Quote:
Originally Posted by DawnFalcon
Okay, I won't be buying from closed circle then if that's your attitude, I'm afraid.
EU law is quite clear - resale is permitted, and Exhaustion Doctrine applies.
Or, you can rent me the books. I'll pay $1-2 for renting them.
I know it sounds harsh, but you expect me to respect your rights as an author. Certainly - but I in return expect you to respect my rights as a purchaser, or I'll go elsewhere.
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The laws and rights you refer to were formulated before the digital age. They were created for physical media.
Current laws notwithstanding, why
should you have the right to resell a digital file? The right to resell a physical object is quite common sense to most people I think. You own the item in every sense. You sell it to someone else and the item then physically belongs to them.
Reselling a digital copy isn't such a black-and-white issue, nor is it an isolated issue. The digital economy is simply different to selling physical copies of things, and any assumptions and direct comparisons to traditional trade need to be considered carefully.
I don't believe that reselling a digital file should necessarily be a right. It doesn't make sense to me that an infinitely reproducible file can be resold as 'second-hand'. But that should be factored into the price of the original (think of the cost of a paper book as including the resale value in the price).
The consumer's rights and the publisher's rights need to be worked out from the realities of the digital age, not from the conventions of an economy based on physical items.
But I think most of this is going to be moot anyway. I think it's inevitible that all digital media will become free or so cheap that the cost is irrelevant, and we will pay indirectly (e.g. ads, donations, sponsorships, etc.). There is simply no way to control the distribution of digital content going forward.