can there be a market for used digital content?

[DawnFalcon]

Hamlet53 - If you treat the customer as the enemy, don't be surprised when he's hostile in return.

Or, you can stop doing so - like Baen - and make serious money off this internet thing. If you persist in pushing blatantly end user-unfriendly changes to the law which serve only to protect the interests of big business, you are ultimately only empowering the private copy exemption lobby.

Wait and see how they do in the UK elections, now the other parties effectively shoved a rocket under their campaign with the digital economy bill.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

The thing to remember is that "used digital content" is itself an oxymoron. Whenever you use or transfer digital content you're actually creating a new copy.

Not necessarily. People have sold Sonys & Kindles with books already on them--"used" digital content without creating an extra copy. And Amazon has told people they're required to empty the contents of a Kindle before they resell it. They claim customers are allowed to sell the device but not allow the new owner to read the previous contents.

There are potentially other possibilities, where the digital "original" resides on a piece of hardware that's sold/given away. Laptop loaded with software & documents; ebook reader full of books; flash drive with all the first downloads.

Most commonly, when people want to sell digital files, they want to make a new copy, but sometimes that's not the case--and currently, ebookstores are prone to saying you don't have the right to sell your laptop with book already on it to a new person.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

This is one of those conundrums that need to be solved for the digital age: What is transferable? Is it okay to sell a computer with a separate piece of software already on it? Is software okay, but an e-book forbidden? Should the buyer be forced to pay a full or discounted amount for the software and/or e-book?

Some software, such as Photoshop, is registered to the computer and its owner, and if one of those changes, the software disables itself. Understandable, since Adobe doesn't want to lose the payment due each version of Photoshop, which isn't cheap.

Other software is similarly registered, but won't just disable itself if you change something... usually these are fairly inexpensive pieces of software, so it's more of an issue of not being worth the trouble to prevent ownership transferal.

Again, the issue boils down to one of potential duplicates going unpaid-for... and the fact that everyone wants to get stuff cheap or free, if they can get away with it. If easy duplication of software, or an e-book, were preventable, therefore, transferal of ownership wouldn't be such a sticky situation.

[DawnFalcon]

There is no "conundrum". The law is quite clear. DRM is currently being used to abuse users, and it's creating a massive backlash. The sooner companies realise that the concept of DRM is defective, the sooner they will stop bleeding people who would otherwise have been legitimate customers.

The only sticky situation is that of the companies pushing the youth of today into the arms of the pirateparties and the like who demand a private copy exception.