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RIAA Doesn't Like the "Used Digital Music" Business
An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica reports on the developing story between the RIAA and music reseller ReDigi, 'the world's first online marketplace for used digital music,' who first came online with a beta offering on October 11th, 'allowing users to sell "legally acquired digital music files" and buy them from others "at a fraction of the price currently available on iTunes.'' If the notion of selling 'used' digital content is challenged in court, we may finally receive a judicial ruling on the legality of EULAs that will overturn the previous Vernor v. Autodesk decision."
Backup copies, you're just trading files with moneys attached. Like reselling a physical CD after ripping it or copying it to tape or whatnot, same as we've done for years really, just quicker and easier. This kind of resale relies heavily on the honor system.
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Now the RIAA has flip-flopped by acting as if these digital files are NOT equivalent to physical items...I guess their position will be where the money is, regardless of what's logical or their prior actions.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
They've already been trying to do this.
In the PC games market, tying games to Steam - I bought Portal 2, and discovered it required me to install Steam to get the install and get the fucking software to run.
What does this mean? Well, I can make it run. But I can't, when done with it, give the copy (serial and all, uninstalled from my computer) to a family member or friend as a gift.
iTunes does much the same thing. You can't buy something and then send it to someone else, in a "deleted from your account, credited to theirs instead" transaction.
The cartels salivate at killing the used market because they think it means more sales.
So if I understand this correctly, the main attack vector they are using in this case is that they aren't actually selling "the used MP3", but that they are "copying it and destroying the original on the user's computer", therefore not actually acquiring or receiving the original song but a duplicate.
But couldn't the same reasoning be used to DEFEND piracy? The original is still in the user's possession. I just also have a copy.
Either MP3's need to be like their physical counter parts or they aren't. There is no in between.
I figured the RIAA would love this idea!
I don't see how "used digital music" actually means anything. There's no way to stop a user from retaining a copy of the file without yet *another* level of some nasty DRM. Anyhow, the idea of "used data" is pretty ridiculous. I predict that the RIAA takes this company to court for enabling and encouraging "unauthorized redistribution of copyrighted IP" or some such. The pusher doesn't like it when you find another source...
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Lots of considerations should go into this. What happens when someone passes away, does their mutli-thousand dollar music collection somehow become magically worthless? What about someone going through a divorce or a bankruptcy? Can these be considered assets and taken from one person and granted to another?
The first sale doctrine needs to apply in common sense situations like this. If you buy something, including a license, it is only common sense that you would be able to resell it. That being said if a license is sold the original terms should also be accepted. I'm not advocating simply sharing it, I'm talking about removing it from one place putting it in another.
People would never tolerate the loss of first sale doctrine in any other aspect of their life as it would be absurd. Can you imagine toyota demanding a transfer fee or the right of first refusal when you want to sell your car?
Buying "used" digital music.
It's about as laughable as paying money for "brand-new, unused" digital music.
(I laugh at anyone who pays money for digital music.)
I wish there were such a thing as used digital goods. If only someone would have thought of a way to make that work...I don't know maybe a major game retailer with their own digital distribution site/application. I don't get what the big deal is. DRM has made enough people sick of buying music, and when they do buy their "license" to the music, they can't do anything with it. People that pirate can do anything they want with their music. Wonder who's winning this fight. My solution to the problem is stop buying music. Listen to the radio, Pandora, iHeartRadio, Tunein, or whatever free service you can find. Don't buy their product and let them wallow in their own misery and try to win us back by providing a product that people actually want in a form they can use it in.
There is no cash income, so it is not SELLing. It is trading
So publishers are allowed to sell copies of CDs, but the people who bought them are not? Besides, I don't think there is much money lost here, people won't sell music they actually like.
Maybe we'll actually get it decided once and for all whether digital goods may be considered equivalent to physical goods. Then again, that'd actually straighten out all manner ambiguity related to digital property rights from ebooks, movies, musics, etc.. Since business must always prevail regardless of merit for that to happen we'd be stuck with a pro-business interpretation. So I suppose that means the judge will either punt or screw us over. God bless our plutocracy!
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I'm sure he'll be standing up to the RIAA any minute now....
gonna be soon.....
he's probably on his way....
just be patient.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Either intellectual property is a physical good that can be legally acquired, owned, and resold as a used item, or it is not, in which case stop fucking calling it theft.
Their position has always been clear:
Digital music is treated like physical property inasmuch as the accidental loss of the file does not entitle you to receive a replacement for free. It is not treated like physical property for resale purposes, because you don't have the option to resell.
That isn't hard to understand. And of course you don't like those terms, but the music belongs to the RIAA, not you, so deal with it.
Or, you know, lobby and get the law changed.
The main issue is that people don't actually own the music they purchase, they own a licence to the music and the licence is flagged non transferrable. That is why I believe the first step is for a country to precisely describe in law what digital property is and also through some means encourage its adoption in a fair and universal fashion.
Why doesn't anyone challenge all copyrights and patents in court. Heck, why we don't all do this?
We don't need these monopolies.
Digital files aren't rival. If you copy a music file and give it to my, we both have it.
Disobey, download, share, pirate everything. It's getting ridiculous. Why are so many people just brainwashed fucking zombies applauding copyrights and patents, for what? for stomping on everyone's freedoms? for making us believe that sharing is bad?
Fuck them all!
The problem being that you *can't* really even pretend to 'give away' digital content without DRM. In the event of death, I think you can easily say the previous owner will not likely use their copies again, so inheriting makes sense (though should not count in any way in terms of 'estate tax'). In a divorce, I think practically both get the 'property' (maybe a *smidge* unfair to the music industry, but I doubt this constitutes much 'loss'). For purposes of bankruptcy, I'd say it's fair to call the music library valueless (I've never gone through bankruptcy, but I was under the impression that things on the order of CDs didn't really count anyway except in extraordinary circumstances.
Now, reselling a license without any even vague enforcement, I could see the RIAA getting rightfully worried that they have no hope at all of reselling really being a transfer rather than copy. I can't really imagine a good way of resolving this without DRM. I'd rather have no 'secondary' market than one made possible through DRM,.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I can't imagine toyota demanding a feel, but I bet toyota sure can.
There are too many situations where this law is not clear. The line is somewhere in here:
- I burn my music to CDs, ostensibly deleting all other copies. I sell the CDs.
- I sell my laptop, including all software/media on it.
- Combinations of the above: I buy a used laptop and burn media from it and sell it.
- I include all my CD copies in a garage sale of my old washer, free.
- I install bought software on client's computer and haven't install elsewhere. I charge for the service.
- I sell the license to unlock a piece of commercial software, not having used it, on e-bay.
- I take tracks from various CDs that I never use, place them in a new compilation, and sell it online or as a new CD.
- I sell just a playlist without music in it.
- I sell a movie re-dubbed in my local language, destroying my own copy.
- I re-cut scenes, tracks, and box art from bought media and sell it, destroying my original copy.
I want to know what happens if your collection is stolen? If it's a license, the RIAA should let you get it back. (for a nominal processing fee)
What happens when you tell your wife to give that box of CDs to charity, and she grabs the wrong box? Do you still have rights to that music that was given away by mistake?
Fire? Scratched DVD?
I can borrow a DVD from my public library for free, for 2 weeks. Much better than the Redbox. Should they be able to make a copy of a rare DVD, lend the copy, and if the copy is not returned, lend out another copy?
Copyright law needs a complete overhaul. We the People should find a few persons to go to Washington to present our needs to the Government, especially where they conflict with the needs of the corporations. We could call these persons, "Representatives".
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
"used digital music"
This is beyond newspeak. This is just fucking awesome on so many levels.
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
Can you imagine toyota demanding a transfer fee or the right of first refusal when you want to sell your car?
I'd be quite surprised if Toyota were to do that, since i own a Nissan.
----- "I'm still sane on three planets and two moons."
What happens when someone passes away, does their mutli-thousand dollar music collection somehow become magically worthless?
I always thought that it would be instructive for someone to stand in front of congress, hold up an MP3 player or phone and say, "There are 30,000 songs on this device. The Recording Industry insists that every one of those songs is worth at least a dollar. I have a great deal here for some lucky congressperson today - who wants to buy $30,000 worth of music for just five hunnert dollah?
"Do I have any takers?"
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
We're now talking about rights to intangible stuff and it's all silly. If I tell someone they can sing my song in public and they decide they don't want to sing it any more can they let someone else sing it without my permission because they "owned" a right to it? If you don't buy the physical media, then you aren't serious about "owning" your music. That's the price of convenience. It will all go away one day and there will be no evidence it ever existed. Meanwhile, I enjoy 2nd hand media that someone owned before me, and someone will probably own after me.
That is not my problem. If the business model they have set up is not technically and realistically workable then come up with another model. Part of that new model will ahve to accept that the value of a digitial music license for which I have no transfer rights is then much less than the value of a physical music license which i can transfer via selling the phsyical storage medium.
That is the real crux of this whole issue and one of the many reasons the ??AA like to play both sides of the fence. It prevents them having to address head on the loss of value inherent in a non-transferable license. The same goes for e-books BTW.
I have no trouble with non-transferable licenses, but don't try to charge me the same price for it.
If you can't be good, be good at it!
Spent? Certainly! But used? Never!
People would never tolerate the loss of first sale doctrine in any other aspect of their life as it would be absurd. Can you imagine toyota demanding a transfer fee or the right of first refusal when you want to sell your car?
And yet, people do accept that they have to pay a transfer fee when they sell their home: This happens all the time with home owner associations. Of course, the terms are clear up front when one buys their home, and the amount is generally small (on the order of $100 to $500) compared to the price of the home, but there is clearly precedent.
Any time a relationship is maintained between "creator" (or other interested party) and "possessor" that is to outlive the "possession" (that is, transfer with the title), there is usually a fee involved. In fact, land and real property transfers often involve a fee to register the title deed.
I fact, in some cases (used cars), sales taxes are collected again on subsequent sales (generally until the item can be considered significantly depreciated).
I'm not saying I agree with this in all cases, and certainly not for items of little individual value to begin with (just how much is a three year old game worth, exactly?), but it is not entirely unreasonable in all cases.
No! I will not support the RIAA.
I haven't pondered this long enough to form a complete opinion, so I'll hold off on that a little. But what is clear and has been repeated numerous times is that the music and movie industries are late and reluctant to enter the digital age. Their knee-jerk reactions have been to block, restrict and limit all new media. By doing so, they are hurting themselves badly. Worse, they are hurting their customers and any other business that wants to participate in new and emerging markets.
They REALLY need to get their heads out of their asses, learn about and understand what the hell they are selling because at the moment, is seems pretty clear and obvious that they don't even know what they are selling since they can't decide for themselves what "the thing" actually is.
Please, please, please, please, please..... !!!
Well, if the seller does not remove his copy and the buyer get's the copy, then the seller is actually pirating music and profiting from it. Secondary market can exist and it is way better then what we have now — a lot of filesharing networks. Allowing people to resell what they rightfully bought will be a step towards the end-users and might actually decrease the numbers of those people who don't buy digital music because there is no way of recouping the cost of buying it in the first place.
Can you imagine toyota demanding a transfer fee or the right of first refusal when you want to sell your car?
When a car company lets you drive a car while they still retain ownership its usually called a lease. At the end of the lease they do require a fee for you to keep the car or transfer it to someone else.
This doesn't bother most people because they have the option to buy or lease so most people don't complain. With software you are only given one option, and that is to accept the license or not use the software. One instance I can think of where owners were only give the option to lease is with GM and the EV1, and many people eventually did complain when GM reclaimed all the vehicles at the end of the lease.
I've been waiting for a good name to describe the 3rd party that i've been kicking around, and i kind of like the connotations that the "Representative" party gives.
First, it doesn't suggest anything that differentiates the members from a 'normal' person, or that drives any kind of idealogical wedge between them...you can be a party member without having to toe any party line, because the only line to toe is that you actually, you know, represent.
Second, it strongly implies that the current "representatives" are not.
A+ idea. Someone will be in touch with you shortly to negotiate intellectual property transfer.
I don't like RIAA business.
Artists do not support them, the industry does. The RIAA does not represent artists. It never has. There are other organizations for that. the RIAA acts solely in the interests of the labels, often in direct opposition to the interests of the artists. Learn the players in this game.
Just don't leave your MP3 player in the car
Can you imagine toyota demanding a transfer fee or the right of first refusal when you want to sell your car?
I'd be quite surprised if Toyota were to do that, since i own a Nissan.
However, for the RIAA, that's just business as usual. They're quite happy to charge money for something they don't own.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
from: [ace37]
to: webmaster@google.com
date: Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 13:38
subject: Digital media and IP Law
--
Dear Google,
Please buy the RIAA and reinvent digital media in a more sane, fair,
and rational fashion.
Thanks,
John
That doesn't mean the license is not transferable. You can put anything you want in fine print, that doesn't mean it's the law.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Can you imagine toyota demanding a transfer fee or the right of first refusal when you want to sell your car?
I'd be quite surprised if Toyota were to do that, since i own a Nissan.
To complete the analogy, Toyota in this case would be the RIAA, or UMG/whatever....can you honestly tell me that you would be surprised about the RIAA demanding a transfer fee on something they had no part of?
I needed a sig so people would know who I am, but I was too drunk to make something witty, so you get this instead.
I hearby transfer all rights physical, digital, and ethereal for the term "The Representative Party", to a group that can get elected as "The Representative Party"
Here's how it would work. A figurehead would be nominated and if elected, would contractually agree to vote the way the People want. Electronic voting would be used to transmit the will of the people to the figurehead. Voting may or may not be secret ballot. (TBD)
Question. Would the "People" be defined as any voter, or just the registered members of the Representative Party? Would regular voting rules apply, or could someone underage register to be a member and be counted, agreeing to vote for the party when of age?
I like it.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
So what if it's legal in your country to rip a CD? This is the Internet, legality is a matter of which country you and/or the buyer reside in at that moment, not what country the RIAA or the medium used to do the trade in is based in. Or is it? This is too hairy to give absolute answers on, because there are way too many situations in which exemptions to one or the other jurisdiction will apply.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
The problem being that you *can't* really even pretend to 'give away' digital content without DRM.
I agree. But given that I have already agreed to DRM in many cases (e.g. Steam), allowing resale/lending would at least give me some benefits to offset the costs of DRM.
If the RIAA provided services for unlicensed movie duplication, THAT would be hypocrisy.
The holding of two mutually-exclusive positions is not, in and of itself, hypocrisy. It is just contradictory.
These words have precise meanings.
Can you imagine toyota demanding a transfer fee or the right of first refusal when you want to sell your car?
Microsoft and Cisco do it. That used router you bought? Its firmware was fully licensed, but since it's non-transferable you have to buy it all over again. (And since the router is a brick without firmware, they have you over a barrel on pricing.) I always thought it was unfair that such practices are allowed when they only hurt businesses even though people would scream were they applied to consumer goods.
In Capital vs. Thomas, the verdict was for $2,250 per song. So your 30,000 MP3 player/phone would be worth $30,000 if the songs were legitimate and $67.5 million if they were pirated. That makes the $500 sale price even better. It'd be 99.999% off!
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Latest entertainment industry power grab ... ... ...
Slashdot: "Down with the stupid evil corrupt entertainment industry!! Dirty lying evil bastards!!"
They're making a "Dr. Who" feature film
Slashdot: "Oooooh - shiny!!"
[Insert pithy quote here]
The RIAA is evil I have a few points of contention with RIAA. To plunge right into it, a RIAA-controlled culture that cheers on RIAA's suppression of nonconformity, dissent, and other unpopular words is every bit as chilling as one that seeks merely to annihilate a person's personality, individuality, will, and character. But what, you may ask, does any of that have to do with the theme of this letter, viz., that it is driven by its urge for power, its love of force, and its dream of conquest? Well, I'm sure RIAA would rather force me to undergo "treatment" to cure my "problem" than answer that particular question. If there's an untold story here, it's that RIAA is out to make today's oppressiveness look like grade-school work compared to what it has planned for the future. And when we play its game, we become accomplices. Is anyone else out there as struck as I am by RIAA's utter disregard for morality and humanity? The reason I ask is that RIAA can't possibly believe that it's inflexibly honest, thoroughly patriotic, and eminently solicitous to promote, in all proper ways, the public good. It's smarmy but it's not that smarmy.
I could write a hundred letters about how the things that RIAA says about nativism range from the trivial and inarticulate to the ignorant and incoherent. I can tell innumerable stories about RIAA's desire to welsh on all classes of agreements. And I can show you that I wish unsavory criminal masterminds like its intimates would quit whining and try doing some honest work for a change. Regardless of what I do, however, I have in fact told RIAA that its platitudes are a modern-day example of a Procrustean bed. Unfortunately, there really wasn't anything to its response. I suppose RIAA just doesn't want to admit that if we take its ebullitions to their logical conclusion, we see that faster than you can say "counterrevolutionary", it will befuddle the public and make sin seem like merely a sophisticated fashion.
RIAA's rejoinders should be labeled like a pack of cigarettes. I'm thinking of something along the lines of, "Warning: It has been determined that RIAA's mottos are intended to turn back the clock and repeal all the civil rights and anti-discrimination legislation now on the books." While I know very little about unprofessional, voluble casuists, I do know that we can never return to the past. And if we are ever to move forward to the future, we have to recognize and respect the opinions, practices, and behavior of others.
Some sententious heresiarchs are actually considering helping RIAA waste our time and money. How quickly such people forget that they were lied to, made fun of, and ridiculed by RIAA on numerous occasions. RIAA always looks the other way when one of its trained seals gets it in his head to convince innocent children to follow a path that leads only to a life of crime, disappointment, and destruction. Apparently, the principle laid down by Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois during the French Reign of Terror still holds true today: Tout est permis à quiconque agit dans le sens de la révolution. As a matter of policy, judgmental licentious-types should not advocate RIAA's accusations amid a hue and cry as nasty as it is nefarious, but this has never stopped RIAA. If I didn't think RIAA would delude and often rob those rendered vulnerable and susceptible to its snares because of poverty, illness, or ignorance, I wouldn't say that if it wanted to, it could lay the foundation for some serious mischief. It could channel the pursuit of scientific knowledge into a narrow band of accepted norms that are based exclusively on its wily machinations. And it could show us a gross miscarriage of common judgment. We must indubitably not allow RIAA to do any of these.
If the left of the current political spectrum is infernal, unrealistic separatism and the right is hopeless Chekism then RIAA's politics are undeniably going to be a form of pestilential libertinism. For future reference, I wish I knew when RIAA was planning on unleashing its next volley of effe
According to the RIAA, an 8GB iPod is actually worth about $764billion.
http://www.cracked.com/funny-4003-the-pirate-bay/
Why couldn't we treat music like we do cars. Car ownership doesn't official change until the deed changes hands. Digital content could be sold with a second file that is signed by a digital deed authority. It is also possible that the deed data could be tacked onto the last N bytes of the digital file. The digital content could be played, cut, mixed, or otherwise legally used without DRM. If you want to legally sell your collection, you transfer the deed through a digital deed authority to another user. The digital deed authority could take a few cents to a nickel per digital content in order to cover costs. The best part about this is that if you wanted to get your digital content in another physical format, you already paid for the license and businesses could just charge a conversion cost. For example, if you purchase a game on your computer, why should you have to pay the full retail cost to get it on the Xbox 360 when you already paid for a vast majority of the cost. I would much rather pay $5.00 to get my game on a different platform than $60.00.
If you buy something, including a license, it is only common sense that you would be able to resell it.
Actually, it sounds more like natural right than common sense.
This argument will get so convoluted and backwards all reason will start to gravitate to it and disapear. Eventually it will increase in size and collapse in on itself.
Down with the RIAA! Listen to Talk Radio.
~GRUMPY OLD MAN
Alex? Can I get "NO SHIT!" for a thousand?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
This is perhaps the best argument I have seen on this issue.
One of the problems with dishonorable liars trying to redefine things like "sell" is that they fail to take into account all the many, many special cases that happen in real life.
In addition to your very good arguments, I would like to add:
In addition, there is the issue of theft. Not from the music industry, but from you. Lets say a company goes with their horrendous "one machine" concept but then that machine is stolen. If the licensing company refuses to let you re-install in on a new machine, do you have legal insurance claim for the content (as well as the stolen machine)?
Items can be sold or rented. Trying to create new "neither sold nor rented" business models and expecting people to fall in line and take it up the .... is ridiculous.
Part of the reason you might not look at a used computer game or digital music/films and I think "I should sell that" may in fact be because there's no widely functioning marketplace in which to sell the items. You want to sell some used physical stuff, you put it on your lawn and have a yard sale, or use Craigslist or eBay. I've sold old computer parts for $5 and $10 on Craigslist... You want to sell used digital stuff, and unless you have an attached physical copy, there is no easy, widely-accepted, and clearly legal way to do so.
Another thing to consider is that not everyone is selling games. For physical books, I almost always buy used if I can - prices are significantly cheaper, especially for expensive academic texts (but also sometimes for mass market paperback - Amazon usually has a copy for $5 including shipping, and a new copy may be $10). As publishers push digital texts and the prices for academic texts stay high, I am sure people will wish they had a way to resell that $150 econometrics text.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Why don't they just offer to take 10% of the transaction value whenever the media changes hands? If it's going to happen anyway, the choice between making a profit from it and not making a profit from it should be pretty obvious.
Wrong -- when you purchased the 'license' you agree to the contract defined in the license. And part of that contract says that it is NON-TRANSFERRABLE. If you don't agree to the license, then don't buy. caveat emptor.
It'd be 99.999% off!
I'll make you a special deal!
(promise you won't tell the RIAA)
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
"What happens when someone passes away, does their mutli-thousand dollar music collection somehow become magically worthless?"
THIS is exactly what they want. If you ask the RIAA, they will say "YES".
You'd be doing the RIAA a favour; if you're selling it for $500 it's too good to be true so it just has to be stolen property! A loss of revenue of $29,500 one one device! And how many jobs lost?
They have a workable business model in which they do not allow you to resell your music. You are trying to get them to come up with a business model that suits your purposes and asking them to find ways to cater to your whims. You are the one who needs to come up with a workable business model. As far as we can see, allowing people to resell music violates copyright, because you do not have the right to create new copies to sell. Reselling digital music necessarily involves creating new copies of the media. So you need to first find a way around that for your business model to begin to be workable.
The trouble is that theres no tangible representation of the license. Waht is needed is a bitcoin like system for transferring licenses so that if i have a license, i have something to show and, if i dont, i dont.
That wasn't the value for the music, that was the lost sales due to uploading. Physically stealing something, you have to pay restitution for not buying it. Uploading, you have to pay restitution for everyone else for not buying it.
The original example would probably draw questions such as, how did you acquire $30,000 worth of music legally? If you ripped it from CDs then it's not yours to sell, without supplying the original discs. If you downloaded them individually and paid 0.99 per track, then you spent about $30,000 and I would like the IRS to check where you got that money from.
When are thees people going to stop hanging on to their old - no longer relevant - business model. It's like beating a dead horse. They should wake up and smell the future and adapt. A bunch of spoiled children...
I've actually talked to a copyright lawyer who said with a straight face that every router between me and someone I send a copyright-laden file to is guilty of violating the "mechanical copyright" of the rights owner. The settled case law on the matter revolves around radio stations making mix tapes in preparation for broadcast; the stations pay for a license to do so, and the idea of a transient mechanical copy needed for replay is held to be identical to the copying of a .mp3 file into memory as part of replay on a computer. The RIAA has decided that they're not going to try to prosecute any listener for the copy made in RAM or on the processor, although those are violations by the letter of the law as well.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
First I don't have to do anything, I'm the customer. In fact I can choose to do nothing, like not pay money for content. In my case I have not spent money on a quantized product (downloadable music or CDs) for so long I can't even remember. I do make fairly prodigious use of other business models like those provided by radio and Pandora. To top it off I haven't even pirated music in probably 5 years.
Second, I absolutely have the right to sell something which I have purchased (first sale doctrine) AND I am presumed innocent until proven guilty. So what does that mean?
It means I have the right to sell my license regardless of the format it is delivered in (electrons or physical)
It means I am presumed innocent of copyright infringement (i.e. not deleting my copy) until proven otherwise.
If they want to sell a license that is not resellable then they better start pricing it accordingly. Otherwise people will just obtain it for free elsewhere and DRM won't do a damn thing to stop it.
Finally, coming full circle, they better cater to my purposes and whims if they want my money. Neither artists nor the industry has an inherent right to my money and if they have forgotten that they do it at their peril. I don't need to find a way around anything, they do.
If you can't be good, be good at it!
And yet, people do accept that they have to pay a transfer fee when they sell their home: This happens all the time with home owner associations.
That's easily avoidable. I've been a member of two homeowner associations in my life (one a condo association) and the issues there is that you are buying a service. Much like if you bought a car with XM radio, and the subscription went with the "owner" not the "driver" such that the seller kept his account, and you had to pay a new "install fee" for an account setup when you already have a functioning device in your possession. That's just how it works, and if you don't like it, don't buy a house with an association. They are usually in bad neighborhoods anyway, with neighbors who actually care what the color of your front door is. And the Homeowner association dues are rarely (if ever) paid to the creator (though the newer ones may require the management company be associated with the builder for some period of time).
Learn to love Alaska
The contract is called a "purchase" by the store. I agreed to no license prior to that "purchase". That the maker redefines the purchase after it's done doesn't affect me. I don't agree. I click "yes" as part of the install process and that is no more legally binding that clicking "next". It's a condition of use applied after the purchase, much like Ford stealing the tires off your car after purchase and demanding another $10000 before they let you drive it.
Learn to love Alaska
Their "workable business model" relies upon violation of the first sale doctrine. Now how workable is it?
Social Credit would solve everything...
And if DRM isn't working, then why did they make laws against circumventing it?
It also relies on honour like the CD resales did if they're not DRMd: you sold a CD and said you hadn't kept a copy.
the public performance is a public performance license, the agreement to which may be an acceptance to certain copyright-like exclusions (e.g. not using for-sale copies, not selling rental-only copies, etc)
The first sale doctrine needs to apply in common sense situations like this. If you buy something, including a license, it is only common sense that you would be able to resell it.
Or we make it even simpler and legalise copying for private use. Then online music stores will simply sell a download service for the user's convenience, and what the user does with the copy they obtained is up to them.
Copyright law needs a complete overhaul. We the People should find a few persons to go to Washington to present our needs to the Government, especially where they conflict with the needs of the corporations. We could call these persons, "Representatives".
An excellent idea. I just hope these "Representatives", as you call them, don't forget who elected them, and become errand boys for the corporations in exchange for economic favours.
THIS is exactly what they want. If you ask the RIAA, they will COME IN THEIR PANTS.
Fixed that for ya'.
The RIAA doesn't like the music industry in general.
Copyrighted works are a special case. That is why there is a copyright law.
You are guilty of copyright infringement if you create copies to sell without the permission of the copyright owner. So, unless your digital download comes with an agreement allowing you to do so from the copyright holder, or their representative, you cannot create copies to sell, even if you would then immediately delete all copies you previously had.
The copyright infringement does not occur because you fail to delete your copy. The copyright infringement happens when you create a copy to distribute without the permission of the policyholder. The fact that you only want to sell one copy is irrelevant.
Cisco was one of the first things I thought of when I read the blurb. I'd love to see it go through and be brought up as a challenge against them. I suspect that's one of the reasons you don't see Cisco chasing down folks who bought used gear and didn't ante up for the inspection and SmartNet - it's a legally murky area right now, and the Head Lawyer In Charge over at Cisco didn't really want to be the first to see how it would pan out. Better to keep the companies with that fairly certain revenue than to open the door to those "good enough" couple of year old units.
Copyright law a bit tortured here. In the case where copyright material came on a physical good, it worked fine as the container was meaningfully transferable. In a case where the material *never* comes as a good, it's a non-trivial problem to ascertain what is fair. We can't pretend the CD (rather than the music) was the thing of intrinsic value when sold to a used music store, but then on the other hand we say the music cannot retain value without being on an 'original' CD.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
There's nothing new here, the RIAA doesn't like any used music sales, even the sale of used and out of print music because they don't get a cut.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.