Slashdot Mirror
Selling Used MP3s Found Legal In America
bs0d3 writes "After some litigation; ReDigi, a site where people can sell used MP3s has been found legal in America. One of the key decisions the judge had to make was whether MP3's were material objects or not. 'Material objects' are not subject to the distribution right stipulated in "17 USC 106(3)" which protects the sale of intellectual property copies. If MP3's are material objects than the resale of them is guaranteed legal under the first sale' exception in 17 USC 109. Capitol Records tried to argue that they were material objects under one law and not under the other. Today the judge has sided with the first-sale doctrine, which means he is seeing these as material objects."
So if I own lots of MP3s, millions of them including multiple copies of popular songs-
Could I sell one to you, then a few minutes later buy it back as I sell you the next MP3 on your playlist?
I can see having any song available on demand from a music service for a small monthly fee becoming a viable business model, where previously only radio-style playlists (you don't get to pick every song) have been available free or cheaply.
this is just a case of them trying to have their cake and eat it too, when they'd really much rather HAVE their cake than EAT it, if given the choice. So the judge had to make a call, and it was called EAT it. So now they find themselves in pretty much the worst possible scenario. By their own involvements they've gotten MP3's judged as material objects.
And now have an almost impossible to police or defend position of having to identify and prove that you don't still have a copy after selling it. Serves them right for trying to double-dip. They would have been much better off to have claimed it was exclusively not a physical object - at least then they'd have more applicable laws to erm... abuse.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Well, as it is information, it certainly has entropy; let's assume that the best possible encoding of an mp3 is the mp3 itself (not a terrible assumption, since a mp3 is a compressed file, and as such highly entropic). By Landauer's principle, to write a bit irreversibly one spends kTlog(2) Joules. This corresponds to an increase of m = E/c^2 = kTlog(2)/c^2 kg per bit. If one assumes a 8 MB mp3 (One more time @ 256 VBR) at room temperature (300 K), that's 2.55E-31 kg for you.
entropy happens