Its the same for a physical dvd, or cd. You can copy them and there'd be no way to tell. Why distinguish between digital goods and non-digital goods as if they are inherently different. They are not. They're both jus data. I don't accept the argument that digital goods are easier to copy. Take games on Steam for example. Is it easy to hack and copy them? No. In that case, why can't there be a market for unwanted Steam games?
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Court Rules Users Can't Resell Songs Bought on iTunes
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I bought a lot of music over the years that I either got tired of (tastes change sometimes) or I didn't like much in the first place (often just one good song on the album). I've sold several CDs in the past for these reasons (and bought just the one song I wanted to keep from iTunes or Amazon). I know someone at work that is burnt out on all Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and would gladly sell his CDs thereof and use the money to purchase something else.
No offense, but this is a dumb question ....
I've got a whole stack of music CDs I'm selling off. Already mailed two big boxes of them to secondspin.com after they gave me a price quote to buy them.
I had over 200 of them, mostly purchased from those Columbia House and BMG record club offers, given to me as gifts by one of my dad's friends, and bought used at local record stores or flea markets over the years.
The heavy metal I really liked in the late 80's, I feel almost silly listening to today. It's that out of style, with lyrics pretty irrelevant to my life experiences now. And some of the other stuff, I never listened to much in the first place. When you had those "pick 8 albums for 1 cent" offers or friends of people buying you CDs at Christmas-time, you tended to collect up music that wouldn't have been on your "grocery list" any other way.
It makes no sense having a bunch of CDs in jewel cases taking up a lot of space when you could turn them into some cash instead.
I've got a whole stack of music CDs I'm selling off. Already mailed two big boxes of them to secondspin.com after they gave me a price quote to buy them.
I had over 200 of them, mostly purchased from those Columbia House and BMG record club offers, given to me as gifts by one of my dad's friends, and bought used at local record stores or flea markets over the years.
The heavy metal I really liked in the late 80's, I feel almost silly listening to today. It's that out of style, with lyrics pretty irrelevant to my life experiences now. And some of the other stuff, I never listened to much in the first place. When you had those "pick 8 albums for 1 cent" offers or friends of people buying you CDs at Christmas-time, you tended to collect up music that wouldn't have been on your "grocery list" any other way.
It makes no sense having a bunch of CDs in jewel cases taking up a lot of space when you could turn them into some cash instead.
You are not selling any of these copies.
Physical media is physical media. It is _not_ just data. It is an item that you can pick up, hold in your hand, and hand over to the guy who pays you cash for it.
Can you translate that into a language that I can understand?
Exactly. With a CD, you're buying something you can touch. Same as if you bought an MP3 on a USB stick. You could sell the USB Stick/MP3 combo, but not the MP3 itself.
By selling and/or transferring digital content, you are, by the very nature, cloning it. For me to sell you an MP3, I need to copy it onto your hard drive. If I sell a CD, I'm giving you the original item. There is a massive difference there.
And IMO, that's exactly where we've been taken ...
No matter what people want to argue to the contrary, when you step back from all the "letter of the law" and you simply look at how reasonable people view music, music purchasing, etc. -- the vast majority conclude that music albums are relatively low value things which make sense to sell for a reasonable price, but which aren't really worth wasting law enforcement and/or the court system's time over when people duplicate and pass them around.
The only people who really have a vested interest in pushing a different viewpoint on this are the lawyers and the recording industry folks.
Oh, there are SOME artists who do too -- but just as many who don't, or at least who take a neutral stance on all of it and "leave it up to the lawyers to fight over".
The law has gone pretty far from what most people consider "common sense", and as it does, it just creates more and more "offenders" who refuse to follow it.
I used to be in a band myself, trying to make money with our music -- and I can tell you this much; a real musician creates and performs music because he or she enjoys it. He/she usually has some kind of message... something to say that's most easily expressed for them through song. Other times, it's to fulfill that need to "make a mark" in society ... to become well known enough so random strangers off the street can say, "Yeah... I know who that is. I have one of his/her albums!" Whatever the case, making a lot of money is at most, only a secondary concern. The types who are in it to get rich are just trying to crank out whatever material they think will sell the best (by copy-catting popular works that came before them), and they tend to rely on producers to make them sound better than they really are.
When you do something you really love, I think the money will always follow, eventually. But too many people saw that happening and wanted to get in on the cash too, without their heart and soul really telling them to make music. I blame primarily THOSE types for bringing the lawyers and law into everything.
I've never seen it written anywhere that a musician must make his/her fortune selling music CDs or digital music, anyway? Maybe all of that should be viewed only as a vehicle to get people interested in paying for tickets to see live concerts? Whatever the case -- copyright law has made a mess out of the whole industry, IMO. You could literally scrap the entire thing tomorrow, and I think you'd still have people paying reasonable prices to buy music. People do it for the convenience factor -- for instant gratification, and to know they received a copy with good sound quality. Some even do it just to make sure the artist they like sees some of the money.
The rest of this stuff just "bites the hand that feeds", arresting a musician's own fans. (I haven't seen anyone yet who illegally downloads music from artists they don't like to listen to! And any of those fans could be a paying customer for a future album or the next live show that comes to town!)
No matter what people want to argue to the contrary, when you step back from all the "letter of the law" and you simply look at how reasonable people view music, music purchasing, etc. -- the vast majority conclude that music albums are relatively low value things which make sense to sell for a reasonable price, but which aren't really worth wasting law enforcement and/or the court system's time over when people duplicate and pass them around.
The only people who really have a vested interest in pushing a different viewpoint on this are the lawyers and the recording industry folks.
Oh, there are SOME artists who do too -- but just as many who don't, or at least who take a neutral stance on all of it and "leave it up to the lawyers to fight over".
The law has gone pretty far from what most people consider "common sense", and as it does, it just creates more and more "offenders" who refuse to follow it.
I used to be in a band myself, trying to make money with our music -- and I can tell you this much; a real musician creates and performs music because he or she enjoys it. He/she usually has some kind of message... something to say that's most easily expressed for them through song. Other times, it's to fulfill that need to "make a mark" in society ... to become well known enough so random strangers off the street can say, "Yeah... I know who that is. I have one of his/her albums!" Whatever the case, making a lot of money is at most, only a secondary concern. The types who are in it to get rich are just trying to crank out whatever material they think will sell the best (by copy-catting popular works that came before them), and they tend to rely on producers to make them sound better than they really are.
When you do something you really love, I think the money will always follow, eventually. But too many people saw that happening and wanted to get in on the cash too, without their heart and soul really telling them to make music. I blame primarily THOSE types for bringing the lawyers and law into everything.
I've never seen it written anywhere that a musician must make his/her fortune selling music CDs or digital music, anyway? Maybe all of that should be viewed only as a vehicle to get people interested in paying for tickets to see live concerts? Whatever the case -- copyright law has made a mess out of the whole industry, IMO. You could literally scrap the entire thing tomorrow, and I think you'd still have people paying reasonable prices to buy music. People do it for the convenience factor -- for instant gratification, and to know they received a copy with good sound quality. Some even do it just to make sure the artist they like sees some of the money.
The rest of this stuff just "bites the hand that feeds", arresting a musician's own fans. (I haven't seen anyone yet who illegally downloads music from artists they don't like to listen to! And any of those fans could be a paying customer for a future album or the next live show that comes to town!)
Well, technically you can tell because commercial cds are pressed and your janky illegal copies are burnt. A person can tell because the burn area can be seen on your copy.
See, selling something you own is inherently your rights, first sale. The problem technically is that you would be violating copyright by "making a copy". I've shown that thats how computers operate. Using the technicality of data transfer as making a copy is therefore BS. You're just stating the difference between physical media and digital media. But you haven't given any good reason why they should be treated differently. Property rights is pretty important to a Capitalist state, and I don't see any reason to forego first sale because one good is digital, of course provided that digital goods can be safeguarded from being retained once its sold or copied. Safeguarding digital media can be done. See Steam games. Why shouldn't we be able to sell old unwanted Steam games we no longer play? Its tied to your account. Its a simple matter to delete the games from your account if you sell the games.
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I'm talking about burning yourself a copy, and selling the original. A lot of argument against people selling used digital goods center around people making a copy for themselves.
There's a relatively simple solution to selling digital media and that would be to have a web site register a license for a digital copy of whatever media and THAT you could sell/transfer to another person. If you have it on record you are allowed to watch and have a copy of Star Wars: A New Hope on your person, you should then not be able to held liable for a copyright violation if it's found on your computer/person. If you sell that license to someone else, you could be found liable if your copies aren't destroyed say within 48 hours or something.
It wouldn't be any more or any less different than selling an actual CD while holding onto a copy of that CD. You'd need the original CD or you'd need the digital license registered in your name. Fair use might let you keep a copy on a direct family member's computer or whatever within reason or something, but overall, it would just be formalizing and storing a record of what is already a legal license to watch/listen to something. It would also mean if you lost your copy of the media, you could just download it from anywhere since the license allows you to have that movie/music/whatever on your system (where it comes from is meaningless in the digital world).
It wouldn't be any more or any less different than selling an actual CD while holding onto a copy of that CD. You'd need the original CD or you'd need the digital license registered in your name. Fair use might let you keep a copy on a direct family member's computer or whatever within reason or something, but overall, it would just be formalizing and storing a record of what is already a legal license to watch/listen to something. It would also mean if you lost your copy of the media, you could just download it from anywhere since the license allows you to have that movie/music/whatever on your system (where it comes from is meaningless in the digital world).
Well, let me rephrase. I'm not saying that corporations aren't greedy. Not at all.
I'm just saying this: reading people's responses on here, you'd think they'd been planning for years to eventually sell their digital music collections, and now this has completely screwed up their financial future.
Imagine if they passed a law that said you're not allowed to resell gas that you buy from a gas station. Would it be a greedy move? Sure. Did anyone ever actually plan on that or consider that as an option? Doubtful.
We checked into it and were explicitly told, if the copies are stolen the originals must be destroyed. Which is only one of many reasons I choose to pretty much completely ignore copyright.
I think you mean the other way around (if the originals are stolen the copies must be destroyed). I agree it's BS. Laws often aren't fair, but look at the kind of people they're written by and what their approval rating is (which tells me they aren't representing their constituents worth a darn) and it's not hard to figure out why so many laws are stupid.
That's what we thought too, asked for clarification and it was confirmed. I doubt if anyone would ever be charged either way though.
My way of securing backups for media is to make lots of copies, and distribute them as widely as possible. Odds are pretty good that fire won't destroy them all.
Not sure how effective that would be on melted media. But I think multiple copies left in multiple locations would be pretty safe from total loss.
The point of "ddrescue" is that if copy A in location A has some bad blocks, and copy B from location B has some bad blocks - "ddrescue" can create a perfect copy as long as any particular sector is not bad in all copies.
It sounds like they have a real genius working for them.... Like most of government; they don't even know WTF is going on so how could they possibly enforce it when they don't even know the difference between the original and the copies?
The way it was explained to me, you buy it and you are authorized one copy. That one. You make a copy and THAT copy is stolen, you no longer can guarantee that copy and your original will never be used at the same time and the only recourse is the destruction of the one copy you still control. Oddly enough, if you pirate the original you effectively bypass the use agreements. Much safer legally to pirate. Carefully.
Like I said, REAL GENIUSES.
They protect the criminal copy (by making it the valid one) and screw the legitimate owner. Yeah, that makes sense. It reminds me of the gaming industry putting draconian DRM on their games which punishes the legitimate users with a lot of BS while the pirated versions have no such DRM on them since it's been defeated. Yes, punish the innocent and reward the guilty. That's justice for you.
You see this in the news all the time (like right now). One person does something bad and they go after all the legitimate citizens instead of the criminals (who can always get the product regardless of the law). Yeah, that makes sense....
I'm sorry, but our country (and much of the world) is pretty much run by IMBECILES.
I think you read more into my words than I actually said, even if I did hyperbole. I didn't try to suggest it changes anything currently in law. The next time someone tries to pull this off, there is now additional precedent to say no, because as you say, the status quo has been upheld.
I sure did, thanks for asking!
From pages 4 & 16:I wasn't referring to any friend-friend trades at all. If first-sale was upheld, ReDigi's service could've allowed people who buy a whole album of 12 songs from iTunes to immediately resell 11 of them they don't want. Of course it won't work. Of course one can't break a physical CD apart. But try buying a multi-disc collection: you can't buy just Disc 3 from the store, because it's all shrinkwrapped; but you absolutely can legally attempt to sell several discs you don't want to keep. The courts know it's totally impractical to treat electronic sales in the same way, but this is also why private copying levies exist for blank tapes and CDs. Because it's impractical to pretend it doesn't happen with physical media.
If ReDigi had negotiated a levy, maybe they could've gotten somewhere, but that's just speculation. I can't imagine the RIAA hasn't considered how to do this themselves. There must've been a time car makers didn't take the idea of selling their own used cars seriously.
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The problem with those laws is they judge everyone guilty of a crime they have yet to commit (which in the US violates the 5th Amendment's right to due process since they are judging you guilty without a trial). And by acknowledging that you are compensating the industry for piracy on the blanks, that also legitimizes it since you are paying for the right to copy your arse off since that is what the levy is paying for. (Sorry, but that IS the logical consequence of levying a fee for compensate for copying. You are literally EXPECTED to copy copyrighted materials with it and the courts get to decide exactly who receives the money as well as if they know whose copyright you violated ahead of time as well)
Yes, they have fully legitimized pirating with those levies, in my opinion. If they don't want me to copy copyrighted material, they should stop FINING me for a crime I have not yet committed which is the height of an unjust BULLCRAP LAW. And people wonder why some of us have ZERO respect for the justice system at this point. We seem to get endless BS laws that don't represent the people of this country but rather special interests and the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 proves it. There are other uses for blanks than copying copyrighted material with it. In the past, fair use covered recording. The idea that digital is somehow different is a load of horse crap.