Court Rules Users Can't Resell Songs Bought on iTunes

[alexgowers]

The problem is unlike a physical copy a digital copy is the exactly the same as the original for sale!

So the question is are you really buying an work like in the physical world or an actual original or a copy or a copy of a copy.

It's an endless rabbit hole of discussion that I think will end in acceptance of the transfer of purchased content in wills, but transfer or for sale or copy being totally against the idea of digital only media.

It's interesting but I agree there should be a mechanism in place to gift your collection one time to another person. I'm pretty sure it should be a cashless exchange though as that would then mean no profit could be made apart from getting access to the content and wouldn't devalue the collection as such.

Long term money would have to come into play though I see it as invevitable.

 

[DesertEagle]

Re-selling physical CDs and digital content are two very different matters.

The content is digitally encoded on the CD. That's a significant similarity. What is the difference?

 

[kingtj]

Huh?

This ruling is AWFUL in SO many respects.... Bickering over whether or not someone bothered to read their iTunes EULA before making a music purchase is really far from addressing how bad it is!

Years ago, I remember the legal battles over such purchases as Microsoft operating systems. (User would buy a new PC that came with a copy of, say, Windows '98 bundled with it. User wanted to run the free Linux OS instead and didn't need the Windows license, so he/she would do the logical thing and try to resell it. Microsoft lawyers came down on them, claiming the bundled copy was "not for resale" and was legally tied permanently to that PC hardware purchase, regardless of if the shrink wrapped CD was ever opened or used.)

Now, it looks like the courts are trying to leapfrog over ALL such debates, by simply declaring "Right of First Sale" invalid for digital media, period.

Right as we're transitioning all manner of content (books, magazine subscriptions, music, computer software, movies, etc.) to the digital realm, this seems like a MASSIVE step backwards.

If anything, the courts should be upholding the First Sale doctrine, and thereby encouraging distributors (such as Amazon or Apple) to devise systems making it easy for users to transfer their digital purchases to other account-holders.

(IMO, they haven't given us this capability only because they know they make a lot of extra money from people who buy the same things twice, just to get it onto another device. I've seen countless situations where someone buys a game for one of their kids and puts it on their iPhone. Later on, they give the kid his/her own device which is used under a different user account, and now they have no way to get the app moved over to the kid's login.)

Yeah, how dare they not make for free everything that I would never have heard of if it weren't for their distribution networks!

In all seriousness, nobody is going to come after you if you're just handing off your AAC/MP3 collection to your younger brother or something.... The resources to even determine that you did that simply don't exist now that DRM tagging is dead. The real usage here will be as a deterrent to those who are thinking about abusing first sale doctrine in a realm where the nature of the product is in the artistic content and not fixed in a tangible product whose transfer means the original owner having to physically relinquish their access to the content in a meaningful way.

If the law is flawed, then organize and bring good legal cases against it that have merit or organize a boycott instead of sitting here and complaining because you didn't read the agreement you signed with iTunes/Apple.

 

[nzalog]

I hope they don't wonder why people pirate media after this. There has been many examples why pirating is way more convenient than a legitimate purchase. You would think that it should be the other way around and a paying customer should have the best experience.

 

[petsounds]

Nope. First sales applies to physical goods, where ownership is without a doubt.

With digital, there's no way to determine whether you are only selling a copy.

As 3D printers get more sophisticated, this will eventually also be true with some physical products. But to say, "Well, we can't prove you're selling a copy or the original, so you're forbidden from selling at all" is a terrible argument. You bought it -- and that's provable -- so it's yours to do with as you please. Whether the item can be copied or not is irrelevant. Hopefully this will get overturned.

 

[JAT]

I wouldn't say it's perfectly clear, though, I would have believed this would have settled without a case being needed.

Though I am not 100% clear it was even in the agreement during the period this dispute is covering.

Nothing is truly answered until the courts have ruled. And maybe not even then.

 

[whatever]

This. If I purchase music, then I should truly OWN the music and do with it as I please.

Actually, you do not "truly OWN the music".

Ownwership means you would be able to do whatever you wanted with it, which is not the case.

You legally can only use the music for personal use.

You cannot legally sample the music or use the music for a commercial endeavor.

 

[Jessica Lares]

I heard about this service when it first started. Just plain stupid. It had flaws to begin with. I saw people uploading stuff that had JUST come out that week. People probably just thought of it as a easy way to rip people of their money while still keeping their music.

But the joke is really on them because there are more people who are willing to upload than to make a purchase. I buy my music on eMusic, and it's only $0.49 a pop most of the time. It's actually more expensive to buy "used".

People need to get over the fact that they won't EVER be able to resell this stuff. And it has NOTHING to do with corporations, it's the consumer and pirates. We're the ones who pushed for non-physical media, and it's the pirates who don't get that it's not just one person losing profit.

And lastly, my parents have DECADES of music sitting in this house. No one in their minds would ever spend even 20 cents per vinyl, cassette, or eight-track that they have. Especially when it's popular music that was heavily printed. And it takes up so much room and it just sits there to degrade and lose value. And it can be all lost just like that. Which is why I don't buy physical much anymore.

 

[nagromme]

I can definitely see it being a legal can of worms. Lots of dishonest people would sell their entire library, but not delete their own copy! Piracy with direct financial gain. At least with physical originals you are giving up the thing you bought. You could keep a copy of the music data (happens all the time) but not the real printed disc and booklet and packaging of each disc (which physical media buyers often enjoy) unless you go to a whole lot of trouble!

I don't know what the best answer is (no solution will ever be ideal) but I do know the rights of creators can't always come last.

I certainly think music transfer without payment is a must that the courts need to accept--whether for inheritance or giving away unwanted past purchases or whatever. Selling it FOR payment? Trickier area.

 

[camomac]

Exactly why I support local record stores with my money!

 

[0098386]

I wonder if this will ever be brought up in the EU. Here it was ruled that the user has the right to sell digital goods, but no other distributor (Steam, etc) has followed up on it yet.

I imagine it's only a matter of time.

 

[longofest]

With digital media, there is no physical media, so there is no original work to be resold. There is no way to prove the seller is selling you a copy or an original file. Further, there is no way to prove the seller has deleted the file after it was resold.

You can't prove any of that with physical media either. If I sell you a CD, you can't prove that I haven't ripped it first to my computer. The same was true of tapes - you couldn't prove I didn't use my boombox for tapes

[ oldschool ]

[ /oldschool ]

 

[laurim]

This. If I purchase music, then I should truly OWN the music and do with it as I please.

The content is digitally encoded on the CD. That's a significant similarity. What is the difference?

You never OWN the music or movie. All you own is the convenience of enjoying it whenever you want. The actual owner went through the trouble and expense to put it in a form that would make enjoying it convenient for you and that's the value of it. Otherwise, you would have to wait until it was available on the radio or tv or whatever and eventually it would die away and you would rarely be able to enjoy it. When you sell it illegally, you are selling someone that convenience so they don't have to buy that convenience.

 

[Rog210]

Did anyone actually have plans to sell content that they'd purchased digitally?

All this complaining sounds like nothing more than people seizing an opportunity to complain about "greedy" corporations.

Digital downloads are often more expensive than the CD versions, you can't resell them and they're mostly of inferior quality. They also cut costs for labels as there is no physical media to press, distribute and have to eat the costs of if it doesn't sell.

In other words, the consumer gets the shaft several ways on this deal. So yeah, tell me more about how you don't think corporations are greedy.

 

[JAT]

You can't prove any of that with physical media either. If I sell you a CD, you can't prove that I haven't ripped it first to my computer. The same was true of tapes - you couldn't prove I didn't use my boombox for tapes

[ oldschool ]

[ /oldschool ]

But you can easily prove whether the media was sold. That is the point of the current law situation. Basically, it means that they haven't won over the courts to ban selling a physical, retail copy, yet.

 

[bommai]

I think the courts have a great handle on this particular scenario.

First Sale doctrine applies to ORIGINAL physical objects/media.
When an ORIGINAL physical CD is resold, it deprives the seller of the object. It's ownership can be physically transferred.
The seller can obviously make a copy for themselves prior to selling the original CD, but that is illegal under current copyright law.

With digital media, there is no physical media, so there is no original work to be resold. There is no way to prove the seller is selling you a copy or an original file. Further, there is no way to prove the seller has deleted the file after it was resold.

What if apple does it? You have the legal right to that music only if you own it. When you sell it, it gets removed by apple from your iTunes account. While you might still have a copy lying around, that copy now becomes an illegal copy just like a music file you downloaded from a torrent site.

 

[laurim]

I hope they don't wonder why people pirate media after this. There has been many examples why pirating is way more convenient than a legitimate purchase. You would think that it should be the other way around and a paying customer should have the best experience.

Image

You kind of skipped over all the pain it is to pirate movies such as waiting for it to download from some sketchy site and hope it doesn't have a virus attached to it. You often have to re-encode it to play on the device you want. Sometimes you accidentally download the wrong language version. Some of them are so small and low quality they look like crap on a tv. After a while, the movie you want is no longer being seeded by anyone or only by a couple people so it takes forever to download and craps out several times in the process. Then you have to store it somewhere. I looked into the whole pirating thing for a hot minute and, besides the fact that I didn't want to give up my morals for a stupid movie I could rent for $5, it was really more bother than it was worth. I'm not poor. I can pay to watch a damn movie.

 

[thehustleman]

Which is why rap godfathers is my go to site.

 

[laurim]

Digital downloads are often more expensive than the CD versions, you can't resell them and they're mostly of inferior quality. They also cut costs for labels as there is no physical media to press, distribute and have to eat the costs of if it doesn't sell.

In other words, the consumer gets the shaft several ways on this deal. So yeah, tell me more about how you don't think corporations are greedy.

Do you have a breakdown of the costs to create, promote and distribute a movie or music? I'll bet the pressing and distribution is a small fraction of the expense of putting it out.

 

[milo]

Soon, one can no longer (legally) resell a CD if the record company dislikes it.

No reason to expect that, the court is obviously making a distinction between downloads and physical copies, and even reiterated that reselling physical copies is protected.

"Reselling this item is stealing"

Putting a claim on a product doesn't make an existing law go away.

Just like making a remix of a song is original art.

Remix of a song is a derivative work, and whoever owns the copyright of the original owns the copyright of the remix (unless you get permission and work out a deal). A remix can't be copyrighted without permission.

The content is digitally encoded on the CD. That's a significant similarity. What is the difference?

The difference is when you sell a CD, you no longer have the original CD. It's easy enough to tell that the original is being sold (and the same CD can't be sold over and over again). As well as there being no way to verify that the person selling a file is deleting it from their hard drive instead of keeping it.

 

[Lancer]

Okay but what is stopping anyone from just burning their collection to CDs and then giving those to anyone they like to use as they see fit?

I know a burnt CD is never the same as an original store bought one but still if someone just want the music. And yes I know the sound quality won't be the same but for 99% of people they probably can't tell the difference anyway.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

Digital is different from physical.

Someone paints a painting and sells it to you. Can you then take a photo of it, enlarge it, and sell that? Of course not. You bought that particular copy of the painting, and cannot reproduce it. The Artist owns it.

Someone writes a book. Can you Xerox all the pages, bind them together and then sell that? Of course not. You bought that particular copy of the book, and cannot reproduce it. The author/publisher owns it.

Now, can you sell that ONE painting to someone else, and not own it yourself anymore? Can you sell that ONE book to someone else, and not own it yourself anymore? Can you lend it out? I think you should be able to.

This is where the law needs to be straightened out.

The law is clear on this and a very recent case about the purchase of textbooks in the US and resold overseas was upheld. Physical media is different than digital media.

More importantly, digital media is cheaply replicated. Replicating a copy of a John Wiley textbook by the thousands to then resell is cost prohibited to almost all parties.

Digitally duplicating an mp3 is a synch. Putting it on a CD is already done and it's called the black market and it is illegal as it should be.

It is an asinine start up idea that devalues the original artist while this start up makes a fortune off of their work. Sorry, but the court made the right decision.

 

[bloggerblog]

With digital, there's no way to determine whether you are only selling a copy.

Yes there is. If you own a song that you purchased from iTunes and you decided to later sell it. You can put it up on an Apple licensed web store that will pull your song out of your Purchased Songs in iTunes when sold.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

Okay but what is stopping anyone from just burning their collection to CDs and then giving those to anyone they like to use as they see fit?

I know a burnt CD is never the same as an original store bought one but still if someone just want the music. And yes I know the sound quality won't be the same but for 99% of people they probably can't tell the difference anyway.

Nothing. The point of making a copy is recognized for personal use. It's now a question of ethics on the personal owner of the original copy if they like being a stooge for their buddies who never buy their own music.

But attempting to resell this as an authorized reseller is a felony. There is a reason you can buy used cds from authorized resellers.

No one is going to go after someone for buying a CD/DVD from an estate sale. It's a used product. No one will go after an ebay reseller of used cds/dvds. They will go after them attempting to pawn it off as new material that they have no authorization to resell in such condition.

If one is willing to pay retail price for a used CD then they are a fool. But if someone attempts to sell a used CD at retail pricing and get caught the law will not defend them.

 

[nzalog]

You kind of skipped over all the pain it is to pirate movies such as waiting for it to download from some sketchy site and hope it doesn't have a virus attached to it. You often have to re-encode it to play on the device you want. Sometimes you accidentally download the wrong language version. Some of them are so small and low quality they look like crap on a tv. After a while, the movie you want is no longer being seeded by anyone or only by a couple people so it takes forever to download and craps out several times in the process. Then you have to store it somewhere. I looked into the whole pirating thing for a hot minute and, besides the fact that I didn't want to give up my morals for a stupid movie I could rent for $5, it was really more bother than it was worth. I'm not poor. I can pay to watch a damn movie.

First off if you can get a virus from an audio or video file then you are a whole new kind of special. I don't recode anything, XBMC plays anything you throw at it. There are good torrent sites out there that are not open to the public if you really want to do this, however the point of what I'm saying is the industry (not talking about iTunes at all) needs to make things more convenient. Why buy media online that is non-transferable later? I know there may be no good way to make sure that a user who passes their media to someone else is no longer using it themselves... but with this law no one will figure out a way.