bling581

February 08, 2012 at 10:58am

This one I kind of have to agree with the music companies. All you have to do is backup your songs on an external source, sell your songs, and then put them back on your hard drive. Even if it deletes them off your hard drive you can still have them on your iPod and nobody would know. Then just transfer purchases and they're back on your computer.

Of course the same can be said with music CD's, but it's a little more of a hassle because you need to buy physical media and have software that can copy the tracks from the disc. When you go into a used CD shop it's clear that you're buying a legit copy of the disc.

Up Early

February 08, 2012 at 4:42am

The record companies want to have their cake and eat it too. They sell you a digital file that cost literally NOTHING to mass produce and sell them at a buck a song! Then they want to have complete control of something that isn’t even a tangible item. For instance, having complete control over how many devices I can play this file on. Boo Hoo. If they are so concerned about rampant copying of music files, encrypt them so it would be impossible to copy. Of course, they won't do that.... music files that can't be copied or backed up would never sell. They want to take the easy way out and let lawyers do the dirty work.

Book publishers are media purveyors just like record companies. I can't recall the source, but I've read that book publishers want a bill passed that would make it illegal for you to sell a book you have purchased and read. You would have to sell it to a licensed "book dealer" who would give you a small amount for the book and THEY would resell the book to the general public and give a perecentage back to the publisher. This idea was concieved under the notion that you "don't really own" the contents of the book.
It sounds like I'm getting off-track, but just where do your rights as OWNER begin and end? An automobile incorporates protected technologies in it's manufacture, does that mean you don't have the right to directly resell it when you no longer want it??

Back in the day, I had a recording machine that made 8 tracks. My friends and I used to copy all our albums and play the tapes in our cars. Legal? No, but in the end we BOUGHT EVEN MORE albums because the usage was so flexable! And I don't think we put Atlantic or anyone else out of business in the meanwhile.

Scatter

February 07, 2012 at 4:21pm

Here's the problems with this to me;

There's really no way for any service like this to ever ensue that the original MP3 is deleted. Why couldn't a person simply copy the original to a flash drive or any the drive and then sell the MP# on their primary drive?

Why couldn't a person repeatedly do this and sell copies of the same file 1000 times?

Digital products aren't the same as physical products and can't be treated as if they're the same. IMO I don't think that selling used MP3s can be controlled since files are so easily copied.

steevonson

February 07, 2012 at 4:07pm

I'm hoping that things like this will spur the larger conversation of "what is digital ownership?". As it stands currently the markup is the same but the functionality is much more removed from the physical media. This must stop.

someuid

February 07, 2012 at 3:31pm

Of course EMI is blowing smoke. They know the file isn't illegal. If it was, restoring your music collection from a backup would make your entire music collection illegal.

And as for ReDigi, of course the whole process can be circumvented. The only way to keep that from happening would be to make the ReDigi app part of your OS, having it scan regularly to make sure you didn't restore to the music files. And even that can be worked around.

The saddest part here is the failure of the music lables to embrace digital music. They could have set up their own stores, and allowed people to resell or return tracks for a credit. They could have all gotten together, offered a single music player/syncer, and each required a plugin to check now and then for songs that were traded in and the user tried to restore from backup.

Heck, if you could redownload your songs due to a hardward or software failure (like steam) no one would bother with a backup to begin with!

My god, they could be rolling in cash if they'd just hired some programmers to institute this. But no, they have to keep firing their guns at anything that moves, blasting away, crying that people aren't still buying a dozen albums a week.

Hey.That_Dude

February 07, 2012 at 1:07pm

Yeah. IDK if i want to buy a copy of someone else's music. Like could I tell the difference between if i'm buying an MP3 or FLAC. With a CD you know what you get and you know it hasn't been tampered with... too much.

nsvander

February 07, 2012 at 12:44pm

"EMI claims that First Sale doesn't apply here because ReDigi isn't selling the original music file, but what EMI asserts is an illegal copy of the original file."

Then the same could also be said about all the other sites that sell music, it's technically just a copy of the file that you are getting. The only thing that makes it legal is because the record companies are getting a kick back from the sale. With this type of resale they are not getting a kick back, and well as we all know, all they care about is money.

pedersen1990

February 07, 2012 at 12:56pm

Wonder how it works when they "Dig through your hard drive". If its a browse... option it is wayyy to easy to copy the mp3 (even name it something else) to keep it or keep a copy on an external or even another computer. It's also tough to prove that the copy you are selling "used" is a legit copy and not one torrented or p2p downloaded.

It is different because at the store because in a store we cannot take that cd and make a duplicate using a local computer there but with digital media it's so easy. This one will have to be handled with extreme care and probably VERY specific rules that have to be followed.

I could see Itunes implementing something like this. It'd have to probably deal with only the songs you have bought through Itunes and it would delete your song within your itunes folder. Only hiccup again is if the song is copied. Itunes however could implement if the song is still there or on your device to not allow you to play it unless you buy it again. This would be a huge thing for them to do though.