And what is being sold by ReDigi is the right to access a file stored upon their cloud storage service which has been offered for sale by the original owner. The file itself is the original taken from the owner, and transferred to the purchaser.
The file leaves the sellers PC for cloud storage; It is deleted from the seller's PC by the client software. There is only one copy of the file. The file is assigned a unique identifier to prevent duplicates being sold. The identifier is assigned to the owner's account so they may access the file. When the file is marked for sale and thereby sold, the unique ID is assigned to the buyers' account; The file itself is not copied, moved, duplicated, shifted, or anything else. The new account may access that very same uncopied file, and the seller may not. This is the important distinction being made; The file is the same one the original owner bought the license to own, and it is this file that is on the cloud service, this file (license to own) which is purchased.
Looks to me like you've been RTFA. Are you new here?
you're not buying the copy, you're buying a license to possess a copy, as the copyright industry keeps telling us
That is NOT what iTunes is saying. It says you are buying the file and that title passes to you. See iTunes terms and conditions, exhibit A to Ray Beckerman declaration, posted here
I was reading Ray's brief yesterday at work. I started to chuckle on the first page. Mid way through the second page I was laughing out loud so much that my co-workers asked me what I was reading. Imagine their disbelief when I responded "A law brief."
If a simple layperson like myself is allowed, may I say that if you read only one law brief this entire year, this is the one you should read.
Awesome work Ray!
Wow thank you very much for that:) But let me make one correction. It wasn't "Ray's brief", it was "Ray and Ty's brief".
If you can wade through the 66 pages of oral argument, you'll see that the judge was well informed, asked pertinent questions, and had an understanding of the ramifications of his decision. He asked an interesting string of hypotheticals about what he might be able to do with a group of BeeGees songs he'd purchased from iTunes and placed on his iPod.
Personally, this sounds awesome. I just wish there was more of an actual editorial written up about it, as I am not that interested in slogging through the legalese.
If you get your "legalese" translated by others, you may be getting it slanted. That's why I like to give people the actual documents, instead of telling them what the documents mean. I know it's a bit of work, but I think it's better to make up your own mind than to let others tell you what to think.
NYCL,
Many of us value and respect your comments on this. The time you do spend posting is something I apreciate a lot. Thank you for the insights you give us.
Thank you. Much appreciated. I was just kidding. It's obligatory, isn't it, for us to bash Slashdot from time to time? I love the Slashdot community, and have since the first time, in 2005, that I stumbled on this nutty place. I truly do value my experience here.
Google could pony up and buy Capitol Records completely, release all copyrights held, then break up and sell what worthless assets it has left in a fire sale. While they probably have the capability to purchase the entire industry, they only need to stop there with Capitol Records aquisition.
Maybe they feel the present management of Capitol Records is doing a good job of bringing the price down still further.
I'm a big fan of you, NewYorkCountryLawyer, but you really should have disclosed in the summary that you are currently counsel for the defendant, ReDigi, in this court case.
If I'd done that, it would have seemed like self promotion. But really, it didn't take you long to find out, did you? Plus, it's not like I said anything controversial either in the Slashdot post or in my blog post; I just report the news on these cases, and leave it to others to discuss the issues.
Why do you want to distribute _their_ music or _their_ movies? Why not make your own and defeat their business model that way?
Or more precisely... why not just boycott the big record label/big film studio business altogether, and feast upon the fabulous, creative, much better stuff coming out every day from indie musicians and indie filmmakers?
The owner had a good idea and the RIAA got jealous.
Yeah, one of the funniest things in the record company's papers is the statement that
ReDigi promises that its âoeVerification Engineâ analyzes each file
to ensure that it was âoelegally downloadedâ by the user in the first
instance and thus âoeeligible for sale.â Given the widespread piracy
of sound recordings on the Internet â" an issue with which we have
been struggling for more than a decade â" it is questionable whether
ReDigi can effectively determine whether files were lawfully
obtained in the first instance.
To this I responded:
I.e., because plaintiff is inept and has been wasting its money on frivolous litigation instead of
the development of useful technology which protects copyright, therefore it is âoequestionableâ
whether ReDigi can have accomplished what plaintiff never could. Well it may be âoequestionableâ
to Mr. McMullan, but it is the fact. And he offers not a shred of evidence to the contrary.
Welcome to Slashdot:) The story doesn't matter, it's just an excuse to spout your opinion. Everyone here is an expert on everything.
Fortunately, the people who aren't posting inane gibberish are reading and learning. The silent majority appreciates the effort, be assured of that.
And yes, I know you've been here before, but if you hadn't gotten a sense of the place before, sounds like you have now.
I've been here a lot, since 2005, so I know how it goes. I just wanted to call folks' attention to the fact that some of the questions Slashdotters have been asking me since 2005 -- which I was either unable to answer or not at liberty to answer -- are now being played out in court, finally:)
Thanks for posting regarding this story, Mr. Beckerman. I've followed such stories with great interest since a friend of mine had a ridiculous situation where he licensed a movie for showing in his venue then received a C&D the date of the showing. Please be aware that some of us truly appreciate the work you do and your communication with us here.
Thank you. The support of the Slashdot community means a great deal to me. We are living in an interesting time, where 10 large, politically connected corporations -- 4 record companies and 6 motion picture companies -- are on a rampage to save their dying business models and to deflect blame from their management for allowing their businesses to die. Instead of investing in the future, and building better technology, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on nonsensical litigation. Very sad. I look forward to the day when they have been beaten back.
The issue is the first sale right, the idea that something downloaded is still your property and you can do with it as you wish. It is very important that these guys win.
Since 2005 people have been asking me all kinds of questions about what you can do with your digital music after purchasing it. Now along comes a case where I'm actually litigating, and the court will be deciding, those types of issues, and the comments seem to be all off topic.
Oh well.
I usually like NewYorkCountryLawyer, but I'm going to have to ask him for some proof for the statement "antibiotic use in livestock and antibiotic resistance have continued to rise throughout the entire period". I would offer the alternative that antibiotic use peaked, and then declined because overuse led to antibiotic resistance. Currently I believe that livestock antibiotic use is minimal, simply because frequent heavy use doesn't work well. And the livestock antibiotics is only a minor cause for the rise in antibiotic resistance. That resistance, which predates livestock use, is primarily caused by overuse in humans.
I hope you didn't stop liking me. I was relying on the knowledgeable folks at Grist for the statement that the practice of feeding antibiotics to livestock not for treating disease, but for the purposes of promoting growth and enabling the use of more dangerous living conditions, has increased. I know that the total amount was estimated at 29,000,000 pounds per year, and that 80% of that is estimated to be for non-therapeutic uses.
Your statements about increased resistance and use of antibiotics actually miss the point; no one is complaining about use of antibiotics to treat disease. What we are talking about is the 80% of antibiotics which go into two nefarious uses for antibiotics in livestock: (1) to increase growth [for reasons still unknown, agribusiness discovered at some point that antibiotics promote growth] and (2) disease prevention.
While "disease prevention" sounds like an ok thing, it is really a code word for "enabling the animals to be kept in such inhumane and unlivable conditions that it is assumed that antibiotics are needed to prevent the diseases they would otherwise be given by such living conditions".
So while I can't put my fingers on the data regarding growth of these uses for antibiotics in animals, I can say with certainty that the use is about 10 times the amount of antibiotics used on humans, and that 80% of it is used for purposes other than medical treatment.
What idiot thinks that "voluntary self-policing" works in any for-profit business? There are two fundamental problems with that plan: (1) businesses will only "volunteer" to do what benefits them, not the public, and (2) many businesses are surprisingly short-sighted and will only "volunteer" to do things that help their industry or their business in the short-term.
My guess is that no one actually believes it. It's just that the FDA are, as another Slashdotter so eloquently put it, "corporate bitches". It is a real threat to our health and safety, and to our democracy itself, that the foxes have been put in charge of the henhouses. It is so intrinsically corrupt that the people who run these agencies were employed by, and upon their retirement from public "service", will be employed by, the agencies they are supposed to be regulating. It is a national disgrace. The United States has been on its way to becoming a classic third world country, except that much of the corruption here is actually legal.
The real question is this: are the estimated figures (which the scientists initially used to base their predictions) wrong due to accelerated climate change - things like mean and maximum temperatures? Or were the scientists wrong simply because they didn't understand the model well enough, or had a bad model on which they based their predictions?
To me the real question is "why is mankind making this planet uninhabitable for mankind" and "why aren't we doing more to stop it?"
Slashdot Mirror
A hot bench is when the judge has a lot of questions for the lawyers.
Not necessarily. What I mean when I say "hot bench" is a court that has really read the papers, and done some homework.
And what is being sold by ReDigi is the right to access a file stored upon their cloud storage service which has been offered for sale by the original owner. The file itself is the original taken from the owner, and transferred to the purchaser. The file leaves the sellers PC for cloud storage; It is deleted from the seller's PC by the client software. There is only one copy of the file. The file is assigned a unique identifier to prevent duplicates being sold. The identifier is assigned to the owner's account so they may access the file. When the file is marked for sale and thereby sold, the unique ID is assigned to the buyers' account; The file itself is not copied, moved, duplicated, shifted, or anything else. The new account may access that very same uncopied file, and the seller may not. This is the important distinction being made; The file is the same one the original owner bought the license to own, and it is this file that is on the cloud service, this file (license to own) which is purchased.
Looks to me like you've been RTFA. Are you new here?
you're not buying the copy, you're buying a license to possess a copy, as the copyright industry keeps telling us
That is NOT what iTunes is saying. It says you are buying the file and that title passes to you. See iTunes terms and conditions, exhibit A to Ray Beckerman declaration, posted here
I was reading Ray's brief yesterday at work. I started to chuckle on the first page. Mid way through the second page I was laughing out loud so much that my co-workers asked me what I was reading. Imagine their disbelief when I responded "A law brief." If a simple layperson like myself is allowed, may I say that if you read only one law brief this entire year, this is the one you should read. Awesome work Ray!
Wow thank you very much for that :) But let me make one correction. It wasn't "Ray's brief", it was "Ray and Ty's brief".
If you can wade through the 66 pages of oral argument, you'll see that the judge was well informed, asked pertinent questions, and had an understanding of the ramifications of his decision. He asked an interesting string of hypotheticals about what he might be able to do with a group of BeeGees songs he'd purchased from iTunes and placed on his iPod.
I'm just waiting for the day that they try to sue the judge and say that he has caused "irreperable harm" to their lawsuit.
It wouldn't surprise me :)
MP3 files are both a wave form and a particle stream, but not simultaneously. The RIAA will tell us which and when.
I, for one, welcome the guidance of our RIAA overlords.
Personally, this sounds awesome. I just wish there was more of an actual editorial written up about it, as I am not that interested in slogging through the legalese.
If you get your "legalese" translated by others, you may be getting it slanted. That's why I like to give people the actual documents, instead of telling them what the documents mean. I know it's a bit of work, but I think it's better to make up your own mind than to let others tell you what to think.
NYCL, Many of us value and respect your comments on this. The time you do spend posting is something I apreciate a lot. Thank you for the insights you give us.
Thank you. Much appreciated. I was just kidding. It's obligatory, isn't it, for us to bash Slashdot from time to time? I love the Slashdot community, and have since the first time, in 2005, that I stumbled on this nutty place. I truly do value my experience here.
Google could pony up and buy Capitol Records completely, release all copyrights held, then break up and sell what worthless assets it has left in a fire sale. While they probably have the capability to purchase the entire industry, they only need to stop there with Capitol Records aquisition.
Maybe they feel the present management of Capitol Records is doing a good job of bringing the price down still further.
Please spend your time working on something that matters, NYCL.What a waste of a law degree.
Are you talking about my legal work, or my Slashdot posting. If the latter... you may have a point.
Get 'em NYCL!
OK. Will do.
Both "copies" and "phonorecords" are defined terms in the Copyright Act. They are both defined in 17 USC 101 as "material objects".
I'm a big fan of you, NewYorkCountryLawyer, but you really should have disclosed in the summary that you are currently counsel for the defendant, ReDigi, in this court case.
If I'd done that, it would have seemed like self promotion. But really, it didn't take you long to find out, did you? Plus, it's not like I said anything controversial either in the Slashdot post or in my blog post; I just report the news on these cases, and leave it to others to discuss the issues.
Why do you want to distribute _their_ music or _their_ movies? Why not make your own and defeat their business model that way?
Or more precisely... why not just boycott the big record label/big film studio business altogether, and feast upon the fabulous, creative, much better stuff coming out every day from indie musicians and indie filmmakers?
The owner had a good idea and the RIAA got jealous.
Yeah, one of the funniest things in the record company's papers is the statement that
ReDigi promises that its âoeVerification Engineâ analyzes each file to ensure that it was âoelegally downloadedâ by the user in the first instance and thus âoeeligible for sale.â Given the widespread piracy of sound recordings on the Internet â" an issue with which we have been struggling for more than a decade â" it is questionable whether ReDigi can effectively determine whether files were lawfully obtained in the first instance.
To this I responded:
I.e., because plaintiff is inept and has been wasting its money on frivolous litigation instead of the development of useful technology which protects copyright, therefore it is âoequestionableâ whether ReDigi can have accomplished what plaintiff never could. Well it may be âoequestionableâ to Mr. McMullan, but it is the fact. And he offers not a shred of evidence to the contrary.
Welcome to Slashdot :) The story doesn't matter, it's just an excuse to spout your opinion. Everyone here is an expert on everything.
Fortunately, the people who aren't posting inane gibberish are reading and learning. The silent majority appreciates the effort, be assured of that.
And yes, I know you've been here before, but if you hadn't gotten a sense of the place before, sounds like you have now.
I've been here a lot, since 2005, so I know how it goes. I just wanted to call folks' attention to the fact that some of the questions Slashdotters have been asking me since 2005 -- which I was either unable to answer or not at liberty to answer -- are now being played out in court, finally :)
It's not the government's job to prop up a dying business model. Aluminum used to be very expensive, even more so than silver. The top of the Washington monument is aluminum, at the time a precious metal. Should government have stepped in to guard the value of someone's aluminum store, when the Hallâ"Héroult process made it almost worthless? The cost and value of creative works is being adjusted due to the Internet and cheap storage. Some businesses will thrive, and others die off.
And I can think of a record company that is dying off, but not before it wastes even more of its money on frivolous litigation.
Thanks for posting regarding this story, Mr. Beckerman. I've followed such stories with great interest since a friend of mine had a ridiculous situation where he licensed a movie for showing in his venue then received a C&D the date of the showing. Please be aware that some of us truly appreciate the work you do and your communication with us here.
Thank you. The support of the Slashdot community means a great deal to me. We are living in an interesting time, where 10 large, politically connected corporations -- 4 record companies and 6 motion picture companies -- are on a rampage to save their dying business models and to deflect blame from their management for allowing their businesses to die. Instead of investing in the future, and building better technology, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on nonsensical litigation. Very sad. I look forward to the day when they have been beaten back.
The issue is the first sale right, the idea that something downloaded is still your property and you can do with it as you wish. It is very important that these guys win.
Yes it is.
Since 2005 people have been asking me all kinds of questions about what you can do with your digital music after purchasing it. Now along comes a case where I'm actually litigating, and the court will be deciding, those types of issues, and the comments seem to be all off topic. Oh well.
Wasn't there any actual *coverage of the case* somewhere on the web that could have been linked to, Ray?
Yes of course. Here's an article by excellent law professor/law blogger Eric Goldman, who as an amicus curiae in the case:
Technology & Marketing Law Blog
(Should I be offended that jra doesn't consider my blog post actuall "coverage"?")
I usually like NewYorkCountryLawyer, but I'm going to have to ask him for some proof for the statement "antibiotic use in livestock and antibiotic resistance have continued to rise throughout the entire period". I would offer the alternative that antibiotic use peaked, and then declined because overuse led to antibiotic resistance. Currently I believe that livestock antibiotic use is minimal, simply because frequent heavy use doesn't work well. And the livestock antibiotics is only a minor cause for the rise in antibiotic resistance. That resistance, which predates livestock use, is primarily caused by overuse in humans.
I hope you didn't stop liking me. I was relying on the knowledgeable folks at Grist for the statement that the practice of feeding antibiotics to livestock not for treating disease, but for the purposes of promoting growth and enabling the use of more dangerous living conditions, has increased. I know that the total amount was estimated at 29,000,000 pounds per year, and that 80% of that is estimated to be for non-therapeutic uses.
Your statements about increased resistance and use of antibiotics actually miss the point; no one is complaining about use of antibiotics to treat disease. What we are talking about is the 80% of antibiotics which go into two nefarious uses for antibiotics in livestock: (1) to increase growth [for reasons still unknown, agribusiness discovered at some point that antibiotics promote growth] and (2) disease prevention.
While "disease prevention" sounds like an ok thing, it is really a code word for "enabling the animals to be kept in such inhumane and unlivable conditions that it is assumed that antibiotics are needed to prevent the diseases they would otherwise be given by such living conditions".
So while I can't put my fingers on the data regarding growth of these uses for antibiotics in animals, I can say with certainty that the use is about 10 times the amount of antibiotics used on humans, and that 80% of it is used for purposes other than medical treatment.
What idiot thinks that "voluntary self-policing" works in any for-profit business? There are two fundamental problems with that plan: (1) businesses will only "volunteer" to do what benefits them, not the public, and (2) many businesses are surprisingly short-sighted and will only "volunteer" to do things that help their industry or their business in the short-term.
My guess is that no one actually believes it. It's just that the FDA are, as another Slashdotter so eloquently put it, "corporate bitches". It is a real threat to our health and safety, and to our democracy itself, that the foxes have been put in charge of the henhouses. It is so intrinsically corrupt that the people who run these agencies were employed by, and upon their retirement from public "service", will be employed by, the agencies they are supposed to be regulating. It is a national disgrace. The United States has been on its way to becoming a classic third world country, except that much of the corruption here is actually legal.
The real question is this: are the estimated figures (which the scientists initially used to base their predictions) wrong due to accelerated climate change - things like mean and maximum temperatures? Or were the scientists wrong simply because they didn't understand the model well enough, or had a bad model on which they based their predictions?
To me the real question is "why is mankind making this planet uninhabitable for mankind" and "why aren't we doing more to stop it?"