from the live-by-the-sword,-die-by-the-sword dept.
Disney's attempt to prevent Redbox from buying its discs for rental and resale may have blown up in the House of Mouse's face. The Hollywood Reporter describes how District Court Judge Dean Pregerson sided with Redbox to shoot down a Disney-mandated injunction. In addition, Pregerson contended that Disney may itself be misusing copyright law to protect its interests and its own forthcoming streaming service.
If you're unfamiliar with the backstory, Redbox didn't have a deal in place to procure Disney DVDs and Blu-rays for its disc rental kiosks. So, the company simply bought the discs at retail, often snagging combo packs that include a DVD, Blu-ray and a download code for the movie as well. Redbox would then offer up the discs for rental, and sell on the codes at its kiosks for between $8 and $15.
Such a move enraged Disney, which includes language in its packaging and on the website demanding that users must own the disc if they download a copy. But this is where Pregerson began to disagree, saying that Disney cannot dictate what people do with copyrighted media after they have bought it. Specifically, that there's no law, or explicit contract term, that prevents folks from doing what Redbox did with Disney discs.
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/22/disney-redbox-lawsuit/
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 23 2018, @10:03PM (29 children)
Streaming will probably kill the kiosk within the next few years. And Redbox is trying to adapt to that:
https://www.consumerreports.org/streaming-video-services/with-redbox-on-demand-kiosk-company-gives-streaming-another-shot/ [consumerreports.org]
The users who want 4K HDR content can probably afford a good Internet connection.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by meustrus on Friday February 23 2018, @10:31PM (11 children)
Not everybody is willing to pay $10/mo times the number of streaming services to get everything there is, and there will always be licensing hurdles that prevent every major release from being available for streaming immediately. Redbox is surely quite comfortable selling not just to 4K/HDR enthusiasts, but also to the single parents with $2 to spend on a movie night and the new-release junkies that can't stand the theater.
Not a huge market, sure, but it can't cost that much to maintain a network of vending machines anyway.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday February 23 2018, @10:44PM (9 children)
Not everybody is willing to pay $10/mo times the number of streaming services to get everything there is
Yeah, but you can already watch movies online without a subscription to a streaming service. Amazon Video for instance will let you just pay $5 or whatever and watch a single movie, no subscription needed. This is what Redbox is competing more with, and will compete even more with in the near future. Why bother going to Walmart and looking through the limited selection of physical DVDs/BDs at the Redbox when you can rent a movie right from your smartTV in your living room, picking from a much larger selection?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday February 23 2018, @11:04PM (1 child)
True, but I'm guessing this is an impulse thing, and advertised prices seem to be $1.50 at the Redbox dispenser, and they now have a streaming "on demand" startup going on, price is 4.99 (1 buck less than Amazon, same price as Google Movies), (regular Amazon, not prime).
(These prices were for the same random movie on each platform).
Of course the Amazon and Redbox and Google streaming options require you to subsidize them with a broadband connection, so they should be a lot cheaper than they are. The rip off is the streaming even without a subscription.
That $1.50 looks pretty good if you happen to be passing one on your normal route.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:20PM
That $1.50 looks pretty good if you happen to be passing one on your normal route.
Maybe, but that $1.50 soon becomes $3.00 or $4.50 if you forget to return it on time. Also, that $1.50 requires you to not only make a drive to the Redbox to get the movie, but make another drive (within the time window) back to the Redbox to return it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Friday February 23 2018, @11:04PM (4 children)
I can buy a single movie, on somewhat permanent media, for $5 if I'm willing to live with used media. Which I generally am. Bits is bits. Further, in that case, or even when more invested in brand new media, I own the media: I can back it up, play it at any time, I don't have to worry about returning it or having my "viewing rights" go away after first-watch + 24 hours or whatever, and I don't have to deal with the network suddenly turning my viewing experience into a bunch of low-resolution blocks, or going down entirely, nor my wifi/lan being compromised by relatively high constant data transfer when it is working properly.
I almost never stream movies. And I am a paying member of Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime. And sometimes HBO and Starz. Most of that is for early access to episodic content — which all of those are now producing in considerably better quality than broadcast television (Firefly excluded.)
Streaming isn't my first choice. It's my last choice.
I do have a large theater system, and tend to have high expectations of the display and audio quality; that makes me a bit of an isolated case overall but I'm sure I'm not alone in this.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday February 23 2018, @11:48PM (2 children)
The going price in second hand stores is closer to $1 per DVD around these parts. Selection is sort of haphazard, as you might expect.
But quite frankly I haven't put a disk in the DVD player in over two years, since the grand kids were visiting.
I'm just not a big movie watcher, and have a great deal of trouble understanding those people who spend a lot of time and money watching movies. (Let alone watching them twice).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by bzipitidoo on Saturday February 24 2018, @01:52PM
Why are you all ignoring torrenting and public libraries, the elephants in the room? Are you afraid?
$1 for a used DVD is an okay price, but it can't compete with $0 for a torrent. Yes, yes, I know, that's usually illegal. But it's also $0 to check out a copy from the public library. You do know that these days, public libraries have a fair selection of movies for lending? Admittedly, their media is frequently so scratched up that parts of the movie won't play-- I missed about 5 minutes of Schindler's List thanks to scratches on the library's copy-- and their collections tend to be small.
Also, what about borrowing from friends? Still occasionally trade paperback books with friends.
Torrents have the best selection of them all. So often I have been frustrated by lack of availability on legal, paid services. Lot of good movies I meant to see one day because at the time I didn't have a DVD player or even a TV, not to mention the time or money, are still not available through Netflix or Amazon Prime, of which I now have both. So the hell with them. Torrents, ho! Since I never wrote down a list, odds are that I may never see most of those movies, even with torrenting, and I'm okay with that.
Besides, I don't have room for a bunch of plastic discs. Nor do I care to deal with the DRM and region encoding bullcrap that makes it such a pain to use my computer's DVD drive to watch a movie. I am very glad I was so restrained when I was building my DVD collection. I have less than 50 DVDs all told, and no Blu-Rays at all, and I don't want any more. Sometimes I do rent from RedBox. But mostly, it's stream or download, watch, then send the copy to bitbucket heaven as video is so large even a stunningly capacious 2T or more hard drive can be all too quickly filled up.
I am not much of a movie or TV fan. Make it hard to obtain a movie, and I simply will not bother. There are so many other things to do.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday February 25 2018, @12:14AM
There are no significant sources of used media here. We have to find them online. By the time shipping costs are added, we're usually at least around $5.
We are almost comically isolated from... well, pretty much everything. According to a recent article [washingtonpost.com] in the Washington Post, this town is the most isolated in the USA in a list of isolated communities of more than 1,000 population. Yay. We won! Sort of. :)
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Saturday February 24 2018, @08:16AM
Often, when I watch movies, it's more or less a spur-of-the-moment thing. If that happens while we're in a store that (also) sells movies: great, we might pick one up. But not for full price, it has to sufficiently cheap.
Often, the stars don't align and when the idea hits us, there's not a movie we'd like to watch for a price we'd like to pay in a bin near us. Actually, often it'll be evening and we'll be at someone's home, looking for a one-off movie for a nice evening.
My selection of movies is well-known to me, and as for my family's selection (those with whom I regularly watch movies): ditto. So we could watch something we already have seen once or more.
Or... we click a bit, pay a pittance (less than picking a movie in the bargain bin at the supermarket would be) and get a wider selection and our movie fix.
TL;DR: buying movies for owning is great; renting streams for a quick impulse movie watching moment is great too.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:08AM (1 child)
I like how you assume that everyone has an Internet connection and plan capable of streaming movies at an acceptable level of quality and speed.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday February 27 2018, @05:06PM
These days, it seems like this is a pretty safe assumption, even for people in small towns. Even satellite internet isn't that much, and works fine for streaming movies, if you're really out in the sticks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @01:58AM
Well, they did pull out of the Canadian market. Damn shame, too. I loved renting from Redbox.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday February 23 2018, @10:59PM (14 children)
>The users who want 4K HDR content can probably afford a good Internet connection
A 4K semi-HDR TV can be had for under $400, scarcely more than a 1080 TV of the same size. It's finally reaching the point where it doesn't make much sense to buy a 1080 TV unless you're on a REALLY tight budget. Call it a 10-year life product, and that's only $40/year, or $3.33/month. I'd call that a radically better return on investment than the $60-$100/month it would cost me for higher internet speeds, for which streaming 4k video is pretty much the only real use. Okay, yeah, it'd occasionally be nice to download a large Steam game or Linux distro in minutes instead of hours - but hardly worth the extra $10-$20/download. It's not like my connection is doing anything else overnight.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 23 2018, @11:03PM (9 children)
Don't forget to add in the cost of a 4K Blu-ray player. Or 4K HDR Blu-ray player.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday February 23 2018, @11:06PM (8 children)
You mean an XBox 1? No reason to buy a dedicated player when you can have a game console instead that does the same job.
:)
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday February 23 2018, @11:14PM (1 child)
The original Xbox One doesn't support 4K Blu-ray [wikipedia.org]. You have to get an "S" or "X" model for that.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_One [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday February 23 2018, @11:14PM
Yes, an S. Exactly so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 23 2018, @11:46PM (5 children)
That's proprietary trash that no one should buy.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday February 23 2018, @11:59PM (4 children)
Luckily, no one need pay any attention at all to such an opinion. See how that works?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @12:22AM (3 children)
You can continue being a fool, but that doesn't make it a good idea. Our world is filled with computers, and it is absolutely insane that people don't care that most of them are essentially black boxes. Who cares about privacy, anonymity, freedom, independence, or education? Not you, apparently, or at least not very much.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday February 24 2018, @12:42AM (2 children)
You're being too general.
I'm not paranoid about corporations, game companies, etc., learning what games I play, my scores, or what video I watch. Not at all. There's no significant threat inherent in such activities, and in fact, they can tune themselves to me better with that kind of information, which helps me out. I don't want tampon and baby food ads, I want ads for mech games, test gear, etc. I want book suggestions for programming and SF. And those are the things I get. This is very much a good thing.
The actual threat comes from the government. The government has the power to use information as a bludgeon — and they sometimes do so. So that's the front I keep an eye on. The XBox isn't a significant risk factor there. Not at all. What are they going to do, arrest me because I watched Avatar in 4k, or beat you down to a nub in a pinball game? No, sorry, the XBox is just what it appears to be - a way for companies to mine my fondnesses for games and hidef video, something I am entirely willing for them to do in the game and media genres that interest me.
OTOH, A smartphone - or any phone, really, as the government can monitor everything you say on any phone you use - presents a considerably higher risk, if your lifestyle has such risks inherent in it. So does a general purpose computer with data on it other than your high scores or what movie you last watched.
In all of this, there's a balance between reasonable care and dEh CrAzY; the trick is not to fall into the trap of the latter. Worrying about the XBox is pretty far into the "lost your mind" zone.
But if you must, live in a cave, build a fire with sticks, communicate by whispering, and eat bugs.
They can't get you then.
Or... can they???
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @01:52AM (1 child)
You don't need to be paranoid, because they have a history of abusing people. If the user does not control the program, the program controls the user. Surely you're at least intelligent enough to realize that these proprietary devices can do far more than just spy on your choice of games and such. Why would they stop there when they control the device completely?
More importantly, proprietary software is inherently evil because it denies users their freedoms. Proprietary software is utterly antithetical to independence, education, and freedom. Since I actually care about those things, I do many of the same things that Richard Stallman does to avoid proprietary software.
How do you know this? They are always spending massive amounts of money to find ways to make money from your information, and they will use those methods even if it harms you as long as they can get away with it. I do not have any confidence in your ability to predict every possible abuse, so that's one very, very small reason (in comparison to other issues present here) I err on the side of caution.
Which can retrieve all of the information that these devices can retrieve. But you apparently believe that these devices which are almost entirely out of your control limit themselves to merely spying on your choice of games and other such trivialities, so I suppose it doesn't matter.
It is easy to avoid proprietary game consoles. No one has to live as a hermit to do so, so it's hardly crazy.
I don't buy devices that don't respect my freedoms, whether the device in question is an XBox or a cellphone. Game consoles may not be the worst devices imaginable, but the fact that other things are worse does not mean they are not bad.. I support privacy, freedom, education, and independence on principle. Even if it could be guaranteed that these devices would not abuse me in other ways, I would still refuse to buy them.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday February 25 2018, @12:16AM
Honestly, you're beating a dead horse. You're also very far over on the paranoid side of things.
Be that as it may, you do it your way, I'll do it mine. I'm having a lovely life, but thanks for your concern. :)
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday February 23 2018, @11:07PM (3 children)
What's the bandwidth needed to stream 4K HDR? (Honest question, because I have no idea).
Does it push you into broadband overage charges territory?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fyngyrz on Saturday February 24 2018, @12:51AM (1 child)
Here you go:
Then there's non-streaming direct from media:
As you can see, streaming cuts the data rate significantly. So when Netflix says you need 25 Gb/s, they're also (not) saying (but should be saying) "to view a highly compressed and lossy version of the content."
If you consume 4k video content critically, you'll almost certainly want hard media — not a stream. That's assuming there's anything worth that kind of detail in whatever you're watching. Most non-CGI scenes are mostly some level of soft blur outside one or two characters who are in focus. Movie producers love to use focus to guide your attention (and, I suspect, make backdrops less expensive.) CGI scenes, however, can have very high levels of detail and be worth looking at: rendered cities, dragons, space stations / ships, etc. Consider the scene in Starship Troopers where the ships are being hammered by bug plasma; the ships break open, you can see the decks, people falling out, etc. Detail in a scene like that is very compelling.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday February 24 2018, @02:40AM
According to https://dataplan.xfinity.com/faq/ [xfinity.com]
So watching just one sporting event in 4K Ultra HDR or a movie per Month MIGHT fit withing the 1TB Netflix is offering most customers right now.
But its unlikely two or three would.
Xfinity Unlimited Data Option costs an additional fee of $50 per calendar month.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @01:38AM
Netflix's help page states 25 Mbps, which would exhaust my data cap of 250GB (base 10 because my ISP sucks) in just under 22 hours and 15 minutes.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday February 23 2018, @11:12PM (1 child)
I live in a neighborhood that you might call "urban."
Everytime I go to the local 7-11 to watch Blacks do their grocery shopping for cultural anthropological purposes, there is always at least one person at the Redbox kiosk. And they're not always trash, either. Blockbuster video never died, it just mellowed with age.
And as long as some Americans have to choose between non-tetherable crappy and overpriced phone service and procuring their own distractions, Redbox will be there to stay.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday February 24 2018, @02:52AM
Well, jeez. I never suspected that the Soylentnews crowd hated cultural anthropology. The White male STEM bias is real.
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Friday February 23 2018, @10:04PM (4 children)
This is how Redbox often operates. The local Redbox guy used to come into the warehouse store I worked at and buy tons of new releases and combo packs to load his machines with every other Tuesday and Friday or so, right at open (Tuesdays are often when stores rotate DVD/CD media - Fridays are often new releases). He was on a first name basis with much of the morning stock staff who'd recognize him and help him load his cart sometimes.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Saturday February 24 2018, @08:22AM (3 children)
Aren't those DVDs prohibited from being rented?
Or is Redbox skirting that by "selling" dvd's to their customers and then "buying" them back?
That trick could fall within first-sale doctrine. Redistributing dvds without a license to do so seems to fall afoul of a law here or there, though.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @09:40AM (1 child)
Once the "you can't rent these videos/DVDs/etc" clauses got tested in court, it turned out that first sale doctrine allowed anyone to do anything with the physical media.
Back in the day, they used to sell new release Videos to rental outlets for $100, while the for-sale consumer versions were $20. When they realised they couldn't get away with that, as the rental outlets just rented the retail versions, they tried to sue, but came afoul of the law. So then they just sold the $100 new release videos to video shops, and only a month or two did they start selling the lower cost retail copies.
Just because they include some non-skippable FBI warnings with bogus legal stipulations, doesn't suddenly mean they can circumvent the law and force you to use a product in a certain way.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Saturday February 24 2018, @07:25PM
Interesting. This makes me very curious to know how it works in Europe.
What I know is that the Berne convention led to some harmonisation of copyright internationally.
What I also know is that in Europe, you used to have these "not for public viewing" warnings.
From a little googling, it seems that an equivalent to first sale doctrine ought to exist in the EU.
If there's a lawyer willing to weigh in, color me curious!
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Monday February 26 2018, @01:25PM
I have no idea. Just know what I saw.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by tnt118 on Friday February 23 2018, @10:35PM (8 children)
This is not an original thought, but I found it interesting enough to repeat...
What Disney was apparently trying to claim was that you didn't own multiple disparate physical objects (a disk and a piece of paper) but something more like the rights to watch a specific movie across multiple formats. You were sold *access* to the movie. It'd have been interesting if this went in FAVOR of Disney because that'd ultimately mean a copy of something I own on VHS also grants me the rights to watch a modern, high-res version as well.
I think I like it here.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 23 2018, @10:43PM (2 children)
Yeah, it seems like the crux of the issue was the old "but-on-a-computer" trick. I'm glad the court made a sensible decision on this one.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday February 24 2018, @12:37AM (1 child)
It remains to be seen whether the decision was "sensible" if you favor a permissive approach to use of copyrighted materials as you wish. In fact, it actually does sound a bit like the old "but-on-a-computer" trick, since the digital version was considered quite differently from the physical media by the judge.
It's interesting that the summary here skips the next sentence of the Engadget article, which makes this perfectly clear: "Although it's possible that Disney can amend the wording on its packaging in future to make its objection to reselling legally binding."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @05:28AM
It cannot be legally binding if it violates the 1st sale principle. Considering they lost on principles, I don't see them winning with revised language.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday February 23 2018, @11:19PM (1 child)
But what Disney tried to say was:
The download code was sold inside the disk, and good for one shot.
You don't get to upgrade that old tape for a download that didn't even exist at the time the tape was released.
So the judge got it right. You can sell, gift, rent, loan, your DVDs and BlueRays to your heart's content, as long as your heart is content to NOT reproduce it. I note that many DVDs also contain a prohibition of Public Performance, (anything beyond home use). I wonder if that also gets kicked out?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @05:17PM
Since a public performance would be considered a "copy" for the sake of copyright, I doubt it.
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday February 24 2018, @12:24AM (1 child)
Actually, that's NOT what Disney was trying to claim at all. More accurately, you were sold "access" to the download, but only if you owned the DVD physical media. To put it another way, you were sold a physical object, but were only granted a license to the electronic download if you agreed to specific terms.
(Also, the "piece of paper" is a red herring here. The judge explicitly rejected Redbox's argument that the "piece of paper" was a separate physical object that effectively could be resold separately without any copyright significance. It only had value, according to the ruling, due to its relationship to a potential downloaded copy.)
No. It'd simply mean that the judge adopted a more permissive interpretation of the way you agree to contracts when you open a box.
Unfortunately, the Engadget article, along with the summary posted here, completely misunderstands the nature of the ruling, which isn't much about copyright law at all. It's about contract law.
Most of the ruling (complete version found here [documentcloud.org]) is spent with the judge thinking through the nature of "shrink-wrap licenses" and "box-top licenses." A "box-top license," according to the ruling, specifically creates an enforceable legal contract that obtains if you open the box. It explicitly states the terms of the contract, that you accept said contract upon opening the box, and preferably also the actions by which you can refuse to accept the terms. A "shrink-wrap license" can theoretically do a similar task, but the wording of Disney's language was not explicit or clear enough to constitute a legal contract, in the opinion of the judge.
Specifically, the language "Codes are not for sale or transfer" is not sufficient to create a contract because it did not specify what action the user must take to accept those terms. The judge cites California precedent that states that "silence" is not generally sufficient to constitute acceptance of a contract, and since Disney didn't say, "If you open the shrink wrap/box, you accept these terms," there's no evidence that Redbox agreed to those terms. The judge also notes that some of the other language on the box states things that are obviously unenforceable legally, giving credence to the argument that the box is merely stating Disney's "preference" for the actions of the consumer, rather than a legal contract.
The only place that a copyright issue came into the ruling against Disney was in a secondary argument about how the "Codes are not for sale or transfer" and guaranteeing that someone using the code is "the owner of the physical product that accompanied the digital code at the time of purchase" imply that there are restrictions on how consumers could resell the physical media while retaining access to the digital product. The judge argues this is an inappropriate restriction that tends to overstep on copyright, since consumers are generally free to resell or redistribute physical media, and this clause effectively decreases their value. (According to a footnote, Disney at oral argument backtracked on this point, and attempted to say one could resell the codes ALONG WITH the physical media and thereby stay in compliance with copyright law, in which case the judge said the ruling about the vague contract already mentioned still obtains. Thus, the copyright issue is clearly secondary to the contract dispute.)
In fact, despite this digression into copyright law, the judge goes on to explicitly state that the first-sale doctrine [wikipedia.org] CANNOT apply to the digital "copy" in this case, since the digital copy does not come into existence until after the purchaser uses the code:
So, the judge explicitly states that Redbox failed to make a convincing legal argument that the (potential) download has copyright significance.
TL;DR -- According to this preliminary ruling: Consumers do NOT necessarily have the freedom to do anything they want with a license code for a download -- Disney just wrote a really poorly worded shrink-wrap contract. The judge did not preclude the idea that they could write a better contract that in fact restricts downloads the way Disney wants to, perhaps as long as it allows said download codes to transfer along with future sales of the physical media.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @10:28PM
I much prefer the article summary. Your's is a too depressing slap in the face after reading the article summary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @08:37AM
" It'd have been interesting if this went in FAVOR of Disney because that'd ultimately mean a copy of something I own on VHS also grants me the rights to watch a modern, high-res version as well."
Why would you think that? Disney (or fill in any other big name movie producer here) will immediately bring down lawsuits to say that the only rights to view you purchased were for the exact formats you were given in the sale. So in addition to losing your property rights, you will then be corralled into an ever smaller set of rights. I'm glad the courts confirmed that just because a company puts BS restrictions on their products, it doesn't make them binding by law by default.
You bought a bluray disc, a dvd disc, and a download code. While the download code is a 1-use item, there's nothing the company can do to about who actually redeems it unless there is a signed contract that the purchaser has explicitly signed with their signature prior to purchase. (hint EULAs don't cut it.)