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?"

Comments

Resale?

[KermodeBear]

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.

Re:Resale?

[PhotoJim]

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.

Re:Resale?

[ganjadude]

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.

Re:Resale?

[Hatta]

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.

Re:Resale?

[Nerdfest]

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.

Re:Resale?

[bobbied]

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.

Re:Resale?

[ohnocitizen]

Probably because used digital goods are more appealing than non digital used goods. If I buy a used book, pages may be torn, it might have writing inside "this is for Dave, thanks for being Dave", or it might have coffee stains. A used digital book has none of these problems. This is going to impact the market significantly. Why buy a new copy for $10 when I can buy an identical copy for $3?

Unless of course they figure out a way to add the coffee stains digitally. THEN we're talking.

Re:Resale?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.

Hey Scott!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.

They want it both ways

[denis-The-menace]

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.

Copyright is not compatible with digital content

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

With e-books

[razorh]

How about they just sell them for a reasonable price (ie. not equal to or more than physical books) at which point there would be no need for reselling.

Re:No more authors?

[ArcadeMan]

First, you could argue that there is currently more media in the form of books, movies and music than any person could ever read/watch/listen in a single lifetime, many times over. So the "need" to create "new" content relative to each person is currently nil and has been for decades. However, this is only a quantitative argument because media evolves with its era. Science-fiction from the 1940's seems simple and prehistoric from our 2013 point of view.

The second argument would be that there will always be authors. People who love to write stories and compose music will do so with or without financial compensation. It's the same with inventors, who create things because they have the need to create. If it becomes popular and the inventor starts making money because of it, that's only a nice side-effect.

Do not confuse needs with greed. People will always create, even after this concept of "currency" is long gone.

I really see what you are doing Apple and Amazon

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

The bottom line is any resale model will have to use DRM. There is no conceivable way to do this with non-protected content. You can't resell digital content if there is no guarantee that the original copy will no longer be used by the original owner So yes, if you value saving a few cents off a $0.99 song or app then you are going to have to embrace DRM (meaning to bend over), period.

What Apple and Amazon REALLY want to do is start charging you $30 for an app, movie, book or album under the guise of allowing you to recover some of that financial loss through resale, only to get more money for every future resell of the product. You might get $15 back by reselling a movie, but then Apple and Amazon are going to sett up their resale system to sell back the item for $20, just like the way Gamestop sells used games.

These companies are not going it for our good they are doing it to get more money out of us by ultimately charging more for content and continuing to reap a profit off of content long after it has been "sold". Anybody thinking digital content resale is a good thing is oblivious to common sense and the greed of these companies.

I would prefer the price of content to be so cheap I don't care about recovering back financial investment. There is no reason to resell a $0.99 "thing", Nobody resells a cold cup of coffee. There is every reason to resell something that costs real money and its is obvious Apple and Amazon want us to start paying more money for stuff up front under the guise of giving us an opportunity to sell it to someone else. Just sell it to use for a decent price and end this stupidity.