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.
Actually, there is a way to tell if you're selling a copy. See my response to the next guy.
It forever eludes me why courts have such a hard time grasping technological things. For every technological thing there is a physical equal, and the court should simply interpret based on the precedent that has been set forth. Digital music should be treated no different than CDs, tapes, cassetes, betamax, vinyl, whatever.
While I also think that those that enforce the law should have a better grasp of technology, the irony here is that they understand technology enough to apply the same law to it that they apply to CDs/tape/etc. When you move a digital file from one location to another, you ARE making a copy. You can't NOT make a copy. Even if you "delete" the original, you are still selling a copy. The law is quite clear that you can't reproduce a work of art and resell it without authorization from the party that owns the work of art. In effect, they ARE enforcing the law against digital works the same way they enforce the physical medium.
Sometimes artists sell the rights to their work of art with the physical medium. Other times they retain the rights to reproduce the art and do not grant them to you. This is especially true in Photography, where you might purchase the use of an image, but are limited in what you can do with it (no commercial use, for example).
This. If I purchase music, then I should truly OWN the music and do with it as I please.
This is not a common thing. You usually own the rights to poses a work of art, but rarely do you own the rights to do with it as you please. A common misconception, but if you think about it for a second I hope you'll realize that to poses something does not give you the "right" to do with it as you please.
Agreed but increasingly in the digital world, everything is turning into "you own the license to view the content, not own it". Technology is allowing the owners to control the content completely and we're letting them get away with it.
You have it backwards. Technology is allowing them to enforce laws that have
always existed but were difficult to enforce. Perhaps in the digital age those laws need to change, but not because of reasons I've seen stated here. Copying a work of art and redistributing it for a profit has been illegal for most works of art since the dawn of copy-right. The digital age has just made it stupidly easy to do something that has always been illegal.
How about this one: I went to a pretty small college, and the Student body would put on a movie in one of the central buildings once a week. They did that, until they found out that when you "own" a movie, you have the right to show it to 10 (not sure on the number) people but no more than that. You need an additional license to put a movie on and have more than X number of people watch it. This is regardless of whether you charge money for the viewing or not (we weren't).
Now, is this law readily enforceable? No. And unless you leave a paper trail (like fliers all over campus inviting the entire student body) no court is likely to care. But it
is illegal none the less. If they come out with a technology tomorrow that allows them to enforce this law it will be a huge change to the way we watch movies, BUT it won't be a change in law, or technology somehow twisting the law.
The concept of copyright has always been rooted in the idea that you do not own the content/music/movie. You own one licensed copy fixed in a tangible format.
Exactly.
