That mp3 file you just "bought" online - you don't own it.

[VirtualLarry]

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/04/reselling-digital-goods/

Cliffs: First sale doctrine doesn't apply to intangible goods.

Perhaps this will lead to a resurgence of pressed CDs purchases?

 

[DaveSimmons]

I never re-sell my music, and I normally buy CDs to rip to lossless FLAC then (for portables) transcode to MP3.

This does apply to my Kindle and Steam libraries, but I accepted that limitation when I made the purchases so I'm not really bothered by this. $5 for a "long term rental" of the Fallout 3 GOTY is fine by me. I'd rather have that than $20 "ownership."

Edit: to me the real issue is DRM when you can't trust the company to maintain the servers needed to authenticate and they feel no need to remove the DRM at that time. Microsoft will be shutting down the GFWL servers next year despite the fact that they could easily migrate them to Azure, and they are leaving it up to the game companies to patch away their DRM.

In terms of a "bill of rights" I'm fine with losing first sale if in turn they are legally required to either maintain the DRM servers in perpetuity or refund my money when they shut the servers down.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think that, clearly, purchasers of digital goods deserve some sort of ownership, and thus resale, rights.

I wonder if Amazon offers e-books, distributed by means of being burned to a DVD/CD, and shipped to the purchaser.

 

[Craig234]

I'm glad to see it. I think it's fairer.

 

[Wardawg1001]

This is hardly a new thing. Gamers in particular have been up in arms about it since the coming of Steam.

Personally I don't have a problem with it, I've never bought any physical or virtual good with the intent of re-selling it (except a car, which I'll get to later).

The reason people take issue is that in the past, when you could only buy games/books/music in a physical format, there was no impediment to selling it to someone else when you were done with it. Most digital goods that are sold today have some way to tie the product to the person who bought it though, usually via a user account of some kind. So people see this as an infringement of their rights because they can't do what they used to be able to do.

In my mind though, the re-sale of many of those goods never really should have been allowed (I wouldn't go so far as to suggest it should have been illegal, but it was never 'right'). Take a video game for example. When you buy the game, you aren't paying for the physical media on the disc - yes thats part of the cost, but what you are actually buying is the experience of playing the game, and the work put in by the developers to create that experience. You paid $60 for that experience and the developer got some money for it. When you turn around and sell that to a friend, the developer doesn't get any more money. You can argue that this is fair because you own the physical media that the game is on and you have certain rights to do what you wish with things you own, but the reality is that they didn't sell you a disc with a game on it, they sold you their work, at an agreed upon price, and you already consumed it. Nobody else should have the right to consume that developers work off of your physical media without also paying the developer for it. This is an unpopular opinion among gamers, but its what I believe to be true and fair. The same idea applies pretty well to books and music as well.

The most common argument I see put forth by people who disagree with the idea that you don't actually own a digital product you buy is the comparison to other goods that are commonly bought, used, and then sold to someone else - cars are frequently referenced. A CD and a car are both physical products, but they should not be treated the same. When you buy a new car from a dealership, what they have sold is a vehicle that is expected to function properly for X number of years/miles. They have no stake in who actually gets the value out of the car, as it can only be used by one person at a time, and if the person who actually paid for it never uses it (because they give it to a family member for instance) they lose nothing - they sold a vehicle that has a finite amount of usage, and the value is consumed as the car is used, regardless of who is using it. A car cannot be fully consumed, re-sold and fully consumed again, then re-sold and fully consumed a third time the way that a video game can.

To provide a simplistic example, lets assume that a car is bought new from a dealership with the expectation that it will run for 15 years. When you sell that car after using it for 5 years, the person who buys it is not getting a brand new car with a life expectancy of 15 years, they are getting a used car with a life expectancy of 10 years. The dealership doesn't lose anything because they already made their money with the expectation that the car would last 15 years - the fact that someone else other than the original buyer is using up that value does not affect them. Compare this to a video game, where the original buyer pays $60 for the ability to play the game to its completion. Once that person is done with the game, he's already consumed all $60 worth of value. When he sells that to another person, that person is also going to consume $60 worth of value, because hes getting the exact same thing that the original buyer got. This can be repeated endlessly, with only a single person buying the game, but everyone else getting the entire value out of it, and not a single cent going back to the developer despite only being paid once. If you take this all the way out to point of absurdity, a single copy of the game could make its way around to every single person in the world, with every single one of them getting the full value out of the game and none of them paying the developer. This cannot happen with a car (and most other physical goods in the world for that matter).

 

[C1]

Nah, you dont go to garage/church sales, Goodwill stores, etc. There are all kinds of games and media on CDs/DvDs which have fallen off the end of the world in the sense that they have become incompatible with both common available hardware and software. Stuff from WIN 3.1 doesnt run right in WIN 98 nor WIN 98 stuff run right in WIN NT/XP and even If I were even to upgrade from XP to VISTA or better(?) stuff like NERO and Adobe PS have to be replaced (what a PITA BTW).

The purpose of copy protection is to discourage making and propagating replicas of the original media. Dont believe me, see what happens if you had a replicator like in Star Trek and started duplicating then selling Corvettes.

 

[dud]

"ReDigi, which opened in late 2011, provides a platform to buy and sell used MP3s that were once purchased lawfully through iTunes."


This concept was doomed (from a legal standpoint) from the beginning. Selling USED MP3s? What is a "used" MP3? It is simply a digital file.

 

[shortylickens]

Thats ok. You dont "own" the CD either. You never did.
Never owned the cassette, the 8-track, or the LP.

 

[Craig234]

Wardawg, I agree with your conclusions but not some of your argument.

When you say the car company has no interest in who drives that car, I don't quite agree.

If the car companies could restrict the car ownership to one owner, they'd benefit. Lots of people who buy it would want to upgrade and just discard the old car, eliminating the used market, making a lot of used car buyers buy new cars instead. The industry would increase their profits and sales.

But it would be wasteful, of all those used cars.

There is a difference in the 'materials' value of a used car, making it different than intellectual property which is vulnerable to copying.

Even cars have some of that - you don't want a company copying another company's product, making them pay for all the R&D a different company benefits from - but it's a different issue for resale than intellectual property. It'd be a bit like a car owner being able to magically make a copy of his brand new car to sell to someone else, costing the dealer a sale.

 

[smackababy]

Wardawg, I agree with your conclusions but not some of your argument.

When you say the car company has no interest in who drives that car, I don't quite agree.

If the car companies could restrict the car ownership to one owner, they'd benefit. Lots of people who buy it would want to upgrade and just discard the old car, eliminating the used market, making a lot of used car buyers buy new cars instead. The industry would increase their profits and sales.

I think car manufactures understand that is completely false and won't happen. A very large number of people cannot afford new cars, thus with the used car market gone, car companies either have to offer far, far cheaper cars or cars become a luxury item and opens the opportunity for new businesses to open (privatized public transit maybe) or expand and eliminate even more of the car market. Without a used car market, people don't buy new cars nearly as often. That is one of the false equivalents people try and make the the software market though; they forget a PC game costs $60 and a car costs $25,000. Eating $60 every now and again isn't a big deal for people, but something that is financed and paid off over the course of years is.

I think the problem is people seem to think software isn't a service being provided (same as music). They see it as a finished good and want the rights associated with that.

 

[Wardawg1001]

Wardawg, I agree with your conclusions but not some of your argument.

When you say the car company has no interest in who drives that car, I don't quite agree.

If the car companies could restrict the car ownership to one owner, they'd benefit. Lots of people who buy it would want to upgrade and just discard the old car, eliminating the used market, making a lot of used car buyers buy new cars instead. The industry would increase their profits and sales.

But it would be wasteful, of all those used cars.

There is a difference in the 'materials' value of a used car, making it different than intellectual property which is vulnerable to copying.

Even cars have some of that - you don't want a company copying another company's product, making them pay for all the R&D a different company benefits from - but it's a different issue for resale than intellectual property. It'd be a bit like a car owner being able to magically make a copy of his brand new car to sell to someone else, costing the dealer a sale.

Yes it would benefit the car industry if everyone were forced to buy a new car and used car sales were not allowed (or maybe not, smackababy makes some good points). I was specifically ignoring that scenario because it does not and never has existed (that I am aware of at least). You could try to compare that theoretical scenario to the sale and resale of virtual goods, but it really isn't the same thing, and the reasons why are in the points made in my original post.

There is no valid, convincing reason to prevent the sale of used cars. Increased profit is not a reason in and of itself**. I can't envision a scenario in which this would ever come to pass, and so I don't think its really relevant to consider. Thus, my statement that car companies do not care who drives the car after it has been bought.

**The car companies might think it is, but they'd have a hard time convincing consumers to play along, or the government to enforce it.

 

[Craig234]

Wardawg, we're mostly agreeing. I disagreed with one comment you made, that car companies have no interest in a resale market for their cars.

It's not a practicla issue - there's going to be a used car market. Just noting a couple things, that it does affect the companies, and there is a smaller IP issue for cars.

 

[Craig234]

I think car manufactures understand that is completely false and won't happen. A very large number of people cannot afford new cars, thus with the used car market gone, car companies either have to offer far, far cheaper cars or cars become a luxury item and opens the opportunity for new businesses to open (privatized public transit maybe) or expand and eliminate even more of the car market. Without a used car market, people don't buy new cars nearly as often. That is one of the false equivalents people try and make the the software market though; they forget a PC game costs $60 and a car costs $25,000. Eating $60 every now and again isn't a big deal for people, but something that is financed and paid off over the course of years is.

I think the problem is people seem to think software isn't a service being provided (same as music). They see it as a finished good and want the rights associated with that.

As I said, this is not a topic of getting rid of used car sales. I was simply responding to the statement that it isn't of any convern to cap companies that there are used car sales.

If there wasn't a user car market, car sales would go down, but a lot of the used car buyers would become new car buyers.

On software, I like each person who uses the software buying a 'new' copy.

There is a need for having it available more affordably for some customers, but that is pretty addressed with the price going down and sales.

Selling a 'used' copy gives the people who provide it nothing.

 

[BoberFett]

IP is a monopoly on specific thought, and as Craig well knows monopolies are bad for the consumer. Further restrictions on IP such as the inability to resell IP you're no longer using takes it from a monopoly to an abusive monopoly. I'm sure Craig would agree that monopolies should be stamped out.

 

[Pulsar]

Hrm. Can't own an intangible. So you buy the MP3 player, but don't really own the firmware that makes it work?

You buy the blu ray player, but don't own the code that runs it? Pretty much everything you buy now has program code at some layer - from chipped car keys to cars themselves to phones to alarm clocks.

IF this sort of precedent is set, it suggests that the companies are free to remove their code or shut it off down the road. It's already happened to a number of game companies where they take their servers down and that's it.

I can still play Diablo and Diablo 2. I still love Diablo (the original). Will I be able to play Diablo 3 15 years after its release? Doubtful. Yeah, it's infeasible for the companies to shut off the code on non-connected items. But you really need to think about the precedent something like this sets.

Personally, I won't buy DRM'd ebooks or music. Movies get immediately ripped to my storage, because having kids means every DVD I own gets destroyed over time. Placing things like office and photoshop on a 'licensing' system is a non-starter for me as well. I have a computer up north that I turned on once in a blue moon when we go on vacation. The idea that I need to pay licensing fees to keep that software up and running is nuts.

This will almost certain increase the move away from proprietary closed-source software that requires yearly license fees. Kids are already learning linux and unix basics far earlier than they used to. It used to be that you didn't touch that stuff till college. Now kids in middle school are starting to screw around with it because they want to hack their android phones.

Eventually we'll all be on open source and the only ones paying the licensing fees will be the 'professionals' and the large corporate entities that can afford it.

 

[Pulsar]

Selling a 'used' copy gives the people who provide it nothing.

The exact same things as used car sales. It gives the auto manufacturer nothing when a used car is sold. There is no reason software needs to be any different.

Consider my above post. Since the manufacturer owns all the software that makes the car run, can they now tie that software to a specific title, and shut it off when you sell the car to someone else until that other person pays licensing fees?

 

[smackababy]

The exact same things as used car sales. It gives the auto manufacturer nothing when a used car is sold. There is no reason software needs to be any different.

Consider my above post. Since the manufacturer owns all the software that makes the car run, can they now tie that software to a specific title, and shut it off when you sell the car to someone else until that other person pays licensing fees?

The problem with a car is that it is a product that has a lifespan. Car dealers sell cars at their full life span and full value. A used car as had some of it's life (and therefore value) depreciated by a user. It can be abused even. An MP3 can't be 'driven hard' and depreciates zero of it's resource no matter how much it is used. The same can be said about software. No matter how many hours you played D2, it will never lose it's ability to function exactly as it does each time.

 

[Craig234]

Cars and MP3's are different in that the car wears, but I don't think that's the core issue.

It's a dactual difference, but doesn't really capture the principle involved.

What if they made MP3's sound a little worse every year until they don't play at all in several years? Nonsensical but that isn't really what the resale issue is about.

I think the issue is what I mentioned in my post, that the dominant component is IP, and it makes sense for each consumer of an IP to buy it.

Barring the sharing that already can go on - shared computers, shared iPod's, and so on sharing the same MP3. Just like you can let someone borrow your car.

 

[smackababy]

Cars and MP3's are different in that the car wears, but I don't think that's the core issue.

It's a dactual difference, but doesn't really capture the principle involved.

What if they made MP3's sound a little worse every year until they don't play at all in several years? Nonsensical but that isn't really what the resale issue is about.

I think the issue is what I mentioned in my post, that the dominant component is IP, and it makes sense for each consumer of an IP to buy it.

Barring the sharing that already can go on - shared computers, shared iPod's, and so on sharing the same MP3. Just like you can let someone borrow your car.

I think another issue is the cost to make vs the cost of sale. A car costs a company so much to make and is sold at a small profit to a dealership, who then sells it to you for a profit. An MP3 (and software) has a very large upfront cost that must be recouped over the life of the sales. It is sold at a very discounted rate compared to the costs involved, but since it easily reproducible can be sold in mass. That is why record labels exists. They provide the upfront cost for artists to produce their art and recoup that money (times 1000) by 'reproducing' the art and selling that.

 

[v-600]

I'm puzzled by this. Its already legal to resell "used" software licences here but I've not seen a ruling on mp3 or video. I can't see how it would be much different though. I think there's only one way the courts can go if it goes to a trial.

http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2012-07/cp120094en.pdf