That's just what they say, that doesn't mean it is legal. If McDonalds said it wasn't selling you a sandwich, but a license to eat a sandwich of theirs, any complaint of theirs of you giving or selling your sandwich to someone else would still be entirely legally invalid.
More to the point: EULAs are not legally binding. They are just pseudo-legal tools that are used to justify certain actions (like disabling an account), so that people don't actually go against those actions in court, in which case it is quite possible that Steam would lose.
That's a really poor analogy; but it's admittedly difficult to find a physical-world equivalent to digital copyrights that everyone can understand. I'm going to provide a series of comparisons.
- Business Construction Wal-Mart doesn't own anything in it's store. Wal-Mart acts like a warehouse, and company's "store" their goods in this warehouse. Potential customers are allowed to come in and see the goods that are being "stored" there. When a customer purchases an item, Wal-Mart buys it from the Warehouse with the money you are using to purchase it.
Just like Wal Mart, Steam doesn't actually own the games they are selling to you. They don't have a stack of X number of licenses that they can sell you before having to buy more. Their job is to make the game available to you (the potential customer) as well as ensuring that you don't steal the product. Given the lack of CD-Required protection in the Steam Library, the response is to tie that CD key to your account.
- Accounts Steam's accounts are like a commercial Social Security Number. You don't pay for the account... it's just something that Valve uses to keep track of who is who. By sharing that ID, Steam can no longer keep an accurate count of who is who- and by extension, can no longer perform the job for which the program exists. If Steam can't tell who is who, then they cannot tell who has ownership of what games. If they can't tell who has rights to what, they cannot enforce it. At this point, they are just another D2D Service.
- Sales Steam doesn't sell you a physical object; but the consumer laws regarding the product try to emulate how it would work if it were an actual object. This is why you can make copies of digital media for personal use only.
You don't buy a CD for the plastic disk... you buy it for the content on that disk. In this case, the content is not expected to degrade- the incentive to purchase new software comes with the deprecation of the current software; not with the damage of the disk. If the data on the disk is damaged, many companies will replace the CD with proof of a damaged CD. However, in the case of physical goods... if you purchase a TV, and it comes broken- you can replace it. If you purchase a TV and then break it, the cost for a new TV is out of your pocket.
Steam skips the hassle of the plastic disk, and provides the data directly to you. This method immediately provides a problem: There is no longer a physical object to tell who has the actual rights to the software. Let's say that you, and 5 of your friends, are all sharing 1 "legal" copy of Windows7, and 5 "illegal" copies. If police have a warrant, and are searching your homes, the "easy" answer is "Who has the CD?" Whoever
has the CD is the one who has the license.
With Steam, you can't do this. The CD is replaced by a digital watermark on your account. "User 5311182 owns Civ5." It eliminates the need for a registration key for digital content. By sharing the username and password, you are allowing other people access to
that copy of the software. Not a separate copy, but
your copy. If two people can install the same
copy of a particular software, on different machines, and use this software in multiple locations at the same time... this is no different than making multiple copies of the CD. (I actually don't know why they haven't made it so that an account can only sign in at one location at a time.)
The purpose of sharing account information for permanent transfer sounds reasonable enough... but where do you draw that line? "I wasn't pirating software. I was sharing the game with 5 billion of my closest internet friends." In order to stop loopholes, the system has to be harsh.
However, in regards to "taking Steam to court"... if Steam locked your account because they believed you were pirating software- it's because you weren't pirating hard enough to warrant them taking you to court. If you take Steam to court, because you cannot access your games- Steam would likely be ordered to allow access to those games. However, I would fully expect Valve to counter-sue for the cost of all the software licenses that it can prove, with reasonable certainty, were pirated.
In other words, if you shared your account with 7 people and your account is locked; if you took Valve to court over it, you should expect to get sued for 7x the total cost of everything on your account to make up for the profit lost by sharing that account with 7 people... since Steam will be able to prove that sharing the account is the same as sharing the activation code.
Individuals are also out to make a profit and obtain pleasure for themselves. Tell me why they should explain their actions against companies, while companies don't have to explain their actions against them.
That's not what profit means. When I talk about profit, I'm specifically talking about a financial profit.
To assume that a corporation is making a product for the enjoyment of the individual is naive. The corporation is making a product to make money. The only way to make money, is to sell that product. In order to sell that product, the consumer must want that product. If the consumer doesn't want the product, the company can't sell it, and therefor cannot make a profit. Your happiness is just a tool that the corporation utilizes in order to access your check book.
Any individual who thinks that their decision not to purchase a $60 game is going to cause enough damage to a multi-billion dollar industry to make them care, is also naive.
$15,000,000,000 - $60 = $14,999,999,940.
Nobody said that a consumer has to explain what they are doing. It should be equally obvious as what the gaming industry is doing. The majority of people don't go to work because they love their job. They go because they need the money. They need the money so they can spend it on things they like.
The vendor and the customer should have a mutual, if implicit, understanding of why the other is there. The company explains their policy, and what they expect from the customer- and in return, they explain what they will do.
Anyhow, you are ignoring the fact that companies don't exist in a void, they exist within nations. And they have to follow the law of the land.
I have not ignored the fact that companies exist within nations; there are very few countries where piracy is legal. If you are pirating games, even if you don't understand that (or how) you are pirating, you are still breaking the law in
most countries. If you don't understand how Steam works, or it's purpose, I would not advise suing them if they lock your account.
You should be prepared to purchase all of the "pirated" copies of the game. In other words, be prepared to pay for: every game on the account, multiplied by the number of users who have ever had access to the account (other than yourself). After all, just because you didn't understand the system, doesn't mean you get away with all of those free copies of the software you were distributing against the law.
The Steam EULA does a really good job of explaining how to use their system without violating the law... and while it may not be strictly legal for them to close your account for piracy- it's probably cheaper to let them do that, than to risk being ordered to pay for all of the pirated copies of the game AS WELL AS court fees. This suit, Valve is just as certain to win as your suit of not being able to access the games you bought.
