It seems to me that deleting the original file is hardly good enough.
I think that a secondary market for digital works is something that will just never work like it does for physical media, and that's something we just have to accept and move on with.
My biggest worry is that ReDigi is going to end up losing a lawsuit that sets a bad precedent and makes future better technologies impossible.
That said, the RIAA's ownership vs licence vs access debate is BS, and they never even stick to it.
The RIAA needs to change course soon, because unlike the book and movie industries, I can easily imagine a future without a music industry at all.
As for Amazon vs. the authors? I think they are pretty much both wrong, and I'm staying out of it.
MDY v Blizzard [1] already set an (absurd, unconscionable) precedent that people who purchased World of Warcraft did not own their copy of the digital work, but were licensees -- regardless of whether they ever agreed to the EULA or the service's Terms of Use.
Further, the court held that copying a digital work into in-system memory by any program not 'unauthorized' by the rights-holder constituted infringement and the operator thus subject to statutory penalties. (Seriously. Let that and its implications sink in.)
So the bad precedent already exists. And not only does it set some troublesome legal hurdles for future technologies, but a large swath of current technologies are suddenly in a very tenuous (and expensive) legal situation.
If the RIAA sticks to this 'license' argument, they could hold that not only is it infringement to copy your DRM-free iTunes tracks out of iTunes, but so much as playing your iTunes-purchased tracks via software other than iTunes is infringement (as it necessarily requires loading a copy of that digital work into memory).
1. This service is ridiculous and I'm embarrassed that they raised nearly as much funding as we did for it. Who on earth didn't see this coming?
2. Deleting "the original" when it's so easy to have your own other copy somewhere doesn't do anything. How do they even begin to answer this concern?
3. How can the RIAA argue in one breath that you don't own their product, that it's just a license, and argue in court in another breath that they don't owe artists an increased royalty on licenses (vs purchases)? These guys do an awesome job of making sure everyone hates them. It's too bad that their interests are aligned with artists in some cases, because they only make it harder for reasonable people to have a leg to stand on.
2. The same could be said of CDs and DVDs. Especially if you follow up with the license bit. Basically, if you can sell your CD licensed music, why can't you sell your other digitally licence music? If both are dealing with licenses, and you can sell one, the argument is you can sell the other.
I agree, it's ridiculous, but I think it's that way mostly because of the RIAA's way of defining things.
As time marches on, the RIAA is going to see their business dry up, not from customers, but from artists, who can now easily handle their own distribution. They might as well change their name now to the Music Marketing Association of America, because that's all they have to offer.
Perhaps they enforce the deletion by preventing you from restoring a copy of the song from a backup to iTunes. Though doesn't stop you playing the song on another device that is entirely independent of iTunes.
This distinction between license and ownership underscores the need both for open source software and also for expanding such models into other spheres. Here I am defining "ownership" as "economic ownership" namely the right to utilize a good in any way one wishes to (following Hilaire Belloc's definition of ownership). Here ownership of a copy is distinct from ownership of the ideas or expressions in the copy, and the question becomes what you own when you get a copy of a piece of software or a recording of music.
With a piece of software, what you own is typically restricted by a clickwrap agreement. You agree not to exceed your client access license ownership with server software for example. With music what you own is the right to listen to that music for your private enjoyment only. With software you get some limited economic ownership, but with music you only get non-economic ownership.
With open source software you get (nearly with the GPL and complete with the BSD license) full economic ownership. You can connect as many clients to the server software as you want. You can deploy it for customers. You can use the software in any way you wish to use it, and you can combine it with other goods to produce goods for resale. Only in this last area are there any limits to what is owned with open source software, and then only sometimes.
I don't believe that musicians right now know how to benefit entirely from creating entirely open content, but musicians could compete at the moment in part by offering additional ownership of their music: get my songs, play them in your store, display my videos publicly to an audience of 500 people or less per viewing, ensuring that people are buying not only entertainment but also that the music has value. The fact that it has value means it will be played more. The fact that it will be played more means it provides more advertising for live shows.
Can I burn an HD copy of a movie off my DVR via the analog hole and then sell it to someone?
Which part is illegal? Recording it? No. Burning it to a DVD? No. Owning it? No. But can I sell it? No. I think this paradox of ownership without being able to sell it will cause ReDigi to lose their case. Horrible situation for setting a bad legal precedent.
Let's not forget that the MPAA is a criminal organization whose members commit fraud every single day. I suspect the RIAA is the same. "Hollywood accounting" is a nice euphemism for a felony crime. I have no sympathy for unethical criminals who as standard business practice screw over producers, musicians, writers and actors. Piracy is justified.
The RIAA is, shock/horror, right in this case. First Sale Doctrine is not a free pass to make copies of digital media.
A friend of mine is the principal at SmartFlix, so I've had the opportunity to hear a lot of rubber-meets-the-road detail on first sale doctrine over the past few years.
Thing is, the RIAA has been arguing in court that the royalties they pay the artists for MP3s are based off physical sales, rather than license based sales.
They're playing both sides of the argument. Should artists get paid for downloads using the same rates they agreed to for physical media? Or should downloads be treated like licenses, and artists get paid according to that scale?
This just in, RIAA claims you do not own the food on your table, you only license it for consumption.
(But really, would you be surprised? God help us if RIAA gets their hands on a patent for a wheat genome. It sounds ridiculous and sensationalist, but this is the RIAA.)
The Guild voices some valid concerns, including the fear that publishers might try to prominently position loss leader books in the lending library in order to drive sales of other authors — but this sort of activity is already prohibited by existing clauses and is more an issue between publisher and author than anything that involves Amazon.
Why is such strategy (using a loss leader to sell other stuff) prohibited? What is the rationale?
it is easy. If you own you re-sell what you own. If you granted the rights under the license, you re-sell the rights granted under the license until the license states that the rights aren't transferrable. You agreed to the license. All this licenses and ToS are complete crap, yet until the law changed, the law seems to favor the crap. And by complacently agreeing to it, we help to proliferate it.
"If ReDigi’s service can accurately prevent users from accessing songs they’ve sold to the service, then the RIAA’s rights have been legally preserved."
Big if. How is ReDigi going to prevent users from downloading song backups from dropbox?
Good faith effort. It doesn't have to do it flawlessly.
Same thing applies to physical media. How can you guarantee that I don't have access to the music after I've sold a CD. And while you might argue that their is a difference between CD's and digital music, the RIAA doesn't see it the same way.
FTA: "the RIAA and MPAA have argued that purchasing a physical CD or DVD simply grants one a license to use the product rather than ownership of the content"
Basically, ripping a CD you own, and then selling the CD would mean your music files are technically illegal (according to the RIAA, that is, following on this logic).
So, ReDigi is extending that logic: if the physical medium isn't the key here, but rathe rather the license, and you can sell your license via selling the CD, then shouldn't you be able to do it without the CD?
There is a settings cog in the bottom left corner. Selecting "view desktop version" simply reloads the "optimised" mobile version which looks nice but is utterly unusable and breaks the web.
I wish OnSwipe had a per-device opt-out that worked.
Completely what I thought! I would if these jackass developers who built the site actually tested it on a real device. Never going back to that publication!
So moving my iTunes library within my computer or even restoring a backup would mean thousands of unauthorized copies of that music.
The RIAA needs to update their practices.
"For years, the RIAA and MPAA have argued that purchasing a physical CD or DVD simply grants one a license ... then the RIAA’s rights have been legally preserved."
Or the RIAA are wrong to make such an argument? They clearly heard the first sale doctrine, and made up words to make it not apply to them. Isn't this ever brought up in court? Or do the RIAA not like, and therefore not partake in, legal proceedings?
Unfortunately I feel ReDigi is most in the wrong here and not necessarily the RIAA. All someone has to do is go into their iTunes and redownload the file they previously purchased, or make a copy before making it available to ReDigi. It may have been meant to be a legal way of selling used songs, but I feel that is just not possible in a digital world.
The cliched statement is that digital piracy isn't stealing because you aren't depriving someone else of the artifact. It works both ways: you can't sell digital artifacts because you aren't depriving yourself of the original.
I was really intrigued by the section on Amazon in this article, in that they don't bother with licensing and go directly to purchasing the book so they can lend it. I think that Amazon's practice in this regard is much more significant than ReDigi's activity as it could spell out how future libraries function with regard to ebooks.
Local libraries are already using Amazon's system to lend e-books, and it's actually pretty cool. If all the copies are 'checked out,' you go on a waiting list. When a copy becomes available, you're notified, and you have a timeout window wherein you have to decide whether to a) check out the book, or b) lose your spot in the queue so the next reader gets a crack at it.
while there is nothing that prevents you from making copies. there can be a certificate of original purchase issued to you and registered/signed to a specific user's public key in a cloud database.
upon sale of the electronic item, you can re-sign/update the cloud cert with the new owner's key. so if a it came to proving that you own the music, you can reference a cloud database and decrypt the signature.
it's really the only way forward that comes to mind without being invasive but still allowing enforcement.
So I can sell that license under the first-sale-doctrine right?
I sell my license to perform this song on a personal media player and thereby promise that I will no longer perform the song on a personal media player that I hold in my possession.
Amazon has a list of all the books in your library. It is not inconceivable that Amazon could provide a list of what books its users are currently reading/have in their library (including books they are lending) and providing such a list to the publishers/guild.
Is that proof enough? Who knows. Is it easily faked? Yes. But that is always going to be the case with anything digital. You either choose to believe them or you don't.
[+] [-] larrik|14 years ago|reply
I think that a secondary market for digital works is something that will just never work like it does for physical media, and that's something we just have to accept and move on with.
My biggest worry is that ReDigi is going to end up losing a lawsuit that sets a bad precedent and makes future better technologies impossible.
That said, the RIAA's ownership vs licence vs access debate is BS, and they never even stick to it.
The RIAA needs to change course soon, because unlike the book and movie industries, I can easily imagine a future without a music industry at all.
As for Amazon vs. the authors? I think they are pretty much both wrong, and I'm staying out of it.
[+] [-] roc|14 years ago|reply
Further, the court held that copying a digital work into in-system memory by any program not 'unauthorized' by the rights-holder constituted infringement and the operator thus subject to statutory penalties. (Seriously. Let that and its implications sink in.)
So the bad precedent already exists. And not only does it set some troublesome legal hurdles for future technologies, but a large swath of current technologies are suddenly in a very tenuous (and expensive) legal situation.
If the RIAA sticks to this 'license' argument, they could hold that not only is it infringement to copy your DRM-free iTunes tracks out of iTunes, but so much as playing your iTunes-purchased tracks via software other than iTunes is infringement (as it necessarily requires loading a copy of that digital work into memory).
[1] http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/arizona...
[+] [-] bradleyland|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duskwuff|14 years ago|reply
Especially since iTunes will allow you to redownload content!
[+] [-] nodata|14 years ago|reply
You haven't said why.
[+] [-] earbitscom|14 years ago|reply
2. Deleting "the original" when it's so easy to have your own other copy somewhere doesn't do anything. How do they even begin to answer this concern?
3. How can the RIAA argue in one breath that you don't own their product, that it's just a license, and argue in court in another breath that they don't owe artists an increased royalty on licenses (vs purchases)? These guys do an awesome job of making sure everyone hates them. It's too bad that their interests are aligned with artists in some cases, because they only make it harder for reasonable people to have a leg to stand on.
[+] [-] jasonlotito|14 years ago|reply
I agree, it's ridiculous, but I think it's that way mostly because of the RIAA's way of defining things.
[+] [-] lukifer|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeza|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] einhverfr|14 years ago|reply
With a piece of software, what you own is typically restricted by a clickwrap agreement. You agree not to exceed your client access license ownership with server software for example. With music what you own is the right to listen to that music for your private enjoyment only. With software you get some limited economic ownership, but with music you only get non-economic ownership.
With open source software you get (nearly with the GPL and complete with the BSD license) full economic ownership. You can connect as many clients to the server software as you want. You can deploy it for customers. You can use the software in any way you wish to use it, and you can combine it with other goods to produce goods for resale. Only in this last area are there any limits to what is owned with open source software, and then only sometimes.
I don't believe that musicians right now know how to benefit entirely from creating entirely open content, but musicians could compete at the moment in part by offering additional ownership of their music: get my songs, play them in your store, display my videos publicly to an audience of 500 people or less per viewing, ensuring that people are buying not only entertainment but also that the music has value. The fact that it has value means it will be played more. The fact that it will be played more means it provides more advertising for live shows.
[+] [-] exfilmexec|14 years ago|reply
Which part is illegal? Recording it? No. Burning it to a DVD? No. Owning it? No. But can I sell it? No. I think this paradox of ownership without being able to sell it will cause ReDigi to lose their case. Horrible situation for setting a bad legal precedent.
Let's not forget that the MPAA is a criminal organization whose members commit fraud every single day. I suspect the RIAA is the same. "Hollywood accounting" is a nice euphemism for a felony crime. I have no sympathy for unethical criminals who as standard business practice screw over producers, musicians, writers and actors. Piracy is justified.
[+] [-] feralchimp|14 years ago|reply
A friend of mine is the principal at SmartFlix, so I've had the opportunity to hear a lot of rubber-meets-the-road detail on first sale doctrine over the past few years.
[+] [-] leviathant|14 years ago|reply
They're playing both sides of the argument. Should artists get paid for downloads using the same rates they agreed to for physical media? Or should downloads be treated like licenses, and artists get paid according to that scale?
See also http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111104/04202416631/fight-...
[+] [-] sliverstorm|14 years ago|reply
(But really, would you be surprised? God help us if RIAA gets their hands on a patent for a wheat genome. It sounds ridiculous and sensationalist, but this is the RIAA.)
[+] [-] einhverfr|14 years ago|reply
Last I checked Monsanto wasn't an RIAA member.....
[+] [-] nobody31415926|14 years ago|reply
You buy their seed to grow wheat, you have a license to grow the wheat but you can't keep any of it to plant next year.
You have a license to use their wheat seeds but not use the copies the plant is making.
[+] [-] reginaldo|14 years ago|reply
The Guild voices some valid concerns, including the fear that publishers might try to prominently position loss leader books in the lending library in order to drive sales of other authors — but this sort of activity is already prohibited by existing clauses and is more an issue between publisher and author than anything that involves Amazon.
Why is such strategy (using a loss leader to sell other stuff) prohibited? What is the rationale?
[+] [-] andylei|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VladRussian|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tedunangst|14 years ago|reply
Big if. How is ReDigi going to prevent users from downloading song backups from dropbox?
[+] [-] jasonlotito|14 years ago|reply
Same thing applies to physical media. How can you guarantee that I don't have access to the music after I've sold a CD. And while you might argue that their is a difference between CD's and digital music, the RIAA doesn't see it the same way.
FTA: "the RIAA and MPAA have argued that purchasing a physical CD or DVD simply grants one a license to use the product rather than ownership of the content"
Basically, ripping a CD you own, and then selling the CD would mean your music files are technically illegal (according to the RIAA, that is, following on this logic).
So, ReDigi is extending that logic: if the physical medium isn't the key here, but rathe rather the license, and you can sell your license via selling the CD, then shouldn't you be able to do it without the CD?
At least, that's what I gather.
[+] [-] larrik|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] comex|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RossP|14 years ago|reply
I wish OnSwipe had a per-device opt-out that worked.
[+] [-] briandear|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dlapiduz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tobylane|14 years ago|reply
Or the RIAA are wrong to make such an argument? They clearly heard the first sale doctrine, and made up words to make it not apply to them. Isn't this ever brought up in court? Or do the RIAA not like, and therefore not partake in, legal proceedings?
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jneal|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rcfox|14 years ago|reply
The cliched statement is that digital piracy isn't stealing because you aren't depriving someone else of the artifact. It works both ways: you can't sell digital artifacts because you aren't depriving yourself of the original.
[+] [-] lekashman|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] feralchimp|14 years ago|reply
Pretty well thought-out.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] leeoniya|14 years ago|reply
upon sale of the electronic item, you can re-sign/update the cloud cert with the new owner's key. so if a it came to proving that you own the music, you can reference a cloud database and decrypt the signature.
it's really the only way forward that comes to mind without being invasive but still allowing enforcement.
[+] [-] robert_nsu|14 years ago|reply
Apparently, I can't send a file to someone else and remove it from my iPod, Galaxy S, Blackberry, office and home pc either.
[+] [-] tedunangst|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andymoe|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] calloc|14 years ago|reply
I sell my license to perform this song on a personal media player and thereby promise that I will no longer perform the song on a personal media player that I hold in my possession.
[+] [-] tomp|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] calloc|14 years ago|reply
Is that proof enough? Who knows. Is it easily faked? Yes. But that is always going to be the case with anything digital. You either choose to believe them or you don't.