Judge Rules That Resale of MP3s Violates Copyright Law

Redigi runs a service that lets you resell your digitally purchased music. Naturally, they were sued by major labels soon after going live, with heavyweights like Google weighing in with support and an initial victory against pre-trial injunctions. But the first actual court ruling is against them. Pikoro writes "A judge has sided with Capitol Records in the lawsuit between the record company and ReDigi — ruling that MP3s can only be resold if granted permission by copyright owners. From the article: 'The Order is surprising in light of last month's United States Supreme Court decision in Kirtsaeng v. Wiley & Sons, which reaffirmed the importance and applicability of the First Sale Doctrine in the United States of America.'" Redigi vows to appeal, and claims that the current version of their service is not affected by the lawsuit.

Comments

Copyright = right to control permission to copy

[blarkon]

Redigi's business model relies upon making copies. The Thai bloke was importing copies. He wasn't making copies.

Re:Copyright = right to control permission to copy

[91degrees]

Right. No matter what the moral rights and wrongs of the case, the letter of the law is what matters here. You might be able to make an argument for fair use here but really we need a change in the law, and ideally a complete rethink of what rights the seller and buyer of digital media have.

Re:Copyright = right to control permission to copy

[firex726]

Technically you make a copy too when you play the file, it'll COPY it off the HDD and into your computer's or phone's RAM.

Re:Copyright = right to control permission to copy

[flimflammer]

That's the argument Blizzard successfully made to win a case against a popular bot. Was honestly somewhat amazed it worked.

Re:Copyright = right to control permission to copy

[blackraven14250]

Yeah, I don't think the judge realizes that computers don't work in the same way as physical good. You literally can't hand over the original, you have to copy and delete the original to "move" it.

Re:Let's look at this more closely

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense like this is the inevitable result when trying to apply realworld paradigms to data (falsely referred to as 'digital goods').

A Judge has sided with the richer party

[rodrigoandrade]

It's easy to understand the judiciary. Whichever party has the most money wins.

Now where's my law degree?

Re:Let's look at this more closely

[FireFury03]

Clearly the judge is a firm believer in piracy, else he wouldn't have made that ruling. Seriously though, people are trying to sell "used" mp3's?

Well why not? The media industry is selling time-unlimited licences to play an MP3 - that licence clearly has value, otherwise no one would be willing to pay for it. When you don't want to use it any more, why shouldn't you be able to reclaim some of the value by selling the licence on to someone else? The doctrine of first sale prevents vendors from preventing people from reselling physical goods, why shouldn't the same apply to anything which has value (such as a licence)?

Don't worry

[RDW]

Reselling media is only evil and wrong this week. It'll be absolutely fine, 'innovative' and mainstream as soon as Amazon, Apple or Google starts doing it:

http://www.zdnet.com/amazon-lands-patent-on-marketplace-for-selling-on-used-digital-content-7000010917/

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/03/07/apples-digital-content-resale-and-loan-system-could-allow-drm-transfers-between-end-users

Re:Ah the perils of the media business model

[JeanCroix]

Do artists who've been dead for three+ decades still need to get money from somewhere as well?

Re:Let's look at this more closely

[FireFury03]

reading the CD and turning the bits into sound isn't considered copying under copyright law).

Debatable. IMHO running a piece of software shouldn't be governed by copyright law, but certainly some parts of the software industry believe that you need a licence to waive the copyright laws, since you are inherently copying the software into RAM. I don't think this has ever been tested in court (?)

If you assume that these parts of the software industry are correct (which I don't, but I doubt my views count), then surely copying a CD into your CD player's playback buffer is copying and requires a licence?

If you sell an MP3 by copying bits to someone else's media, you're making a copy even if you then delete the original.

If I want to move an MP3 from one hard disk to another on my computer then I'm doing exactly the same. Am I not allowed to do this?

Re:Let's look at this more closely

[Zordak]

I haven't read the decision, but I can see a clear distinction between an MP3 and a CD. Copyright law is all about the act of copying something. Under copyright law, even loading a program into RAM from a disk constitutes "copying" (there is a special statutory exception that explicitly allows this if you are the legitimate owner of a copy of a program). The problem with MP3s is that you can't re-sell them without copying them, unless you purchased a physical disk of MP3s or something, in which case you could resell that disk.

In other words, whether or not you agree with current copyright laws, I believe the judge made the right decision under the laws as they exist. First sale applies to a physical object, but can't apply to digital stuff because reselling digital stuff necessarily requires making a copy.