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Apple and Amazon Flirt With a Market For Used Digital Items

Posted by Soulskill on from the authors-sharpening-their-pitchforks dept.

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?"

14 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. Resale? by KermodeBear · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Or is the problem that copyright holders just don't like resale?

    I don't think we need to look any further than this. Copyright holders have always hated the idea of resale of any kind; they think it loses them revenue.

    Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong, I don't have any hard data in front of me. I can say that if I buy something and it's mine, then I should be able to do whatever I please with it.

    --
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    1. Re:Resale? by PhotoJim · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They stand to lose more revenue than with physical products. Assuming the issues of DRM can be overcome, a used digital product works precisely the same as a new digital product. There is no discernable difference between the products when you use them. This is not true for physical goods like cameras, cars, houses, etc.

    2. Re:Resale? by ganjadude · · Score: 5, Insightful

      how do you figure they stand to lose more revenue? for one, no overhead (or much less) to host a few meg/gig file than to have a warehouse of 1 million books. Secondly the secondary market has not hurt book authors to the extent that we no longer have authors, why would this be any different? These copyrights holders want to sell you "the right to view/read/listen to X" but they dont want to allow you to own X. that is the key issue at hand.

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    3. Re:Resale? by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's almost true for books. In 99% of the time, a book from a used book store or library functions identically to a brand new book. Maybe the spine has a crease, but that doesn't really affect your use of the book.

      Authors have survived for centuries with people redistributing used books. They will survive for centuries more with people redistributing used ebooks.

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    4. Re:Resale? by Nerdfest · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The part of this that's annoying to me is not the resale of digital goods part ... that should be assumed to be acceptable in the same way as any or goods are resold. The part I find annoying is that these weasels are patenting methods of doing it. I have a lot of trouble believing that anything they propose is original or not obvious.

    5. Re:Resale? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's almost true for books. In 99% of the time, a book from a used book store or library functions identically to a brand new book. Maybe the spine has a crease, but that doesn't really affect your use of the book.

      Authors have survived for centuries with people redistributing used books. They will survive for centuries more with people redistributing used ebooks.

      I suspect that, for books, what really scares them(at least the ones that are actually thinking, and not just bitching about anything that stands between them and their dream of getting paid per-eyeball-per-second for everything the've ever touched) would be an efficient secondary market.

      Used books, barring serious abuse, retain condition well; but the market for them is physically segregated: New and used books are often sold through different channels(except textbooks, which usually hover right over their target population), in different stores, etc.

      So long as that is the case, the impact is blunted. If, say, Amazon were able to add a checkbox to the Kindle that allowed a user to 'sell' a book for half what they bought it for(probably in Amazon credit rather than cash) and then Amazon seamlessly and immediately offered that 'copy' for sale to the very next person who went to buy a copy(and, since they wouldn't have to pay the publisher anything, they could presumably offer a modest discount off 'new' and still make a much greater margin), then the publisher could be up shit creek.

    6. Re:Resale? by PhotoJim · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Presumably there is a markup in their products and at the end, there is some sort of marginal profit. Otherwise there is no point in providing this electronic product.

      If you can buy a product - let's say a book - as an electronic product, and you can buy it from eBooks Inc. for $10 or used from who knows whom for $2, and there is no discernable difference between the products, which would you buy?

      Normally we might prefer new products to used because they are in new condition, include all accessories, etc., come with instructions, and so on, but none of these issues apply to electronic books or music or videos. You have them, or you don't. There is nothing else to own.

      At the end of the day, that profit that the new product vendor would realize is now gone, and the cut of the sale price that would go to the ebook author or musician is gone, now, too. So there absolutely is a difference.

    7. Re:Resale? by ediron2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Until PDF's got to be easier, grad school with internationals gave me a lot of exposure to pirated books out of China, India, Brazil, etc. Everything matches except for the paper quality (had a faint-formaldehyde smell).

      Books have cloned quite nicely for centuries. And there's preexisting laws to deal with them. Copyright, however, never superceded the doctrine of first sale. And yet now we're getting sold digital media that copies easier but is denied via other channels.

      Three reasonable non-pirate use cases come to mind:
      - buying and selling used content.
      - transfer of an estate's content (who gets my vinyl when I die, vs. who gets my itunes catalog when I die)
      - transfer of content purchased for a minor child, when that child is old enough to open an account (13 or 18 or whatever). News recently had this with a content buyer vs. Steam. This varies from the 2nd because derivative data (characters, experience, etc) makes 'just buy a new one' deeply unacceptable without transfer of that additional data.

  2. Hey Scott! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Remember the tragic story of how centuries of people being able to freely sell/lend/whatever the fuck they want printed books exterminated all authors and creativity, leaving only a scarred wasteland, bereft of culture and picked clean by locusts?

    Oh, wait, neither do I. Because. It. Didn't. Fucking. Happen.

    1. Re:Hey Scott! by ohnocitizen · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, used printed books have defects. Digital used books will not, unless Amazon/Apple adds digitally ripped pages and coffee stains. In that case why wouldn't potential buyers opt for the cheaper yet identical used digital copy? Surely that will impact the market.

  3. They want it both ways by denis-The-menace · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They say own it now which implies resale is allowed.
    If you try (like on Ebay with Windows CDs) you get told no, it's licenced only. you do NOT own it.

    So if it's licensed, you should have access to replacement media when you trash your disc.
    If you try they tell you go buy a new copy like the others.

    They want it both ways
    and terms of life + 70 years is not long enough.

    --
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  4. Copyright is not compatible with digital content by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Copyright thrives on the idea of artificial scarcity. There is no scarcity on the internet.

    As people have been saying for quite some time (TechDirt comes to mind), the only way to make money off of digital content is to make the person want to pay you money even in the event you do not control access, distribution or resale of your works.

  5. No more authors? by gregthebunny · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "until there were no more authors anymore."

    Yes, because this free market will somehow manage to write its own books. There will never be a need to generate new content, ever.

  6. Revenue != Expenses by sjbe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    how do you figure they stand to lose more revenue? for one, no overhead (or much less) to host a few meg/gig file than to have a warehouse of 1 million books.

    Revenue is not the same thing as Profit. Revenue is how much you sell, Profit is how much you keep. Profit = (Revenue - Expenses). Just because Expenses are lower with digital media doesn't mean a thing by itself. Most of the costs for this sort of media are fixed so Revenue can drop without Expenses falling. If Revenue falls far enough then the company will lose money. It is logical that their revenue might fall but it doesn't automatically follow that they will become unprofitable.

    Of course the whole notion of a digital items aftermarket is a bit peculiar...