Digital resales going to court in the US

[JoeD]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19842851

Wonder how that'll go. The EU had a case about software that went in the favour of resales, nothing has been decided on music/books/other digital items though.

One thing that's a poor argument against resales though is this gem from emi

It says that the only way to move music around involves making duplicates, and there is is no way to guarantee all the original owner's copies of the files have been deleted.

Clearly they know how to detect whether a CD has been copied or ripped to mp3 prior to been resold then

Once CD ripping is legal, then really not been able to tell if the original has been fully deleted should not be a good enough argument against resale of digital items imo. CDs can be copied or ripped prior to resale and resale is still legal for those items.

What copyright owners should do, is get in on the action. Make a site that allows you to transfer your license to a given track to another, take a % of the cost of the sale. Down the line if someone is suspected of copyright infringement, the day their PC is searched, the people doing the search will be able to find out if you kept files you've sold on and charge you accordingly.

He has already announced plans to expand into the ebook market.

It could be a potentially lucrative step bearing in mind that digital books cost more than digital songs, and are likely to be resold sooner after purchase.

For anyone reading the watermarking thread. This could be one real benefit of watermarking. Proof of purchase (if retailers played ball), ability to have the ebook sold and the watermark replaced with a new owners id. A form of DRM that could actually provide benefit to consumers and not just copyright owners.

[Giggleton]

Well shiver me timbers!

The plaintiff is really only using an algorithm to "make sure" that the resold digital content is not kept on users computers. If this case moves in favor of the plaintiff we can easily apply it to all digital content without the use of any algorithm. Just simply state that you will not keep a copy of the content when you resell it.