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Apple Responds To iTunes "First Sale" Question
atallah writes "It looks like Apple has come out and explained its position on resale of songs. It is interesting that they didn't flat-out reject the idea.
Check out this Business Week article."
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Legal considerations are beside the point; it is very near impossible at this time to sell an iTunes song without also selling your Mac...and your credit card. There's always ripping from a CD burn, but at that point it isn't an iTunes song, it's a below-quality CD rip.
It seems reasonable that you should be able to do this but if Apple were to facilitate this (I'm not sure you were suggesting such a trading feature be built into iTunes or not but it's an interesting subject), the problems become clear. If I were to trade my songs with you, there's no way Apple can check to make sure I haven't made an line-out type recording of the content and re-encoded it into mp3. Basically you need to have a way to ensure that when I trade away my digital goods, my digital goods are really gone. That's tough to do and that's why I think Apple would never consider adding this.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Ultimately, what I would like to see is the free distribution of music files through the Internet. The idea of a used copy is silly (I'm sure you know that but the RIAA probably wouldn't get it) and the only cost at that point is the bandwidth required to share files. I would like to see the whole business model that currently exists go the way of the dodo. The government funds the arts. If that were expanded, people could have music for free (by paying taxes) and artists could receive money. Artists can also receive money by giving concerts. I've had enough of people in suits getting money because some guy with long hair who plays a mean guitar is locked into a death grip with the RIAA.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
And they are entirely right.
Just as a bookseller in no way has to help you sell the book when you are done with it.
How the song you bought would be delivered, and waht mechanisms apple provided for you to do things with it were CLEARLY spelled out by Apple beforehand, as this is a logical question to anyone who wants to download stuff.
Apple is entirely right.. they are not getting in the middle of it.. why should they? They were clear about what they offered, and what it cost.. and you took it.
Serious collectors frequent estate sales. They're good places to find collections which are of no interest to the survivors of the deceased. Books and music are often overlooked.
The Apple spokesman dismissed the resale potential of a 99 cent download. He overlooked the value of a 1000 song collection, where transfering the license keys would be well worth the effort.
They would create an ebay like system directly in iTunes that would allow me to sell my music to other people. Both music I created and music I've purchased from itms. They provide the audience, I provide the bandwidth and content, Apple would get a cut which would go towards paying the artists and record label if one were involved. The rest goes to me, and lets say for each sale of an individual song the overhead of label costs would decrease for each time the song is sold. Obviously the centralized listing of sellers would have to be seperate from itms, but I think it could work. Think napster with a twist.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
The real problem comes in verification that you have not made copies for yourself. If you have, then the "re-sale" is simply a fraud.
The obvious question then being, why should you require verification? If I've purchased a game, ripped to ISOs and resell it's illegal. If I photocopy a book before selling it it's illegal. If I borrow a CD at the library and copy it it's illegal.
The system doesn't have to be perfect. Just deauthorize any song that is sold, and make it synch it to other devices when possible, like when using iTunes to synch music collection. And let those that want to break the copyright to so, they already can in lots of other ways.
Even if you knew it was burned to a CD - what prevents someone from taking that CD to another machine, and make a copy of the copy? Whoops. It's simply not possible to verify that only X copies exist, no matter what kind of uber-DRM you add.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Please show the court the object you purchased.
The doctrine of first sale doesn't apply just to copyright.. it applies to everything. You can only sell something once.. then it's not yours anymore.. the same goes for a book.
Apple isn't weaseling out of anything.. they are merely showing that something is not their problem to solve.. they were up front about what you were paying them for. The rest is up to you.
I often download iTunes songs, burn them to CD, and then rip them. The quality sounds fine to me. I don't personally do it for resale or illegal copying; I'm a jazz musician, and when I want to practice and memorize a new song, I make versions of it that are electronically sped up and slowed down so that it's in 6 or 7 different keys, so that I can practice playing along with it in all those different keys. This of course falls under the personal use exception to copyright, not the doctine of first sale.
The cool thing is that when you have a digital technology that doesn't have a bunch of plastic padlocks built into it, different people can do different things with it, and they don't have to say "Mother may I."
It was interesting that the article claims there are legal decisions from the copyright office saying first sale doesn't apply to digital stuff -- that's the first I'd of heard that. Can't say I really care, though: Congress gave me the right of first sale, the personal use exception, and the fair use doctrine, so a bunch of unelected bureaucrats can take them away from me when they pry them from my cold, dead hands.
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Yeah! That's what surprised me too. I have never heard the "Right of First Sale" doctrine questioned before when it comes to digital works.
If this is, indeed, the case - and the courts do decide that digital works aren't covered by it, that really opens up a whole can of worms.
Among other things, it means Microsoft is right after all, when they want to stop you from reselling unopened/unused OEM versions of their operating systems that were originally bundled with new PCs. (First Sale doctrine is the main argument people had in their favor, when trying to recoup money lost when they were forced to buy their new laptop or desktop system with Windows pre-loaded on it.)
Even the "personal use" exception seems to be under fire these days, as the publishers of digital works keep trying to find more ways to milk extra $'s from people (DMCA, etc.).
Unless things change, one of these days, you just might find it has become illegal to practice existing music without paying for a "musician's license" from the recording industry. (We're sorry, but without a license issued by the original copyright holder - you're simply engaging in attempted illegal reproduction of our copyrighted works, Mr. Musician!)
The way iTunes DRM works makes things much simpler and less controlling but also takes away the user's ability to transfer songs. When you download a song, Apple attaches a DRM "lock" to the actual music file. Then, when you register your computer with Apple they give you the "key." That way, you only need to be online to get your computer the key. Other than that, iTunes never phones home about any use of the songs. In order to transfer a song, Apple would need to make the original purchase invalid and create a new one. There is no way to invalidate just one purchase under the system. You'd have to give the buyer your whole account. Or yourself a whole new account. Even then, you could easily keep all your old (and sold!) music on another machine that hasn't synced to the internet. The beauty of Apple's system is the freedom it gives the user, like true ownership. No cage comes down around the music if you have no network connection.
On the bright side, let's say you want to unload your whole collection of music. You could literally SELL your whole account with all your music after removing your credit info. Now that seems like a realistic sale. Selling just one song 99 makes little sense. Selling hundreds to someone who likes your taste just might work very well. The buyer of your account would know if you were still holding on to an authorization key because iTunes would tell them so.