Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
What's interesting, I think, and I haven't seen it mentioned in this thread, is that the licencees in this case are not the public who buy copies of the music. They are the retailers selling copies of the music.
So the case says nothing about whether the ebooks we buy are really sold or licensed. But it does say that Apple, Amazon, etc., are licensing the master copies from the producers, and any fees paid by them to the producers of the originals for this are license fees, not wholesale prices.
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Yes, this is a key point...in fact, in a couple of places the opinion clearly distinguished between the licensee (who was in privity with the publisher) and the end user/downloader (who downloaded the music from the licensee).
Most of this is going to be a matter of what the specific contract says, of course. But I'm curious how this would play out since the larger publishers now use the agency model - are they actually selling a license to Amazon, etc. at all?