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Court Rules Users Can't Resell Songs Bought on iTunes
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Because you are in fact purchasing something - a limited set of rights to a song - those rights are defined by a license. ETA: Anything you buy that involves copyright has licensing limitations attached to it.
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On the surface? You can't sell the original digital bits, you have to make a copy of the bits, and sell those. You do not hold a license to copy and distribute music for profit. You also don't have this license for physical media, but since you aren't copying it (hopefully) there is nothing wrong.
There needs to be new laws, but in the mean time the current ones cover the bases. There is no way to know or enforce whether you destroyed all your other copies before selling a digital copy, so why in the world would the courts allow you to bypass the current law?
Edit: Try this one
I buy an academic license for Microsoft Word, I sell an academic License for Microsoft Word to a non-student.
I buy a piece of shareware and unlock it. I sell the piece of unlocked shareware.
Umm, no. I never mentioned anything about copying or pirating and it wasn't related to what I was talking about.
The First Sale Doctrine allows me to resell my physical CD/DVDs to my friends and family if I want, this is not illegal and the said ruling today confirms this for sure.
My point was that I can't do the same with my digital purchases. Why shouldn't I be able to sell my digital purchase of an album that I got from iTunes? Of course, Apple can enforce this by removing it from my iTunes account and all of my stuff, so that I can't ever use it. They can simply assign the purchase to my friend/family.
Probably kidding around, but why does it mean that? Unless you plan to sell your music collection on the black market (good luck with that), downloading things illegally has nothing to do with this ruling. It's not about saving you money, it's about preventing you from making back 50-80% of the money you spent. They are perhaps the same coin, but the ruling only addresses the side relevant to your rights of first sale.
Imagine if computer DRM was sophisticated enough to have a "Garage Sale" app. How much junk you never look at on your hard drive would someone else willingly pay for?
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Judging by reviews, what people don't like is when the one song they want to buy is Album Only, so that $8.99 is a lot less appealing. Whether that is 100% the label's decision, or partly influenced by Apple, I can only guess. But clearly Apple makes it possible. And this ruling makes it impossible for someone who buys the whole album to resell the songs they don't even want to hear, encouraging popular "overpriced" songs to be pirated. To quote a friend, "Happy Riaa?"
Anyway, it will be fascinating to see what happens when another country (big market or small) decides to go ahead and allow this. We'll see what the online services do then.
Incorrect, sir. This ruling changes nothing. It has never been legal to make a copy of music and sell it. And if you think you aren't making a copy, you don't understand computers on a deep level. The only thing this ruling did was uphold the status quo. No laws changed, and nothing weird happened. Did you even read what the defendant was trying to get by with? This was not about a buddy selling a song to his friend.
Nothing really, just like nothing is really stopping you from burning the original disc onto a five cent blank and selling the original. For that matter, nothing is stopping you from just pirating te songs in the first place and skipping that step where your hard earned money leaves your bank account in order to obtain digital goods. Except the law, which basically says you can't do that. In assuming they would be gunning for the same thing; once you sell your digital copy of whatever music file, you agree to delete it since you essentially just sold your license to use that track any longer.
The fact of the matter is that laws are not evolving anywhere near as fast as technology is these days.
I certainly have plenty of software I am sure I could unload for some money. Pretty much all games, but hey, it's digital content on my drives that I don't currently legally have the right to sell. How much money would I actually get? I don't know. But that's not the point. People setting up a garage sale sell their old stuff at well over 90% loss too. A lot of it may as well have gone for free.
I, for one, would love to be able to purchase downloadable games for Xbox and play station that people have played trough and are no longer interested in. There are also some games that went on sale for a while and can no longer be purchased. Not many, but they exist. (I realize that isn't what this case was about, but it is related)
While I agree with that, there is nothing preventing the recording companies from modifying the license to state that you and only you have the right to play the music. It would be completely legit and there is president for digital files, media or programs, being licensed to a single person or entity.
A physical disk can be tricky because you own the plastic, and they own the rights to the song (and the rights to copy the song). As soon as you strip away the physical medium then you as the costumer have nothing. You can't own bits, and you can't transfer bits without copying them.
In the end though I don't know if I understand. If a song cost 99 cents, are you really going to take the time to sell the song again for 89 cents? Transferring your library at death makes complete sense, and is easy enough to "enforce" because the original owner can't possible listen the music again. But it seems like a huge legal bees nest to try and legalize the reselling of music. If that happens, you can expect DRM to come back in a big way so that copyright owners can make sure only a single copy exists for every instance they've sold.
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This reminds me of another often bypassed law.
Let's say that they legalize the reselling of digital music, and they come up with the most brilliantly unintrusive but perfectly tracking DRM system. Expect full well that they states with sales tax will step in and take their cut. We'll all be back here with a bunch of people whining "But I don't have to pay sales tax at a garage sale, it's not fair!" When in fact, you probably do. You're supposed to pay sales tax on items purchased on the internet too, as it is ultimately the buyers responsibility to pay their local taxes, but people don't do that either.
In response to reselling 99 cent songs (for the record most are $1.29, at least on iTunes, these days)... Imagine the reselling marketplace is within iTunes (for simplicity's sake). Now imagine I can just put a check box next to all the songs I want to sell. I set a price, maybe a la cart, maybe as a package. Someone comes around to the "used section" and sees my tracks and decides to buy. Sale goes through just like it would any other sale. Buyer has his new tracks. I no longer have access to mine. That seems like it was pretty minimal work, IMO. A lot of people see 99 cents as something to just throw away. Hell, in pretty sure that's a huge reason why 99 cent apps sell so well a lot of the time. But yes, I am fairly certain that if there was a venue available for selling "used tracks" that was relatively hassle free for both the buyer and the seller, there would be a market for it. Same goes for used games and other software, which can fetch far more than a handful of nickels and dimes, depending.
I agree regarding the tax thing. But that could be easily handled over an online venue. Taxes on sites like eBay are mid change, and many sites already charge tax based on your shipping zip. And that is how it should be IMO.
Edit: I was intrigued by the garage sale taxes discussion so I looked it up. It seems to be up to either the state or county, but often times if the sales aren't recurring (this will be defined but usually this means multiple times a year), sales tax needs not be collected. Likewise if the sale doesn't provide profit (you are not getting more for the item you sold than what you paid for it), it also isn't subject to income tax.
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I don't get why first sale doesn't apply to digital media. If I bought it with my money, and I no longer want it and its still valuable to somebody else, why can't I sell it? Why should it just sit around, not being put to good use? I am not talking about reproducing the digital media and selling it for profit. I am talking about recuperating my money for material I no longer use.
The argument unread here, and I must admit it is a good one, is that if you sell a track off of your hard drive you are technically selling a copy of that track (assuming you aren't handing your entire jar drive over). In short, the laws haven't changed to adapt to digital content and I suspect that until they do, we will have zero resale rights. It's possible that even if laws change we won't have those rights.
The issue is there is no law that directly applies, because congress is so far up the industry butt. The courts have to sometimes interpret the intent of the laws with respect the current populace. For example gay marriage, this was never an issue with respect to the civil rights laws when they were written, if the courts were to stick to original "intent" then we'd have little progress on many issues. In this case many of the media laws have intent that can be readily interpreted in the digital realm, but its apparent the courts are also now up the industry butt.
Precisely, you can't re-sell something that isn't yours. Period. The artist, writer and label own the songs you buy. It would be no different then selling files you have no right to sell and it is illegal.
Because "guilty until proven innocent" has always been the motto in this country (and around the world for that matter). Even if you're 100% honest and would never even think about making a copy, they're going to assume you're going to lie and cheat and steal your way into making a buck. Especially when it's stupid easy to do so with digital content. Especially especially when so many people would.
You can purchase a song but you have no right to resell it. Period. Perjury is illegal too. Someone else created it and only they (label, artist, producer etc) have the right to sell it. Media isn't free, unless you made it yourself and even then it isn't free. It always costs somebody something at some point.
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You can purchase a song but you have no right to resell it. Period. Perjury is illegal too. Someone else created it and only they (label, artist, producer etc) have the right to sell it. Media isn't free, unless you made it yourself and even then it isn't free. It always costs somebody something at some point.
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Thank you. Making music used to be something that I loved to do, and paid my bills at the same time. When illegal downloading took off.. the entire industry took a nose dive.
Because you agreed to licensing terms on an abstract item. Seriously. Digital downloads are not physical items and the laws relating to first sale do not apply. The court has legally ruled them as different things and the law applies differently.
When you have a digital item, the distribution of such item is done very differently than a physical one on a technical level. You may not see a distinction, but the court does and they rule based on the laws that exist. The only way that this can change is the copyright laws regarding distribution change.
And the law doesn't care about making a profit either. You can even make a loss and it's the same thing as making a million bucks as far as distribution rights go.
Because Apple set it up so you don't actually buy the MP4 file. They license it for your use. It is more like renting it.
I disagree. It looks like a sale so it it. But even if you were allowed to resell a song there is ZERO market for them. No one would buy it because they can get them for free from many places. Yes there is a market if you are a company who sells from a large selection. But yo'd have no hope of selling the one or two songs you no longer like. Try it. Put an MP3 on Craigslist for 25 cents an see if anyone takes it, there just is no market
Precisely! Most comments here are laughable
I mean, you rip the CD, have the digital music on your PC and sell the CD on eBay and get the money back
Also you may or may not sell countless of copies of your digital music!This is digital stuff! You can clone to billion copies and sell it if you were legally allowed to.
What do you think CDs are? They are not the masters. They are copies.
Buy a copy of a Picasso print legally and you can sell it if you choose.
If you legally purchased material there should be no reason you cannot sell that copy. The question that remains is whether what you are selling is a copy of what was purchased or you sold the original purchase and kept a copy for yourself. Candidly, there should be no reason one cannot sell an iTunes purchase or transfer it. Protecting the artist and the companies is an issue but the audience/purchaser should not be punished collectively with such stupid laws.
Yes it should say "license" but that is poor marketing and they want your money. Actually it should read "buy a license for private use"
But now you ask. OK I can't sell the file because I don't own it. But why can I not resell the license. Only one answer to that. Because Apple in their fine print says you can't.
So CDs, DVDs, etc. are superior to online bought licenses and corporate controlled cloud servers. I knew that already. It's not always better just because it is new. Physical media is not dead, and will not be anytime soon.