News - US Federal court delivers blow to digital music resales

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Judgement comes about as Capitol Records sues ReDigi website.

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Read more.

I think the publishing companies need to start coming clean. How on earth can something be classed as a sale if the purchaser is not actually buying it. What is very evident here is that this US ruling is changing the legal definition of digital ownership from that of a 'purchase' to that of a 'rental'. It seems some smart lawyer ought to take this to the courts and sue the recording companies for disingenuous practice. It is untenable to market digital music as being 'purchased' if the 'owner' has no claim to 'own' it. I'm quite sure it would hurt the publishers if they were to call all digital music 'rental'.

It seems American courts don't think highly of consumers, we tend to be looked over in favour of corporate interests too often. Although this case seems to be established corporate interests vs new corporate interests and consumers would benefit from the new corporate interest.

I hope they move into Europe and become successful here, perhaps even help make a different digital music store more popular.

Can't remember the last time I bought an album/ Single for the very reasom of DRM and greedy companies. I stick to Games and radio

The thing is, doesn't this now confirm the arguments that pirates come up with, that you only ever copy a file and never deprive the owner of the original, thus it cannot be classed as theft?

Yes, but your not selling the original as you only ever bought a copy of the original file in the first place.

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Originally Posted by the54thvoid

I think the publishing companies need to start coming clean. How on earth can something be classed as a sale if the purchaser is not actually buying it.

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pretty simple, it's a sale of the rights to listen to the music, with certain terms imposed. the customer is buying the rights to listen to the music

this is pretty similar to what has been going on for years with music, except along with a record or cd, when buying the rights to listen to the music, you end up with a bit of plastic too. the download media has just changed the distribution method

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What is very evident here is that this US ruling is changing the legal definition of digital ownership from that of a 'purchase' to that of a 'rental'. It seems some smart lawyer ought to take this to the courts and sue the recording companies for disingenuous practice. It is untenable to market digital music as being 'purchased' if the 'owner' has no claim to 'own' it. I'm quite sure it would hurt the publishers if they were to call all digital music 'rental'.

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but as i mentioned above, you don't buy the music when you buy a cd or record. you buy a bit of plastic and the rights to listen to it. it's just that it's easier to legally resell those rights along with the bit of plastic, although now the rights/terms to downloadable content are different, and don't give you the right to transfer the sale legally or easily

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Originally Posted by Odeas

Yes, but your not selling the original as you only ever bought a copy of the original file in the first place.

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And according to this decision you didn't even "buy" that file - instead you appear to have bought a (non-transferable) license instead.

Then again, I can kind of see where the judges are coming from - they're treating music (and presumably video by extension) works in the same manner as software. Although there I was sure that the EULA terms about non-transferability were overturned recently? (Or was that just Europe?)

At the risk of being rude to my fellow Hexus users, this kind of nonsense answers exactly that question that came up a while ago of "why do we need CD's when (more convenient) digital downloads are available?". At least if I'd got my music on CD, then I've got something physical that has a resale value. Saracen and the other "traditionalists" are right in this case - the new way is worse. ;)

Besides, the prices that the supermarkets, Amazon, etc are doing CD's for, there's not really that much of a price premium. :p

US courts, setting back consumer rights and freedoms (hell, even HUMAN rights and freedoms) since... forever™.

This really gets my goat...for starters, even though we purchase a license, what do they do when the medium becomes lost or damaged? It's not like you ripped up the license contract....

When they re-release something (digital remaster, 5.1 sacd/dvd-A, BluRay, etc etc) we NEVER get an option to upgrade our license for a minimum amount to cover the new conversion without paying for the base license AGAIN.


As i have said many times, they want all the perks of a license combined with all the perks of a physical sale. Sod the customer.

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Originally Posted by rpsgc

US courts, setting back consumer rights and freedoms (hell, even HUMAN rights and freedoms) since... forever™.

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No, they're not. They're affirming and applying existing laws that protect copyright, and declining to make new law judicially. They point out, with considerable justification, that creating laws to adapt policy decisions in the light of technological change is for lawmakers, Congress in this case, to do, not for judges. And they are right. Judges are supposed to apply law, interpreting to differentiate between cases on the facts, not make new law or policy decision, especially when, as the Court points out, Congress has so far declined to do so.

All this court has done is reaffirm that existing principles still apply, you cannot copy a copyright protected work unless you either have the rights holder's permission, or a fair use defence covers you.

If you sell a CD, tape, LP etc, you are not copying it. You transfer the original copy, complete with any wear and tear, etc. If you resell and iTunes file, you do it by copying, inherently and indisputably, that file from one place to another, and then again to yet another.

There are certainly similarities with selling a Cd, in that you could have copied it first. But .... if I copy and sell a CD, I have broken copyright law when I copy it, but the actual sale of the CD does not break any law. If, however, a service like this copies to sell, then they are copying in the process of selling.

It is, says the court, for Congress to make policy decisions on changing definitions of what should or should not be a permitted or infringing copy, and for the balance of the competing commercial interests, not for courts to make it up however they feel like.

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Originally Posted by shaithis

This really gets my goat...for starters, even though we purchase a license, what do they do when the medium becomes lost or damaged? It's not like you ripped up the license contract....

When they re-release something (digital remaster, 5.1 sacd/dvd-A, BluRay, etc etc) we NEVER get an option to upgrade our license for a minimum amount to cover the new conversion without paying for the base license AGAIN.


As i have said many times, they want all the perks of a license combined with all the perks of a physical sale. Sod the customer.

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The answer to that is obvious - if you don't like the deal, don't buy the product.

It could equally well be argued that if you buy a stereo DVD, you got what you paid for, so it's not fair to moan that when a Bluray is released, or it's remastered, you don't get that. You still got what you paid for, that being a stereo DVD, and you didn't buy rights to releases on the latest medium every time a new one evolves, for the rest of time.

Most of the digital music sold is highly compressed anyway. Only a few companies like Qobuz actually bother to sell higher bitrate audio.

In many instances you can buy the CD cheaper anyway.

I do wonder if the companies behind DRM mechanisms actually offered both lending and selling of the licence, if we wouldn't see a good chunk of the resistance errode.


For example, take Steam, if I buy a game key on there I have the option to transfer this to another user as a gift. Without that key, I can't run the game. It's a small step to imagine being able to offer the keys already used for sale second hand, loosing my right to play the game.

A classic case of 'you can have your cake and eat it too!' by the music companies.

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Originally Posted by Lucio

I do wonder if the companies behind DRM mechanisms actually offered both lending and selling of the licence, if we wouldn't see a good chunk of the resistance errode.For example, take Steam, if I buy a game key on there I have the option to transfer this to another user as a gift. Without that key, I can't run the game. It's a small step to imagine being able to offer the keys already used for sale second hand, loosing my right to play the game.

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Problem with that though is that DRM in music has been proven to be more problematic for the consumers to use than for the "pirates" to remove. To be honest I can't really see a way to get around the suspicion that someone "selling" an MP3 file hasn't got a copy of it squirrelled away somewhere.

I even thought that perhaps some kind of user-specific steganographic fingerprint could have been applied. So at least the source of "leakage" could be tracked down - but I don't think that even that would work long term, someone would figure out the fingerprint and remove it.

The other idea I had would that you could opt-in to some kind of system scanner that would look for the files (using fingerprinting technology) that you'd sold and charge you again if any of them were found. The carrot (to go along with that stick) could be that your purchases are tracked and could be downloaded again (at no cost!) if you had a disk failure etc. But even that has obvious flaws - most obvious being all these devices that folks sync their music to these days.

The only answer I can come up with is to accept that digital music cannot be resold, and in return it's price should drop. E.g. I just bought an album launched autumn last year and it's only 50p cheaper on Amazon's MP3 store than on their CD store. So I bought the CD!