Quote:
Originally Posted by DawnFalcon
An interesting legal theory. Shame it shows a basic lack of understanding about first sale / exhaustion doctrine, and would prevent the resale of anything with any "digital content" whatsoever, including devices with the simplest of microprocessors and microcode.
"No sir, you can't resell your microwave, it has digital content"
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I'm not sure if this was in response to my immediately previous post, but if so I think I was sufficiently unclear that you misunderstood me.
I wasn't talking about the legalities of the resale of digital content. That comes down to whether one is dealing with an outright purchase or a license - and that's up to the courts to decide. If it does get ruled a sale then of course first sale/exhaustion applies.
The point I was aiming at was that due to the nature of digital content, the concept of "used goods" no longer applies. Resold digital content is just as "new" as the original purchaser's copy. Digital content is digital content: it's neither new nor used, it just is.
You can't sell "used food" because it's no longer food - and you can't sell "used digital content" because it's no longer "used."
The problem is that people are trying to deal with digital content according to existing paradigms that simply don't apply. I don't think any of this will be resolved until we have a new paradigm which does take into account the fundamentally different nature of digital content in comparison to physical media.