Comment on EU Citizen's initiative to pass legislation to stop game publishers disabling games we paid for
anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months agoGenerally, forcing developers to code something has been considered “compelled speech”
I’m European so I don’t quite understand.
Say person A paid person B to say X and had a valid contract. If B didn’t say X can person A sue person B to compel performance of contract or just money back/damages?
At least for new games wouldn’t it just be an implied part of the purchasing contract, meaning money back at least.
t3rmit3@beehaw.org 4 months ago
Well first, my question more relates to the US Constitution’s 1st Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech from government/public interference, which is why a law could not compel someone to code something, but also, even in contract law disputes you will only be able to compel Specific Performance (doing an action) if you can show that monetary or other compensatory damages would be unable to properly compensate for the breach, and Specific Performance can never cover “personal obligations” such as continued employment.
If you had already written the code, but refused to turn it over, that might be possible to compel, but if it wasn’t yet written the courts would never compel you to write that code as a form of compensation for contract breach.