(My website may not survive the HN hug of death).
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I made this because I feel there’s some interesting questions and implications this raises specifically because it’s going after unauthorised sellers who market their goods as new.
I specifically did not try to answer all the questions I’ve raised because for most of them I don’t have a definitive answer, or possibly even what it should be. I’m interested to see discussion on these points though!
IMO, warranty needs to be considered independent of if an item is new or not and any company who has a problem with how Amazon is representing that should go after Amazon and not random third party sellers. I would also strongly support companies being required to either honor warranty on items that are resold new or specify a warranty period independent of when or where it is bought that is listed on the product. Many companies do everything they can to make sure the warranty sounds great when you buy while making every excuse to not honor it later. "Authorized Sellers" are just one part of that.
First, if the product is unopened, how will Bethesda know the warranty does not apply? I have bought a number of products that came with a registration card that I was supposed to send in so I could get the warranty. In the case of PC games, I'd assume the warranty kicks in if you tie the game to your steam account. No idea how this works for consoles. But this has clearly not happened yet.
Second question: What warranty? Are you f'ing kidding me? Bethesda has been shipping horrendously buggy games for as long as anyone can remember. You buy them at your own peril. After a few years of patches from Bethesda and the community (google for unofficial skyrim patch) the games become playable. But it's not like you get the patches on warranty after complaining to Bethesda. You get them automatically. Because otherwise nobody would buy those games in the first place. If there is a warranty from Bethesda, I would be very interesting in finding out its terms.
As far as I know, nobody has ever gotten their money back from Bethesda because the game was too buggy. Bug people have gotten their money back from Steam when returning a buggy game. So Steam actually does offer a warranty that is actually worth something.
It is worth noting that Steam had to be guilt-tripped into offering that warranty by too many shitty, buggy or outright fraudulently marketed games. This was not a day one feature.
The Court held that the first sale doctrine applies to goods manufactured outside of the United States, and the protections and exceptions offered by the Copyright Act to works "lawfully made under this title" is not limited by geography. Rather, it applies to all copies legally made anywhere, not just in the United States, in accordance with U.S. copyright law. So, wherever a copy of a book is first made and sold, it can be resold in the U.S. without permission from the publisher.
