Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"A Seattle judge ruled in favor of a man arguing that he has the right to sell secondhand software, in a case that had some people worried about an end to used book and CD stores. The suit was initially filed by Timothy Vernor after eBay, responding to requests by Autodesk, removed the Autocad software that Vernor was trying to sell on the auction site. eBay later banned Vernor from the site, based on Autodesk's complaints"

I'm glad that the judge ruled in favour of the guy who was trying to sell the software - I too have tried to sell software on eBay and had eBay pull the listing because the company in question had a "no resale allowed" policy. If you own something, don't you have the right to sell it? Autodesk claimed that they merely "licensed" the software to the user, and that there was no ownership. The judge saw through this ridiculous statement:

"Similarly, the court cannot characterise Autodesk's decision to let its licencees retain possession of the software forever as something other than a transfer of ownership, despite numerous restrictions on that ownership."

Score one for the good guys!

"35% cash back from eBay purchase using Microsoft Live Search *No selling!* Only applies to Buy It Now items paid for using PayPal. For example, go to http://www.live.com/ (type it into your browser, don't click the link in this post) and search for a Wii. Check the paid results at the top and right for a link to eBay with the "live search cashback" icon. Click it, find a Buy It Now auction for a Wii (or whatever you want for that matter). Discount should be listed on checkout page."

Microsoft's Live.com Cashback program is a great deal that gives you cash back for purchasing items found via the Live.com search engine at more than 600 stores. Apparently this also applies to eBay "Buy-it-Now" items that are paid for with PayPal. The cashback percentage appears to fluctuate, but as of this posting was running a whopping 30%!

I was already planning to includes Live.Com Cashback in my holiday shopping, but I'm going to make sure and check eBay now.