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Apple and Amazon Flirt With a Market For Used Digital Items
langelgjm writes "The New York Times reports that Apple and Amazon are attempting to patent methods of enabling the resale of digital items like e-books and MP3s. Establishing a large marketplace for people to buy and sell used digital items has the potential to benefit consumers enormously, but copyright holders aren't happy. Scott Turow, president of the Authors Guild, 'acknowledged it would be good for consumers — "until there were no more authors anymore."' But would the resale of digital items really be much different than the resale of physical items? Or is the problem that copyright holders just don't like resale?"
Yes, but you cannot instantly create 10 copies of a book, sell them to be used in 10 different locations. A physical book is it's own "copy protection" in that you cannot simply hit a button, duplicate it, then transfer the copy to somebody else to use.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
While I'm not so thrilled with their Capsule DRM system, Green Man Gaming has had a system in place to trade in digital games for some time now. I believe the developer gets to set whether or not a game can be traded in.
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer