[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by calvin-c

This is an argument used by collectors of child pornography-yet they do get caught. Often it's by tracking the purchase/downloading of something illegal-but other times it's simply 'run across' by somebody checking their hard drive.

The key difference here is that child pornography is illegal to possess; a copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is not. A copy of it on one's hard drive is not direct evidence of illegal activity. HP:POA is illegal to copy without permission (except where fair use applies), but there is no way to know just from looking at it whether a particular digital copy was legitimately acquired.

For now I'm going to see what happens with the case against ReDigi assuming it's appealed. The court's reasoning seems fatally flawed but that's JMO-an appellate judge (or higher) might believe otherwise. The kindest interpretation of the judge's decision is that he's hiding his real reason which might be the impossibility of ensuring, on a grand scale, that people aren't cheating.

Another interpretation is that, like many judges, his income level is such that he doesn't purchase used goods, and is oblivious to the amount of harm it does to the economy to remove them from the marketplace--and that he's unaware of how much copying is involved in the modern business world. He's relying on a basic interpretation of copyright law: Unauthorized copy = illegal, without considering that all computers do is make copies and process them.

By a simple "unauthorized copies are illegal" interpretation, I could create a website on my own servers, and say "I don't allow anyone running a PC instead of a Mac to copy my words; anyone who visits my website from a PC is guilty of copyright infringement." I could set up a PC-Accessible version of my website and put a $50/month subscription fee on it. Then I could track some site visit numbers, and start handing out lawsuits. I wouldn't even have to give notice on the website itself--technically, one is supposed to get permission before making a copy, and the fact that "everyone else allows this kind of copying" is irrelevant.

Of course that's ridiculous. But that's the kind of ridiculous that comes from not acknowledging that the meaning and purpose of "copies" have changed, and copyright law needs to be adapted to the reality of computers and the internet.

Difficulty of administering this is a problem-that can be solved by auditing the sellers' computers. Publishers (whether music or books) don't like this approach because legally they need to get a warrant. They'd much rather base their 'warrant' on something that's public such as the (re)sale. I can understand their desires-I simply don't see why the legal system should bow to them.

It's not the warrant they object to (although that's part of it) but the concept that resale is legal. They've been trying to get rid of the first sale doctrine for a hundred years, and keep looking for new ways to evade it, to require that only the first buyer gets access to the content.