. You just can't photocopy their layout. Even pictures of sculptures have been held to be unique works at times, but sometimes not, pictures that seem to intend to exactly replicate the original work have been deemed not creative in nature.

Unequal and non-negotiable contracts are supposed to be not legally binding in the US either, but in practice they typically are.
Copyright in the US was originally intended to protect printing press owners from each other. No modern incarnation of copyright really pre-dates the ability to mass duplicate the written word. The only difference is now the "proles" can do it and it doesn't sit well with the people who used to be the middlemen before. Even the mormons back in the early 1800s managed to print their book and I don't think they had a terribly large membership, so even back then the printing press was somewhat accessible to common people.

Forgive me if I miss something in there. It is a bit wall of texty.


1. Proof is not what you think it is. A witnessed contract of the exchange and deletion would be more than sufficient, for example, unless there was just cause to resort to more invasive measures. (A court is not just going to grant a publisher full access to a person's life because our legal framework does not assume guilt.)

2. Correct, GOG is in business with piracy websites.

3. Again, trying to shoehorn terms and conditions into the frameworks of every copyright act in the world doesn't make sense so I don't understand why you are making that point again.

Yeah a printing press is still specialized equipment, it's not like a modern computer system. However, that's really besides the point. Again the salient point is the process of reselling. Even if I have my own personal Kinkos in my house I have to take an active step to photocopy and bind my own copy of the book before reselling the physical entity. With digital media, the process automatically requires the duplication of the good and then deletion of the copy from the previous owner. Add to that no one photocopies a book to "back it up" in case their book crashes. :) People need to backup digital media in case of computer failure or to transfer to a new computer as technology changes. So it's then deletion of all personal use copies of the owner - since all copies are really one entity.
I apologize I'll try to keep it briefer.

1. A witnessed exchange of the transfer and deletion, how does that work over the internet were most digital commerce gets done? How does that work without a client or some DRM? This is proof.

2. umm ... asking abandonware websites to take down GOG materials and point to legal material is bad from whose perspective? It's pretty much good for everyone: the people own the sites, GOG, us, and even perhaps especially the people who own the content.

3. I had three points at the end there, one of which is compliance which given that the US is the biggest buyer is the one they are most concerned with. Europe is almost as strict. The other 2 dealt with their own license to sell given to them by publishers and the fact that re-sell rights are not trivial for DRM-free products.

"if the person proves that the reproduction for backup purposes is destroyed immediately when the person ceases to be the owner of the copy of the computer program. "

That seems kinda messed up.

What about innocent until proven guilty, shouldn't it be the responsibility for the company or government to prove you held on to a copy?

Unless Canada works differently.

Edit: Plus it seems impossible to prove you deleted all copies. The company could say "What if he had 3 copies and has one on a harddrive buried six feet under in the middle of no where and is planning on reinstalling it later!"

Would be rather hard to prove that you didn't bury a harddrive with the game on it somewhere.

Just more reason someone should be considered innocent until a copy is found.

Well okay I didn't know about number 2. For number 3 ... could you expand? I'm not sure I see the connection to your number 3 and my number 3 or your number 3 addresses the issue of resell.

Number 1, true it's not beyond all reasonable doubt, but even in civil court, proof is not just you saying something to be true. Again, they said the seller has to "prove" it. Thus the onus of proof is on the one making the claim. A sold game license would be that proof. What would constitute proof that backups were deleted or unusable beyond that? I agree a witnessed exchange would work were someone watches you delete the old files. But over the internet? An e-mail saying I've deleted the files would be no more convincing that a person saying it in an unwitnessed exchange. The only thing I could think of is again the seller has to take the computer or hard drive to a notary of some kind to witness that the files were deleted. A license does the same thing automatically - it is all the proof you need that unless you've actively cheated the system, you've sold and transferred the program.

Record the whole process.

Record attaching the game to an email or uploading it to a site where you can limit who downloads it (password protected so only the buyer can download it) or packaging it, driving to the post office, and mailing it.
Record deleting the backup on your computer.

Best way I can think of.

Of course, what if the person had multiple copies? What if he had none and thus didn't record a deletion of the backup?

Civil and criminal laws are different. Even in the US, who the burden of proof is on and the level of proof required are not the same as a criminal case. Remember the end result of a civil case is a lawsuit, so the burden of proof depends on who is suing who, for what reason, and the type of commerce involved. This not the police and a prosecutor who have to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that you are guilty of a criminal activity. Here someone has to prove they have the right to sell something and have indeed sold it. It is a civil matter.
That's not bad. But it's the IP owner who needs to view it, not the buyer. The buyer doesn't care that you delete your copy, only that they get theirs. :) As for multiple backups, yes that's still an issue with full proof and why I like the license solution. It's one item that when sold renders the issue of backups moot. Also Canadian copyright doesn't let you make multiple backups - only one for personal use. I'm not even sure what US law allows, my guess is its more restrictive. Even with all that though as I mentioned above proof is not beyond all reasonable doubt, but it does have to be proof of some kind, and I don't know what level is required in this case under Canadian law being neither a lawyer nor Canadian. :)

Right, some organizations like MLB claim that you can't distributes accounts or descriptions of the game without their permission, but on that they're full of it. Unless there's an exception for them that I know of.

The train schedule as in the times they run isn't subject to copyright, in case it wasn't clear I wasn't saying that it is, but the brochure would be protected by copyright law as would the phone book, but not the names and numbers in it.

As for conflating the two, I don't think that the difference here is really particularly relevant. I could be wrong, but I don't think that it's an important distinction. You still wouldn't be able to copy a public domain book, if it had been represented for a new edition. You would however be free to take the text and do with as you pleased.
Not true, it means that Mr. Gog has business dealings with an ad network, probably Google, and that Google also has business dealings with those web sites.

I'm not sure how it's changed recently, but you don't really get to choose what pages you're going to appear on, at least not when I was doing it, and so there's very little control you've got over what gaming related sites you end up on.

Even if there is an exception, Mr. Gog would have to individually opt out of every site of that type that was in existence.

1. How's an act different than a law? That is what companies would sue over. Figured if someone is suing based on something the government set up it would be similar, whether is called a law or act.

2. Yeah, I wasn't thinking to send the buyer, but in the off-chance one might get sued.

Not true. GOG personally approves all affiliates.

https://www.gog.com/en/affiliate/

Sorry you have it right, it seemed unclear, though. It's the old recipe book thing, recipes (a list of steps) don't fall under copyright, however you can arrange them in such a way that your arrangement is creative. It's an end run around being able to make an exact duplication when the content itself isn't protected.

You meant that program, I misunderstood what you were getting at. I thought you were talking about something more like adwords or doubleclick.

Yes they do, I'm not really sure that trying to siphon off people from downloading off abandonware sites is really bad. Unless you're referring to sites which actually encourage piracy or things that one can actually buy from the publisher.
No problem, when I saw your post it became clear that the "train schedule" isn't necessarily the "train schedule."

And you've got a point about recipes, I was aware that they aren't subject to copyright, but I hadn't realized that they made them so hard to read as a way of gaining something they could copyright.