[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Nathanael

First sale doctrine applies to software specifically because a physical medium (in this case the CD or DVD) is involved.

Can you point out in the first sale doctrine where it limits itself to physical medium only?

Your article says as much: "Under the Copyright Act, owners of copyrighted material are given substantial rights in the particular copies they purchase." (My emphasis).

It makes no distinction between physical copies and digital copies.

Note that any rights I have with respect to copyrighted material I have purchased are restricted to the particular copy I own.

True, but whether it's a physical copy or a digital copy doesn't matter.

Further (your article doesn't note this): my rights wrt to said copyrighted material extend only to authorized copies and do not include the right to make unauthorized copies

Of course not, but this case has nothing to do with unauthorized copies. We're not talking about whether or not the Autodesk reseller was violating copyright, we're talking about whether or not the original purchase was a license or a sale. That has nothing to do with unauthorized copies.

Note also that in the Autodesk case, the court only invalidated the portion of the contract forbidding resale of the physical medium. It did not invalidate the entire EULA just because it found one unenforceable clause.

The point of the case is that they ruled it was a sale, not a license. I don't think anybody is claiming that the entire EULA was thrown out. Whether or not EULAs are legally binding at all is a different topic.

In the Autodesk case, the defendant was reselling original copies of the Autodesk software. If, rather, he'd been burning personal copies of the disks, then attempting to sell those copies instead, I guarantee the court would have ruled much differently.

Absolutely, but what does that have to do with anything we're talking about here?

This case simply reaffirms my original statement that first-sale doctrine is intrinsically tied to the phyiscal medium.

I don't see how. The case had nothing to do with whether first-sale is limited to physical medium.