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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."
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
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?
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.
But how do they determine that I have not kept a copy? That's the crux of this. Who cares if I bought it legally. I still don't have the right to sell it to someone else unless I no longer have a copy. Who can prove this to be true?
So? He bought it in a box, but when he tried to install it found that the box is really just a gift certificate for a game tied to an online ID.
Just like it says on the back of the box. Kinda hard to see in that picture, I know. It's not like he shouldn't have known exactly what he was buying, had he done due diligence.
Now, that doesn't address the key point about whether you should be able to resell the games. I can definitely understand Valve's reluctance to allow it, however. For physical objects, used reduces the quality, and can be difficult to find and sell (usually occurs at extremely high premiums - say hi, Gamestop!). Digital copies don't degrade and can be bought and sold easily (instantly, and with no third-part premiums). Basically, it isn't impossible to imagine that a developer would sell only half (actually, that may even be optimistic) as many total copies as they otherwise would. Essentially, it would turn into game renting - except that with a sufficiently established system, the "renting" would be almost free (you could resell the game for, theoretically, exactly or only cents less than what you paid for it).
It's really hard for me to get angry at Valve for not allowing that, especially with the insanely good sales they have on nearly constantly.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
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.
Gotta be perfectly honest here: Going by volume of whining alone, I'm apparently the single, solitary person left on this planet who doesn't sell every damn thing he owns the very picosecond I get bored with it*. No, seriously. I've never looked at a game I've had and thought to myself, "Man, it's absolutely vital that I get about 10% of the money I paid for this back; I mean, COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY VITAL, to the point where my inability to do so, coupled with my apparent lack of reading comprehension and research and a video gaming mindset stubbornly stuck somewhere in the 16-bit era where it was most convenient for me, renders this purchase nothing but a mistake".
For me, long before "I MUST SELL THIS BACK VERY VERY SOON TO RECOUP MONEY" comes into my mind, the thought of "I most likely don't need this luxury item in the first place" wakes up and stops me from wasting my apparently precious money on this sort of thing if I need said money that badly.
But apparently, again going solely on how loud the whining gets, that's just me. Guess I'm a "tool of the cartels", or whatever label the entitled generation wants to attach to me, because I'm actually responsible with my money BEFORE I spend it.
Hint: Failing to get 10% of the price you paid for a game back by selling it is NOT what is keeping you from being rich, nor is failing to get gifted games a few months after release what is keeping your friends or family from being rich (especially since, given time on Steam, that same game will be around 75% off anyway).
*: Solely because modern physics has yet to determine if time itself has granularity.