Used consoles and digital downloads

[FoxNtd]

There is no personal information tied in. There has never, ever been any financially-related material used with the account either. Like I said no CC/debit info was ever submitted at any time, absolutely everything was purchased using pre-paid cards. The profile on the system is just there as it is part of the system's normal operations. I'd equate it to the system config save file on a PS2 memory card for a PS2. It's just a mechanism towards general operations of the device. I don't consider the icon on the corner of the screen or "gamerscore" to be information that somehow is a "loss" to me if I do sell the console.

There is a scenario where you would in fact be violating copyright.
You can authorize one console per year to run XBL content without having to be signed in with your account, with the limitation that XBL will de-authorize them once they are authorized for another console. So, basically, you could load up one console per year with all of your digital downloads and sell it, and they will function just fine so long as the buyer doesn't connect to XBL. As a result, you'd be selling multiple copies of something you only bought once, which is essentially piracy, and you'd be selling something that will become void the moment the buyer decides to go online.

As far as the legality of selling your account goes, obviously an EULA or ToS can't contravene local laws and consumer rights, and it's not as if the swat team is going to kick in your door even if you are doing something 'wrong', but as far as eBay and the like are concerned, big content is always right.

But I'm not selling multiple copies. That data is tied to the machine it's on, and everything will be sold together as one unit in one shot. I have no duplicates or other Xboxes. I'm not trying to sell something and retain a copy. The buyer will have everything and no copying of any kind will have ever been done. In the future if this system dies on the buyer he will do exactly what everyone already does when the system dies; get it replaced and transfer the HDD contents to the new machine etc. You can hook up this machine to XBL; there's no issue with doing so. Everything plays fine without XBL though.

As a side note I was surprised not to hear so far about people buying used Wii's with a bunch of VC downloads on them for a good deal. It makes sense to me; if I wanted a Wii and lots of Famicom downloads or something like that I'd definitely look for a used system and get a good deal instead of buying a bare system and buying all the downloads "new".

[kedawa]

I would just letterbomb.
Your money isn't going to the developers either way.

[Rickstilwell1]

Also remember in the UK a law was passed that says it is ok to resell digital content you paid for. So it would be even less gray to sell it to someone in Europe.

[kedawa]

You can also get refunds for Steam games in the UK.
Lucky bastards.

[JSoup]

By the way I could apply the idea to physical games too: "It would be stupid to pay more for the games when you can just copy all the games for free anyway" yet we still pay for games.

Cheap =/= convenient. Your average pirate is balancing both of these when they pirate something.

[FoxNtd]

Cheap =/= convenient. Your average pirate is balancing both of these when they pirate something.

That sentence I wrote in quotes was just a counterpoint for someone, and was not supposed to digress to some kind of approach regarding economizing and/or convenience.

Nice seeing that tidbit about the UK. I hear Valve is in legal trouble with the EU in general over disallowing reselling any purchased games due to the nature of Steam but that's not the topic of this thread so I won't elaborate on that here.

[JSoup]

That sentence I wrote in quotes was just a counterpoint for someone, and was not supposed to digress to some kind of approach regarding economizing and/or convenience.

And then I decided it was worth pointing out, so now it's precisely all those things.

[skaar]

I'd like a citation that explains how this is "illegal".

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/

[LimitedEditionMuseum]

I think the OP was talking about the value of all the games. I think.

[FoxNtd]

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/

Assuming you're not being a smartass or something what exactly in the details of the notion of copyright somehow prevents selling my Xbox from being legal?

Every single video game is copyrighted. So what? You can sell any of your games just fine. Come back when you have something with more substance than just pointing to a massive document that says "oh, copyright".

[BlastProcessing402]

Right, as long as you aren't keeping copies of those digital downloads, you aren't breaking copyright to sell them. It might violate TOS, but not the law.

[kedawa]

I think what it boils down to is that you can sell the console no matter what, but if you are explicitly selling the content, then you are violating the ToS, not that it really matters. If you're the buyer, you simply don't have a valid license to the games on the console, not that it really matters.