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Slashdot Asks: Should It Be Legal To Resell E-Books, Software, and Other Digital Goods? (arstechnica.co.uk)
There's no one stopping you from selling the CDs and DVDs that you buy, so why can't you do the same with e-books, music albums, movies, and other things you've downloaded? Ars Technica reports about a Dutch second-hand e-book platform called Tom Kabinet which has been "at a war" with Dutch Publishers Association (NUV) over this issue. This is seen as a threat to the entire book industry. German courts have suggested that the practice of reselling e-books should be stopped, whereas Dutch courts don't necessarily see it as an issue. What's your view on this?
It should remain highly ILLEAGAL !!
But with it likely comes harsh(er) DRM that means total end to end tracking.
How about a blockchain for books?
Signature v3.0, now with 42% less memory usage.
It should be illegal to resell these things because it should be illegal to sell them in the first place. Such things are nothing but human thought, there is nothing tangible here, nothing that can break or be replaced or fail. Information by its very nature is infinitely reproducible, that is what makes it so valuable to the human race and is the reason we have achieved dominance over the planet. Assigning costs, prices, or artificially erecting barriers to the free and total dissemination of information in any/all forms should be the crime here, not the other way around.
"so why can't you do the same with e-books, music albums, movies, and other things you've downloaded?" Umm...what a ridiculous question. It's because these goods can be replicated. Why can't the person just buy them from the source, rather than being "used" (in either case, the property would be in the exact same condition anyway.)
Why shouldn't it be legal?
I bought it, I used it, I am selling it because I am no longer using it.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Anything that can be copied should be able to be copied. It isn't like you're paying for a seat in a movie theatre, or a supposedly expensive music cd. We're in a new era of free information transfer. If all ebooks were free, more students could go to school across the world. New books would still be made out of passionate people, and or crowd funding avenues. It would put trillions of dollars of value in the economy instantly if the stuff is worth money. It would help the poor. It would make more educated people, and this means better doctors and better researchers, and even better media makers because of their education of prior media.
Perio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
How do you prove you no longer have an eBook? If I buy one and then sell it to someone else on eBay, I'm probably just selling them a copy of my eBook, not my actual copy. What is to stop me from selling my eBook hundreds of times over? There'd need to be some sort of licensing/registration in place where if you sell your copy, you need to transfer the license or copy to the other party. Sounds a lot like DRM.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Books deteriorate, digital files do not. There is already a de-facto limit on how much a physical good can be re-sold. Lifting that limit by allowing digital resales changes the status quo, and is unfair to publishers. However, an outright ban on reselling goods would also change the status quo. There should be a happy medium.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
Lucy giveth and taketh away
without the right to resell, the prices of e whatever should be closer to a rental price than a "buy" price because you clearly don't own it. why not make it illegal to resell a house or car, or only let Quantas use a 747 for one flight and then they have to scrap it?
As a parent, it's particularly aggravating that if I buy a copy of The Hobbit, for example, for one of my children, he or she cannot then loan it or pass it down to a younger sibling. Paperback books usually last long enough to get through one or two reads by all four of my kids. To reach price parity, an unsharable e-book has to be about 16% of the cost of a paper book. Currently, the Kindle edition of the book is $9.99 and the paperback is $8.31 on Amazon. Therefore, paper is a better deal for me. Of course, digital copies never "degrade", so allowing transfer would kill a natural source of recurring revenue down the line. Bah. Copyright terms are too long. I bet most books make most of their money in the first 5 years.
Are the driving force behind all of this fertilizer.
" We are not satisfied that a product we sold to someone - for a profit, will be sold again without us receiving the same profit... again
Therefore we will eventually be able to collect income until the IPad crashes..."
never buy their stuff again.
There is no way to create an effective used marketplace without onerous DRM. We're better off preventing resale and making sure that selling unencumbered files is a practical option for copyright holders.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
For me, it would be fine for it to be illegal, if they gave you a generous discount over the printed version. I mean they could tell you this book is $10 in the paper book form, part of which has to cover printing/distribution etc, and this book you will own completely and can do as you please with including selling or lending. Then, the same book is $2 in e-book form, but you don't actually outright own it, so you can't sell it.
Something like that would be fine with me. As it is now, they tell you the e-book is also $10, but at the same time try to restrict what you can do with it.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
How do you "sell" something that's merely a collection of electrons that can be endlessly, perfectly replicated for merely the cost of electricity?
I don't think that would go over very well.
Ebooks are not the same as physical books in one important manner. You can sell a physical book under current law because you are not making a copy of it. With electronic books however making copies is trivial and in fact it is in practice the only way to distribute ebooks. So selling an ebook is not the same thing as selling a physical book and currently reselling an ebook without the permission of the author is in most cases copyright infringement unless submit to some pretty harsh DRM.
Whether you think it should be permitted to "resell" ebooks really is asking the question whether you support copyright law. Without getting bogged down into the flaws in our current system, if you believe copyright (in principle) to be a useful thing, then you de-facto have to be against reselling ebooks to be logically consistent. If you don't respect copyright then you would be fine with reselling ebooks but you also are in effect arguing that we should have a right to copy physical books as well. Copyright exists to address the free rider problem. If you wish to do away with copyright you need to come up with an alternative for dealing with the free rider problem.
On a related note I think ideas like "loaning" ebooks from libraries are ridiculous. How do you "loan" something with zero marginal cost to reproduce?
Self interest. My teenage horde of comics, scfi fi pulps and ancien Hardy Boys novels ain't selling on Ebay because all the potential customers torrent the entire history of Superman off piratebay thus leaving my carefully bagged collection worthless...with transferable digital copies you create a LEGAL aftermarket of say all of the X-men series for 0.5 cents.
I really wanted to say yes, but there are a lot of issues with this concept. It benefits the readers but hurts society at large, (undermining ownership rights, lowering the number of copies floating around for non-owners to discover, use).
The used market is predicated on depreciation preventing people from competing with the original sellers. You buy X brand new for $Y, use it up some, then sell it for $Y - z.
Without depreciation, what you are doing is more similar to renting a book, rather than buying and reselling it. You get full use of it, but it is returned in practically the same state, with only time being gone.
Renting e-books would be a BAD idea - it would hurt the writers tremendously and the general population would no longer own the books, which would leave the population open to giving up ownership rights, something that has high value for society, but low values for the individuals as a whole.
A better question would be to clarify ownership after Death. I bought ebooks, and both they and my account should be inheritable after death.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
This is sort of like asking a tree full of squirrels if they think plastic domes should be banned from bird feeders.
We've been coming here rattling our cranky fists about this for the past 18 years or so (about digital rights, not bird feeders).
If DRM prevents copying things, it makes them more like physical objects, and that means the providers shouldn't be able to prevent resale of items, because the argument that "you can't prove you no longer have it" becomes moot - it was DRM'd, right? If the ownership transfers, you no longer have access.
If the item is not DRM'd, the argument above becomes somewhat valid and preventing resale would make sense.
You can use it as a chance to make consumers happy and incentivize not doing DRM.
It's not the fall that kills you. It's the sudden stop at the end. -Douglas Adams
For physical media, like books it has always been legally assumed that when you purchase a book you own it. You don't own the copyright though which is why you cannot make copies of the book and sell them. But with electronic copies, and digital files on physical media (DVD's etc) it all depends upon the license you bought in to when you handed over your money. In many cases what you bought was a limited single user license to use the file without the right to transfer.
You may argue with this or just plain ignore it (at your peril) but the only way around it legally is to refuse such draconian licencing deals and insist that all purchases are transferrable. The seller may say, "we can't do that because we have to proof that once to pass it on you do not retain a copy", to which I say "Then get a better business module, because your current one has been disrupted".
As a final note, DRM and laws that protect it can be seen as a way to prop up this expired business model well past its usefulness and as we all know DRM is futile.
If one wants to argue that digital items can be resold, then it lends credence to the idea that digital piracy is theft. I'd rather not have that.
A digital sale is for a non-transferable individual use license, not an item, so first sale doctrine does not apply. I'd prefer to see laws guaranteeing accessibility of digital purchases for the lifetime of the purchaser and the removal of any DRM in case a company goes under.
We BUY the e-books, we have the right to re-sells. If they do not like that they should not SELL it.
You do not like that ? fine, but just be honest and up-front about it and change those damned buy-buttons in your app or website into 'RENT' buttons.
Of course German courts are against consummer rights- the German legal system contains many laws introduced by the Nazis and kept when the Allies conquered Germany, because they could be repurposed to control the populace. Germany has ZERO Freedom of Conscience- since the government maintains a list of State sanctioned churches. Germany has ZERO freedom of speech- anything that offends the 'friends of Israel' is illegal there.
Only nations properly derived from the British Parliamentary system have things like Freedom of Conscience- and this means only Anglo-Saxon nations like the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc. The First Sale doctrine is an Anglo-Saxon pro-citizen right. In nations where the majority of the population was effectively a SLAVE caste called 'peasants' (almost all of Europe, Asia and Africa as recent as 150 years ago), 'rights' are only given to corporations and the rich and powerful.
France's 'right of privacy', for instance, is the 'right' for powerful corrupt evil scumbags to do whatsoever they wish, free from public scrutiny. So called 'patrons' of 'the arts' are given extraordinary rights of ownership over the works of art they have sposored.
In Anglo-Saxon nations, you have the ABSOLUTE Right to sell the digital copies you have purchased outright (and no EULA denies outright purchase if the purchase sum is final in the ownership transaction). The problem lies in 'digital interference'- companies using things like DRM to prevent tranference of ownership. Unfortunately, the current rulers of Anglo-Saxon antions are in the pockets of the corporations, and have no intent of strengthing the ability of citizens to exercise their rights in this regard- but the rights themselves are not denied.
These losers in the Media companies have been saying that they should be treated like regular physical copies, that they can be considered stolen if copied even though the original is still right where it was to start with. So YES, anyone should be able to re-sell them.
I should have the right to sell an commodity I own. Digital or not. Any problem assosiated with that is the original manufacturers problem not mine! Look at DVD's or CD's. They are digital. I can sell a CD, but could have easily copied the songs. How is that any different?
Of course it should be legal.
Your kids can share a paper book but not a Kindle?
or they need to be super cheap.
an e book should be 1/3 third the cost of a paperback.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The solution is going to be something like Kindle Unlimited, which is essentially Netflix for ebooks.
You're not buying the books, you're subscribing to a service that then works pretty much like a brick and mortar library.
You can have up to 10 books out at a time, but can get a new book at any time returning one of the old books in the process. This is enabled via Amazon's DRM.
I think there are also loan a book features in the Kindle also enabled by Amazon's DRM but I've never used them, and they always seemed clunky. Much more elegant to just have everyone get their own sub (or possibly a family plan) and check out what they want to read when they want to read it.
For special books that you want to treasure forever, print is still probably better, but buying an ebook outright on top of your subscription for "read once" or "rarely reread" books, should not seem like a big deal for something that important to you.
I am sorry if that upsets your profit margin, but I am in favor of products rather than services.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
...as long as you delete your copy what's the issue? The CD/DVD is simply a physical medium for the data. When reselling those your simply reselling the data not the specific storage device. Now, whether or not someone makes themselves a copy before reselling the original is the act that should be restricted/against the law & that's the act that should get you in trouble (whether or not its easy to charge each individual is not the issue here). Of course making a copy of your CD/DVD for 'backup purposes' is also legal but that too should be destroyed when you resell the original.
If you want the ability to re-sell an electronic copy of a work, then you have to accept DRM (and consequences for cracking it.) A physical book (say, a 500-page novel), has built-in "copy protection" in that it is tedious, at best, to make a copy to keep for yourself prior to sale. (And if you do make a complete copy for yourself, it is uncontroversial that this could, in theory, get you in trouble.)
If a publisher can be reasonably assured that the user will not sell a copy while keeping the one they have, then it is reasonable for them to let said sale take place. But without solid DRM, no such assurance exists. I can't blame a publisher for being more than a but upset over an easy market for cheap "used" e-books if there's no DRM.
um WAKE UP STUPID PEOPLE its legal already , what you need to ask is should it be illegal. LIKE i dunno selling your car ....is legal....
As stated the question can neither be answered yes nor no. There's too many edge cases.
If the DRM requires access to a validating server, then the items should be freely re-sellable....and anyone who buys them should realize that they are getting a volatile good. But they usually *don't* realize that. It's usually sold as if it were permanent.
If the DRM doesn't require access to the internet, isn't limited to "so many plays", etc., then it should be vendible. But what's the life of the storage medium?
If there is no DRM, then it should not be vendible while the publisher is selling or offering for sale copies...even at unreasonable prices. (But he's actually got to be prepared to make the sale. A "print on demand" setup would suffice. [I know, we aren't talking about actual print, but the analog.]) This is the one case where copyright law makes any sense, but it needs to be different because of the ease of duplication. One limitation: If you can prove that no copy has ever been made, then it should be vendible.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
0day ftp 4 lyfe!!!
His kids can read a new paper book while their younger sibling reads the old one. How's that gonna work with a single Kindle?
I think you are wrong about them never degrading, in a practical sense say an e-book cost say $10 to buy and say you could sell it for $5 maximum $9 (after selling fees) , because people would be more willing to buy from the original seller. Most people would not be bothered selling their copy they would probably just keep it around just in case they wanted to read it again, just like they do with real books. Those books would be lost.
The introduction of libraries didn't halt the sales of books, and neither would this people would just go to the original seller, as long as they are reasonably priced because it would just be easier.
On the one hand, cooyright ( a legal monopoly on making copies) is inappropriate to computers, On the other hand, I live in Thailand, and nobody around here much cares about legality. Don't resell your digital goods - give them away! Anarchistss of the world, unite!
(www.andycanfield.com)
What about when you die? How can anyone inherit a digital library which may have cost the original owner thousands of dollars?
If I due with a $50,000 credit card debit, does that evaporate along with my library or do my heir get stuck with one and lose the other? It's not like it's a tangible object, after all.
Remember, we're discussing a license here. It's a fair bet that "first sale" doctrine won't apply. IANAL. YMMV.
I'm on both sides of this issue. On one side if I buy a thing I should be able to resell it. On the other side, a virtual product is fundamentally different than a physical product (intangible vs. tangible) and if you want to be able to resell a book, buy an actual book.
I've purchased a bunch of Music, TV Shows and Movies on discs and if I sold them I'd have to ship the discs to the new owner. If I bought a song (DRM-free) through iTunes and went to sell it how do I package up the song? I've got a copy on my phone, my laptop, my media server, my backup server, backup optical discs, on some cloud storage, a copy on a CD for my car and possibly laying around on a thumb drive or two. If I miss deleting a copy from an old backup (how do you delete a single file from a burned-DVD anyway?) am I now a criminal?
Resale rights can be accomplished through DRM where you would have to deauthorise your devices and then register the change of ownership with the original supplier to allow the new owner to authorise his devices but that has serious issues that don't affect physical items.
1. You can only do this with the assistance of the original supplier and they are very likely to restrict, limit or charge you for doing this. -- I wouldn't accept having to go through Dodge to sell my truck.
2. Your ability to resell your items disappears if the reseller disappears or just stops handling the re-licensing. -- Pontiac doesn't exist anymore, that doesn't mean I can't sell my Sunbird.
3. Your customer has to enter into an agreement with the original supplier (a third party) to complete the sale. -- I don't have to enter into a licensing agreement with BMW to buy a used 4 Series.
On the whole, I'm fine with the first sale doctrine for virtual goods not including the right of resale. But I don't have a strong opinion on it, this is an issue needs to be discussed much more.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Same with video games. The digital copies of the game maintain their original price for a long time, even for a few years the price will be at least 75% of the original cost. Meanwhile physical copies of the same game rapidly drop in price because there is pressure on the store owners to clear out space to make room for newer games. Both editions originally sold for the same price. Even for Steam it is cheaper to buy a physical copy of a Steam game from an online retailer than to buy it from Steam. This is despite the fact that the digital copy costs nothing to make an additional copy for sale, whereas the physical copy had a significant production cost.
All those savings from eliminating production costs are NOT passed on to the customers.
EULAs cannot deprive you of any right that is in violation of law. If a law has been interpreted to mean that reselling software is completely legal, a EULA claiming that you can't is unenforceable, and essentially invalid (that specific part of it, at least).
For a VERY long time artists would happily settle for dinner and soft bed in return for a performance. It was this way as soon as we started banging sticks together and painting up caves. Then, not long ago, some guy started offering 5 dollars to sing into his can and it all went to hell.
Ever heard the expression "I got it for a song" ? It implies that a song costs very little.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
I don't see why this should be so. Digital media should have the same rights under copyright law as physical media. Encrypt the media and issue an token that holds the key and represents who owns it. Use a block chain to transfer and track ownership. Whoever owns a token owns the media, can decrypt it and has the rights to transfer the token permanently or temporarily to someone else. It shouldn't be hard to enforce and more to the point it imbues digital content with most of the same properties as physical media. I can give my token to somebody else and set the return date. The block chain can enforce and track this. Readers and devices can be certified to enforce it too.
I'm a bibliophile, and from time to time I've come across some old books from around 1900 that have some printing on the colophon page that is startlingly familiar to modern software buyers: an End User License Agreement. These old book licenses warn the user that the contents of the book belong to the publisher, and sternly lay out what the user can and cannot do with the book. And the things you aren't allowed to do always include reselling or renting it.
Now in 1908 the whole notion of book licenses was struck down in Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, in which it was ruled that a book's publisher couldn't control the retail sale price once it had passed through a wholesaler. In other words the publisher could enforce a contract between itself and the wholesaler, but that contract wasn't binding on the retailer or the retail purchaser. And because of the way books were distributed, that was that for book licenses. Publishers had to put up with the public doing whatever the hell they wanted with books, so long as they didn't copy them.
So this result didn't establish that publishers couldn't forbid end purchasers from reselling books. But as a practical matter it established that publishers don't need to do that in order to be economically successful. And in a way, that's the most important question. Utility is the fundamental principle upon which the modern institution of copyright is built. Copyright exists to maximize the public's access to new material. If plenty of new books get published without the practical ability of publishers to forbid resale, resale isn't a necessary feature of a copyright system.
The fact that a successful copyright system doesn't need resale restrictions doesn't mean it can't have them or shouldn't have them. I'd argue that with the right distribution scheme you probably can impose all kinds of contractual obligations on readers; not just resale restrictions, but editorial restrictions on criticism, like some software licenses include. And even if for some reason you can't legally prevent users from reselling, you can certainly make it impossible by tying each copy to the user's crypto credentials.
So we've never really tackled the question of whether book resale restrictions should exist, because it was never practical to impose such restrictions. Now it's very easy, so it's time to think about changing copyright law.
Copyright is essentially a bargain struck between the public and the publishers, and it worked well without resale limitations. But technology is now making it practical for publishers to restrict books just like they can a copy of Microsoft Office. This means we now need to address this question with legislation. It's a good time to revisit this bargain -- or it would be if corporations didn't have disproportionate power in our political system, so that the public good has no effective representation.
Here's the bargain I'd strike: you can have an absolute restriction of resale and lending, but only for a limited time. After that the book goes into the public domain, and you must escrow your cryptographic keys to ensure the public has access (at which point libraries can step in and curate the material). This gives publishers far, far more control over published material than they ever had in the paper era, in exchange for a return to a sane copyright period.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If digital "ownership" is the same as physical ownership, then during its lifetime a book or a film will get a few hours of usage (maybe you will watch/read it twice) and spend the vast majority of its owned existence sitting unused on the shelf. (10 hours / 10 years = 0.01% licence efficiency)
In the physical world we have a book library. Many people are thus able to read the same physical book on the condition that no two people have it checked out at exactly the same time. For four hours of actual reading, a book might be checked out for two weeks. (2 hours / 2 weeks = 0.6% licence percent)
In the digital world, with a realtime peer-to-peer licence management system that only transfers the licence at the exact moment an individual is watching the content and transferring it away during a pause (upto 100% licence efficiency)
A book would only need to borrow the licence at the moment the page is turned. With technological advances in licence multiplexing, two people could watch the same film, at half framerate, using only a single DRM licence. (200%+ licence efficiency). Buffering content in RAM could improve the smoothness of playback when a licence file in over-demand.
With 100% licence efficiency, it might only take a couple of licences to satisfy average worldwide demand. The cost of this minimum number of required licences could be met using a crowdfunding or licence donation campaign.
The end result would look very much like Napster, technology we had back in 1999, but content would be limited to one access per licence at any given time.
Totally legal, but would completely undermine the business model for content licensing.
Sci-Hub used a similar system of P2P VPNs on university networks to provide instant open-access to virtually all paywall academic journals. Every article access was made through a legitimate institution access account (the licence being freely lent out over the internet on a per-access basis).
The rights holders also want to rebuy stuff that you own. In some cases even when you need to repair something / run it in a vm / and more.
This is where mandatory licensing needs to come into play. It is probably about the best balance between granting a creator monopoly and allowing easy access to all.
All copyright holders can be compensated for their work, and if there is any reasonable market for a product, someone can develop for it. No more exclusive deals where you can only get your favourite through .
This doesn't mean it should be trivial for anyone to resell, but it also doesn't need to be much different than mandatory music licensing for radio.
... then I should have all the same rights as if it were a physical good.
then we can sell it when we're done with it
But I skirt the whole issue because I only buy physical copies of things: books, music on CDs, TV/movies on DVD, games on DVD/Bluray/whatever.
The problem with buying e-media, particularly when DRM is involved, is that you're never actually buying it - you're only renting it. The content providers retain ownership and they can remove access to your bits on a whim, especially when they claim bankruptcy and close up shop.
The problem as I see it is two-fold: first, the sudden presence of about a zillion just-as-good-as-the-original digital media files up for resale would collapse the market and put publishers out of business.
Second, and more importantly, there's no way to prevent people from cracking the DRM on their e-books and backing them up before selling the DRM-locked original. You can crack the DRM on library books now just as easily as you can the ones you buy from Amazon. I don't see that changing.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Not only should you be able to sell, gift or bequeath digital media - it doesn't actually hurt anyone and, in most cases, it helps the author. (That may vary for digital media like movies and TV shows but bear with me ...)
Old way - I buy a physical copy of a book/CD/DVD. Say it's a series. I lend a copy to a friend. I can't watch/read/listen to it while my friend has it but he likes it so much - he goes and buys his own copy of the series - net gain for the content creator. Problem: I often lose media this way because I either forget who I've loaned it to or they abscond with it!
New way - My and my friend both have Google accounts (for example - could be any online service). I buy a copy of a book from Google Play. The nasty way is for Google to keep the copy server side and I'd need to be online to read it - which would annoy me - but it would allow Google to let me transfer, temporarily or permanently, that copy/license to another Google user. Better than the old way because the book would still be listed in my library but "greyed out" while it was on loan. Unlike a real book, if I don't get it back - it isn't lost because I'd have the option to retrieve the book whether my friend was finished or not ... and the likelihood is, if he liked it, he'd buy his own copy. Now I'd prefer to be able to keep a copy offline because my mobile coverage isn't great - and maybe that's easily doable. I'd have to be online to loan or gift the book and for the period of the loan, the local copy would be removed from my devices - doesn't stop people trying to get in and copy it somehow from the local device - this already happens though and the ol' Piracy argument applies - If it were easier to obtain and do with our media as we wished, we wouldn't seek to circumvent the cumbersome policies that prevent it! :) Either way, it's a net gain because some people that currently follow that argument would start doing the right thing contributing to a gain for the content owners and the people that are pirates will continue to be pirates - no change.
Another of the arguments is that selling second hand prevents the copyright holder from making a sale because they get nothing from a re-sale - but the likelihood is, the person wasn't going to pay full price for it anyway so they wouldn't have made a sale in the first place. They've lost nothing. They potentially gain because the reader/listener/viewer that got the "cheap" copy ... likes it and becomes a customer. That certainly applies to me with books and computer games. Not so much TV and Movies because I get them free on my telly anyway ... but again - the series/movies I love end up getting bought so I can watch them when I feel like it, not when the local TV station decides it might get some viewers!
I own series of books, hundreds - possibly into the thousands of dollars of books - that almost all started with one a friend loaning me a copy - or a copy I borrowed from the library. The same goes for DVDs of TV Series and movies.
Someone mentioned renting digital media - well most streaming services already let you do that for TV, Movies and Music and last I heard. it was doing extremely well and the artists aren't complaining! Books would be no different and I think there are a few that let you subscribe for unlimited books? Say I can pay a dollar to "rent" a book whenever I want - I still have to be online and then download it for the period of the loan (OverDrive is a great App for free ebooks if your library supports it!) but it still isn't as convenient as owning a copy. Even though I know I can get ebooks free from my library, their licensing agreement means the only have limited copies so they aren't always available when I want them ... and if it's a book I really like, I'd rather have a permanent copy.
At the moment I well neither buy real books or ebooks because real books are inconvenient and I don't like not being able to treat my ebook like real books - net loss for the content creators.
I am tempted to try one of those book subscriptions if they actually exist but they'd need to have better content than my local library to make it worthwhile ...
It shouldn't be legal to sell it in the first place, it's not a good. Just as it's not stealing if nobody loses it, it's not selling if you still have it after receiving the money.
..while Western world is arguing about what's legal and moral the rest of the world is taking advantage of consuming information and tools available for free, and which the Western world deprived itself of. Yet another stupidity and failure of liberal calitalism.
You'll need to read the EULA to determine if you have been granted a right to resell.
That depends on the country. If you cannot see and agree to the EULA before purchase then it in places like the UK it is totally unenforceable because the sale has already taken place and was agreed to without the EULA.
Wait until there's actual AI software (as opposed to the LDNLS people are mistakenly calling "AI" now.) Then we'll have intelligent, conscious... numbers. That no one can own (hopefully, we've learned our lesson on slavery.... okay, I'm being way too optimistic here, but roll with it.)
Now numbers can vote, own property... Instead of a digital artwork's "owner", you could end up its "guardian."
Perhaps we shouldn't go with "it's a number" after all. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
'Copyright' (I don't believe this can be a right, it's immoral and unethical) requires the use of violence to make people comply. There is no loss to the author that isn't artificial in nature from reproducing there work. I also don't buy into the fact nothing of value would be created if humanity stopped paying a fixed amount for a particular copy of creative works. Most software developers, artists, and similar don't get paid by the end-users. They're employed by private entities to produce work for there employer and most employers aren't even selling the created work. They're using it in the course of business. Where that isn't the case there are other ways to profit from such works. Newspapers have been doing it probably since newspapers existed: They sell advertising. That doesn't require the use of violence against innocent people to prop up a failed business model.
Its a shame so many people dont realise they dont buy software or ebooks or other digital content... they merely lease it. Its just like renting a house, you can use the house but you cant sell the house.
Obviously the book industry needs some protections and one can easily imagine that an e-book could have tens of thousands of copies sold for peanuts. So the individual buyer feels that he has the right to sell his one copy. But what will the second buyer do? Or what will the third buyer do? As more and more copies become available the price the price will drop radically. It is a serious issue for the book industry and yet it is the property of the buyer. It could be that the traditional book industry will vanish due to technology which is happening in other industries . Somehow we will have a awful consequence if we protect one industry and not others. For example Uber will probably totally destroy the Taxi industry. Self driving cars and trucks will crush the professional driver industry. The machinist trade has already suffered a huge blow due to more modern industrial machines. Land line phones are also near death. We are now in an era in which the economy can be wonderful while more and more people live in poverty in the US. There is no path to turn back the clock. We must now change society in such a way that displaced workers do well in life or we will all perish.
I paid for all of my books, movies, TV shows. In the case of the latter I often paid a premium. I paid for a better medium that is more usable in the case of books. I should have all rights to those books that I have with paper books, not less. The streaming notion that we own nothing but pay owning prices anyway and our access even for ourselves can be removed at any time is not acceptable in the least.
Didn't someone postulate that "any headline that ends in a question marked can be answered with no" ?
j/k, i show myself out......
For things like Steam, where there is license management, you should be able to re-sell the product. When the sale is complete, the software would transfer the license from you to the new buyer. That way you lose it and they get it. Otherwise, there's no way we could rely on an honor system for something like this.
eBooks need to work "like a book". Anything possible with a paper book must be allowed.
* Paper books only have 1 reader at a time. This is bad for eBook folks who read on 5 different devices. ... except in the dark.
* Paper books can be loaned to friends, but the original owner isn't able to read when it is loaned.
* Paper books don't track my reading pace or whether I finish or even start reading a book. AMAZON!!!!!
* Paper books can be inherited. Any book that I've purchased from age 5 until age 125 will be given to my heirs. No questions asked and no need to re-authentication with iTunes to gain access.
* Paper books don't show ads.
* Paper books don't care if some server in California breaks. They work off-line, perfectly
* Oh, and I shouldn't be forced to use the _approved_ operating system
For all these reasons, I remove DRM from ebooks immediately after getting them. I've never shared or given any ebooks away, but my heirs will get access, without hassles.
I have no idea how this can be accomplished, but that isn't my problem. I only have 25 yrs in computer software and systems architecture.
The most offensive part of DRM and ebooks for me is the need to connect to some server somewhere. Remove that and we can talk.
BTW, someone gifted me an Amazon ebook for Xmas that I haven't found any viable way to read due to the DRM. Sure, I could use the browser version, but that is unacceptable from a tracking and usability standpoint.
For a digitial material what is the difference between renting and owning? You rent the book, read it. Now you have read it. Now consider instead buying a book. Ideally this costs more than renting it. Now you have read it. It's not like you are going to put a digital book on a bookshelf. You could sell it but that's a hassle. Indeed the cost of renting it ought to be about the same as buying it minus what you could re-sell it for. SO really in an ideal world renting is what you really want for a digital book.
The real problem here is two fold. First, things are not ideal. the price of a digital book these days isn't a lot less than the paper version. Amazon says I own it but I can't resell it or read it on something not on a kindle so I don't really have possession of it. I have basically leased it.
If I really owned it I could re-sell it.
A virtue of digital materials is that they don't degrade and their market is global not local like most physical objects. Thus their may be a very large lifespan limiting the total sales of the book to a smaller number than if the book was physical or otherwise not transferable. It's not correct to say that if they charged less for the book that one would sell more as there are a finite number of readers for any given book
The trouble with that is that it potentially means book prices will rise for books that are re-sellable. A lot of people would therefore prefer to rent a book than own it in a transferable sense, if renting cost less.
Thus I'm all for a model where books are rented.
The problem here is we have neither. We have purchases of expensive digital books that cannot be re-sold.
As for the force of law enforcing this I don't see a problem. That's not the core of the problem.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Well for Amazon etc it should be fairly simple. Sure, if you want to stay offline you could in theory keep an extra copy of said book even though you sold the digital "original", but that comes at the expense of never being able to sync your device online again.
Otherwise, part of the sync process would simply be to purge any "sold" items from a device before downloading new "purchased" items.
For Kobo it would be much the same, as would it be for Steam and games, etc. Sure, you could get away with going "offline" forever, but the cost of doing so is likely more than the $8 ebook you're transferring ownership of, because the device costs more than the media.
Now for music etc the argument is a bit different as those have traditionally been a bit more mobile between devices, but realistically those also face different issues in that they're also plenty easy to copy and transfer anyhow.
One way I see managing media in the future would be to have something like a personal encryption "signing key". It doesn't need to be online, but essentially it controls encryption for all your device media. When you get a file, it's uniquely encrypted and identifiable with your key. This could be tied to an account of some sort (i.e. like Google Play, iTunes, Amazon) so that you don't lose it, but could also be used for offline management of digital media with a combination of personal+device keys. Of course it's still possible for more technical individuals to strip the encryption/keys off of media, but for the average person it's not going to be worth it.
Essentially it's still a form of DRM and/or identification, but the nice part would be that it might also be useful in terms of theft-prevention. E.G. if somebody steals your music device, at least the library is unavailable when keys are revoked and/or you might even be able to identify the device by the keys when next it goes online.
Bullshit, anyone can buy a brand new book and photocopy or scan it if they like, and then resell the original while retaining a copy.
They cannot however distribute or sell any of the copies (legally) without the permission of the author and you can resell the original book without needing to make a new copy. That's not an insignificant detail. You can make copies of a paper book all you want l if you want but so long as you never distribute the copies it doesn't matter and you don't need to make any copies to sell the original. A paper book is a tangible object and consists of more than just the abstract written contents within. They copyright holder has (presumably) already gotten paid for his efforts and expenses in creating the book and no new copy needed to be created for you to resell the original paper book. Copyright merely restricts your ability to distribute any copies you made even if not exact. Digital ebooks are different in one very important respect. You literally cannot transfer an ebook to another party without copying it, even if you delete the original immediately afterwards. That is just how the technology works. Copying a paper book is demonstrably not identical to copying an ebook in a variety of important ways. If you wanted to hand the kindle containing the ebook to a new party then it would be logically the same activity.
You can believe and apply the principles of copyright and apply the doctrine of first sale
Not as it applies to ebooks you cannot. Copyright restricts making copies and first sale doctrine applies to original items, not copies. You cannot distribute an ebook without making copies - it is technologically impossible to do otherwise unless you distribute the device containing the ebook along with the ebook. A paper book consists of a tangible object containing an expression of an abstract concept. An ebook consists of merely the expression of that abstract concept. Unless you sell the kindle containing the ebook along with it, you have to make a copy to resell the ebook which is prohibited under copyright and first sale doctrine doesn't apply. You aren't selling the original work, you are selling a copy of the original work. NOT the same thing.
No, wrong again. Copyright exist so that the public, citizens of a state for example, can aid the creators of useful works to get fair recompense for their creative activities.
You just described solving the free rider problem and what copyright does to solve it. The problem is that it is substantially cheaper to copy a work than to create one. That IS the free rider problem as it applies to creative works. To ensure authors get the opportunity to get the opportunity for compensation, copyright grants them a "temporary" (I know) monopoly so that others can't simply do the economically far easier task of copying someone else's work until much later. That is EXACTLY what the Free Rider Problem is and what copyright does in an effort to mitigate it.
why mess with this issue at all. Government's (school boards in particular) should require public education institutions to use Open Source learning materials when ever available. Publishing houses that "create" primary and secondary education materials should really be reduced to print shops. Perhaps at the University level this changes but then again if it's a publicly subsidized university, maybe not
Of course you should be able to sell anything you buy whether physical or electronic. That just makes sense. The only reason it's not happening is the greedy publishers and their pawns the cogermen we keep electing. We should stop buying from any company that supports these restrictions until they change. ZERO income will show them who's in charge.
There is nothing illegal about your reselling the hard drive, usb stick, SD card, or whatever physical medium the purchase was first installed into, with the data still intact.
Oh, you say that's not what you were contemplating? You were contemplating taking money from somebody and then emailing them the file? Or having them link to your system and take the file from you and moving it to theirs? Or using some sort of duplicator and then deleting the image? Then you're vending a copy of the file, not the file as it was laid down in your media.
The first case would be the apples-to-apples argument for making it 'the same' as your purchased hardcopy book or cd or dvd, whatever.
Not to mention that "I promise I'll delete it from my system" is unenforceable.
Or, in other words, grow up, people.
Books and records have some kind of tangible 'bodies' that are laboriously produced, thus selling the things for money should be legal. The buyer gets few rights and privileges, but she should be allowed to sell her item with the associated permissions to others.
This has already failed in the US for music resale (despite a patented method to transfer the bits such that they only existed in one place at once), because it was determined that downloading the file to another computer constituted a reproduction as opposed to the transfer of a physical object. In my opinion that was an incredibly flawed decision that relied too much on physical definitions rather than the spirit of the original copyright law, but it would be hard to overturn that precedent. Fortunately, the EU has a somewhat friendlier legal atmosphere regarding copyright, so maybe it could come out differently over there.
Every lease, license and possession is chattel and can be bought and sold
So why not licensed software?
National Security restrictions alone trump the right of possession
You can believe and apply the principles of copyright and apply the doctrine of first sale
Not as it applies to ebooks you cannot.Copyright restricts making copies and first sale doctrine applies to original items, not copies. You cannot distribute an ebook without making copies - it is technologically impossible to do otherwise unless you distribute the device containing the ebook along with the ebook.
The topic was the principles of copyright, not the implementation. Even if dated copyright laws make irrelevant distinctions between transferring a copy embedded into a physical substrate, e.g. a printed page, and making a perfect copy on a new substrate while simultaneously destroying the original, the principle of copyright does not. As far as the principle is concerned, all that matters is how many people have access to the work before and after. If the number is the same, no new copies were created.
It is not logically inconsistent to believe that the copyright holder should be able to control the number of copies in existence, public performance, etc., but not who holds each copy, or its specific physical form.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
That the scars of our father's past paradigms have been inflicted upon us, yet our father's paradigm is long since expired. Thus, time to stop whining 'we sit in a grocery store with wine and are discontent with poring it into anything other than old wine skins we held onto for x many generations' and pore new wine, into presently available new wine sinks... referencing biblical text, obviously or not so obviously... Yet the reference continues to - lens - O.O piercing -> value through the gaps of space and time . Ego holds on to and re-enforces revealed dead inconsistencies to any entit(y | ies) easily susceptible to imprisonment (both temporally or indefinitely) by beguiling in the form of fear\weakness\false accusations but accepted judgement by subjected entity, in which Ego reaps 'weak' control, yet keeps its false fantasies re-lived until truth's friction sand papers Ego's finite form/existence into a completely unrecognizable form (such as sand... In which, those baptized and redeemed, through the fires and trials of the eye of the needle race (both real race and metaphorical) can only hope for more head's to pull out of the sand.