(noobish question) re-use traktor on another computer?

[Karlos Santos]

What do you do if you live in a country where you're legally entitled to install as many copies of purchased software as you like on any computer you own?

Which country..?


The EULA that covers Traktor is is an agreement that you make at the time of installation.
You would still be breaking the EULA with NI so they have the right to cancel your account.

[willrjmarshall]

I'm just curious if NI will unlock their software in order to comply with consumer protection laws.

[Karlos Santos]

Not with you..?

What consumer protection laws..? You are alluding to something obviously although rather purposely cryptically .

I doubt NI are breaking any laws allowing 2 Installations. Its pretty standard practice.

[fullenglishpint]

Not with you..?

What consumer protection laws..? You are alluding to something obviously although rather purposely cryptically .

I doubt NI are breaking any laws allowing 2 Installations. Its pretty standard practice.

indeed... I find it somewhat unlikely that NI can sell you 2 licences which magically become unlimited in a different country.

and consumer protection? are you threatened by the limited number of installs? it's hardly a case for the courts lol!

[willrjmarshall]

indeed... I find it somewhat unlikely that NI can sell you 2 licences which magically become unlimited in a different country.

and consumer protection? are you threatened by the limited number of installs? it's hardly a case for the courts lol!

In many jurisdictions they don't actually get to sell licenses, but must sell products. There's a bunch of legal distinctions, but it's been banned in many countries for historic reasons (abusive trade practices, basically).

It's certainly been a case for the courts in the past! I'd love to see this go through the courts again w/ a bigger company, so the expectations and obligations become more clear.

Not with you..?

What consumer protection laws..? You are alluding to something obviously although rather purposely cryptically .

I doubt NI are breaking any laws allowing 2 Installations. Its pretty standard practice.

Explained it better below. I was musing early-morning before coffee. Now I'm coherent

There are a bunch of things that are standard practice in software development/sales that aren't actually legal in much of the world. EULAs, shrink-wrap licenses, some DRM constraints, resale prevention. It's very murky water indeed.

Which country..?


The EULA that covers Traktor is is an agreement that you make at the time of installation.
You would still be breaking the EULA with NI so they have the right to cancel your account.

Last I checked, Germany, France, Norway, Iceland, Chile. There are others, but I don't have an encyclopediac reference offhand - lawyer friend of mine specialises in the topic (academic lawyers FTW). It was a common clause in the mid-2000s wave of copyright reform (when they legalised ripping discs to iPods and so on).

EULAs aren't actually valid contracts in most countries (with the notable exception of the US). They're agreed to after purchase, a bit like selling someone a car then refusing to give them the keys until they sign a contract. Also, most jurisdictions don't accept clicking "I agree" as a valid indicator of intent (like a signature or a witnessed statement).

The standard format for consumer protection laws is basically a non-contractable implicit mandatory contract: all retailers guarantee you a set of rights (which vary from country to country) when they make a sale. Non-contractable basically means that retails cannot contract out of any of their obligations: so even if you sign a waiver absolving them of consumer obligations it's not valid. The upshot of this means that anything in NI's EULA that breaches their consumer obligations (whichever laws apply) is automatically void.

NI can't actually cancel your account without breaching their legal obligations (I suspect in pretty much all countries, certainly in NZ and Australia). In some jurisdictions they may be entitled to cancel your account if they provide a full refund, but that's not the case in all.

The complex question is jurisdiction. Native Instruments are bound by German laws (which are quite good), but if you buy from a local retailer (say for me, the Rockshop in New Zealand) *they* are bound by local laws, and NI has no direct obligations. This gets kind of tricky: what it usually means is that the limit of a local retailer's capacity to address rights issues is providing a full refund.

So for example, if I buy Maschine from a local store, and NI had imposed some illegal-in-NZ restriction on it, I'd be entitled to get a full refund from that store, unless they could convince NI to fix the problem.

[kooper1980]

My brain started to reboot half way through that last post!!! Not sure what you are trying to ascertain!! Just accept that you CAN install it on 2 computers. :-)

[willrjmarshall]

Honestly?

I'm mostly just frustrated that A: Software companies (esp. music software which is very old-model) treat their customers badly/illegally, and B: that those customers don't necessarily realise that their legal rights are being breached.

Frustrated with NI in particular right now because recently I've seen lots of complaints on forums about them doing things they're definitely not allowed to do (refusing to authorise second-hand copies, for example).

I guess I should write a "your legal rights" FAQ or something.

[fullenglishpint]

Surely there must be a legal distinction between a car and a Traktor licence. Selling someone a car with no contract does not mean that they can sell/offer for download infinite copies of that car to whoever they wish, or indeed to themselves. Selling software with an unlimited licence is financial suicide for any company...

I must say I can't profess to be an expert on the specifics of international and local licensing laws, so suffice it to say that it is unjust for a software company to be obliged to sell its products with unlimited licences. That would be carte blanche for piracy. If it isn't law then it should be.

[fullenglishpint]

I guess I should write a "your legal rights" FAQ or something.

Please, if you do, give proper legal citations... Something's just not ringing true about this.

There is a law in the UK stating that all English males over the age 14 are to carry out 2 or so hours of longbow practice a week supervised by the local clergy. This is not enforced because it is ridiculous. If there is complaint about NI limiting the licensing of their products, I would argue not that they should release it on an unlimited licence but rather that the law be changed.

[willrjmarshall]

Surely there must be a legal distinction between a car and a Traktor licence. Selling someone a car with no contract does not mean that they can sell/offer for download infinite copies of that car to whoever they wish, or indeed to themselves. Selling software with an unlimited licence is financial suicide for any company...

I must say I can't profess to be an expert on the specifics of international and local licensing laws, so suffice it to say that it is unjust for a software company to be obliged to sell its products with unlimited licences. That would be carte blanche for piracy. If it isn't law then it should be.

Not really. A copy of Traktor is basically like a book: no license is involved. You own that particular copy, but copyright law limits your capacity to make further copies of it (you may be able to make copies for personal use, but not to distribute, for example).

Native Instruments will try to assert that they're not selling a copy but a license, but this is specifically forbidden in many jurisdictions (it's something con artists used to do to circumvent fair trading laws).

Many companies sell software without DRM preventing installation on multiple computers. It's not financial suicide at all... it saves the cost of implementing DRM (which doesn't work: it's trivial to pirate Traktor for example), and has a positive impact on sales (DRM-free products are better). Trying to limit the # of computers is a very oldskool approach now, but the music software industry is extremely backwards-looking.

Filesharing (what you call piracy) is an interesting case. Conventional wisdom suggests that it undermines profits: evidence suggests it has no impact whatsoever. Either way, it's not reasonable to undermine consumer protections to (ineffectually) combat something that is A: inevitable, and B: not a big issue (go read Geist and Lessig if you want the gnarly facts and details).

Most of the things software companies do to prevent filesharing are actually about the second-hand market. Second-hand markets are usually legally protected, but DRM to "stop the evil pirates" does a good job of shutting them down anyway.

Please, if you do, give proper legal citations... Something's just not ringing true about this.

Of course. I'd need to look up the specifics for a bunch of different countries, as well. I'm only explicitly familiar with NZ law. I suspect I'd just end up referring to Geist (http://www.michaelgeist.ca/) and (http://www.lessig.org/blog/).

There is a law in the UK stating that all English males over the age 14 are to carry out 2 or so hours of longbow practice a week supervised by the local clergy. This is not enforced because it is ridiculous. If there is complaint about NI limiting the licensing of their products, I would argue not that they should release it on an unlimited licence but rather that the law be changed.

Sure, but that's an ancient and silly law. What I'm discussing are recent (within 10 years) laws that were carefully considered, and were specifically to address behaviours by the software industry that were considered unacceptable.

There are many things that software companies would like to be true that aren't in the interests of the public in general. We have regulation and so on to prevent them from doing anything they like.