Originally Posted by
afortuna
If you buy a game for your PC or gaming console, you are paying the fee to use that game. Typically the store you are purchasing it from has already paid for the game and has then added a mark-up when they resell the game. The game manufacturer doesn't require the secondary customer to pay twice for the one game. That customer then plays till his heart is content and then gets bored and puts it up on ebay for sell. He then collects the money and sends out the game to the new owner. The new owner can even register the game as his if he would like, but again isn't charged by the original manufacturer.
Our economic system, as bad a shape as it is in at this point, would have collapsed a long time ago if we were forced to pay the original manufacturer every time we purchased something used. My memory may be incorrect on this, but I thought you were giving away the software when you first came out with it. Downloadable from your website? The only thing you were charging for was the actual hardware that you put together that allowed the software to be loaded onto the marker. Anyway you look at it, unless you are leasing the equipment to someone, if they purchased that equipment out-right, then they have the full bundle of rights for that personal property.
Now, you may have a case if someone is reselling your software, but unless you have protected your intellectual rights to that property you are going to have a hard time stopping someone. On your $50 example, you may be making an assumption the sales price of the gun was increased $50 over the market value of the gun, hence the seller making "an extra $50." I don't know either way if those sales were over the market price, but just something to consider. People buy and resell stuff for a profit all of the time. Unless you established at the time of the sale the property could not be resold, you don't have much to protect yourself with.
Even though I've never used your software, I've never read anything bad or negative about it. Thank you for making another sound and solid option for Mag owners.
But there is still only one copy of the game and thus one license. If you flash a gun and sell it without the buyer paying for another license or a complete transfer of your license you (or the buyer) are stealing, end of story. The same is true if sell your programmer after flashing your markers without removing the software first. It would be like buying a game, burning it, and selling the original, or burning several copies and selling those. You are duplicating the software without license and therefore a thief.
bless, support, and never forget the troops
God bless my cousin: Cprl. Peter J. Giannopoulos K.I.A. 11/11/04 in Latifiyah, Babil Provence, Iraq.