Selling Used MP3s Found Legal In America 281
bs0d3 writes "After some litigation; ReDigi, a site where people can sell used MP3s has been found legal in America. One of the key decisions the judge had to make was whether MP3's were material objects or not. 'Material objects' are not subject to the distribution right stipulated in "17 USC 106(3)" which protects the sale of intellectual property copies. If MP3's are material objects than the resale of them is guaranteed legal under the first sale' exception in 17 USC 109. Capitol Records tried to argue that they were material objects under one law and not under the other. Today the judge has sided with the first-sale doctrine, which means he is seeing these as material objects."
Re:If selling is legal.. (Score:3, Informative)
For the same reason you cannot go buy The Davinci Code and start mass producing copies for your friends.
For all the insanity there may be in copyright / IP legislation, you have to go way out on a limb to argue for complete removal of copy protections on recently produced works.
Re:If selling is legal.. (Score:5, Informative)
What you're missing here is that to "sell" the MP3, it is necessary that you give the MP3 to the other party. This is a "move" not a "copy", meaning, you must destroy your current copy. Yes, under the "material object" logic, you could "give" it away, as in "sell it for zero", but you give up any rights to it yourself.
With P2P, your copy stays on the machine when another downloads it from you. You now have an illegal copy (assuming you GAVE it to the first downloader).
Not true... (Score:5, Informative)
The judge simply denied a motion for a preliminary injunction against the defendant which means the case will go to trial.
Actual source of information: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/02/judge-denies-record-labels-request-to-shutter-used-mp3-store.ars
In short selling of used mp3's hasn't been answered yet (the summary is wrong).
Not True (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm fine with this but... (Score:5, Informative)
Most of piracy is a problem in how companies treat customers, availability, restrictions (the pirated version has more features, is more usable) and cost.
If books started to cost more money, people would start xeroxing them to each other. Its how it goes. This is all a reaction to the RIAA thinking they can dictate terms to the masses and rake in money. You have to respect your customer and provide value.
Article Bogus (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not True (Score:5, Informative)
The title of this article is wrong. Everything I read shows no decision has been made yet. The Judge ruled that there is no need for a prelimenary injunction.
I followed the link in the meaningless drivel that claims to be a submission. The link points to a blog full of meaningless drivel with another link. That link points to another blog full of meaningless drivel which contains a link to an Ars Technica article. And if you follow that link, you find that a submitter has quoted a clueless twat who copied an article from a clueless twat who read an Ars Technica article and didn't understand a word of it.
Quote from Ars Technica here http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/02/judge-denies-record-labels-request-to-shutter-used-mp3-store.ars [arstechnica.com] : "Sullivanâ(TM)s decision means that the case is still headed to trial, where Capitol will attempt to prove its allegations that ReDigi facilitates wanton copyright infringement and is not protected by the first-sale doctrine."
Judge only denied a motion for summary judgement. (Score:5, Informative)
No, selling used mp3s has not been found legal. If you trace the link's back to the original source you get this article at Ars:
**Judge denies record label's request to shutter "used" MP3 store**
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/02/judge-denies-record-labels-request-to-shutter-used-mp3-store.ars [arstechnica.com]
The judge still thinks ReDigi's arguments are likely to fail and that Capitol Records will prevail. The only thing that is significant is that ReDigi's case isn't over yet at the motion stage.
And a Dupe (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, and informed account of that decision by the actual lawyer for ReDigi was
posted on slashdot [slashdot.org] just this morning.
The "Source" link in the Summary is Bogus (Score:5, Informative)
There has been no definitive ruling by the courts in this litigation. The judge only denied Capitol Records request for a preliminary injunction against ReDigi to force them to cease operations while the litigation proceeds. That, most likely would have forced ReDigi out of business, which may well have been what the judge was thinking about. We won't have any real answers about this until after a trial and, presumably, the inevitable appeals.
More Info here [digitaltrends.com] and here [law360.com]
Re:I'm fine with this but... (Score:4, Informative)
You're free to copy a pirated version back into iTunes, but iTunes won't recognize it officially and you won't be able to download the song elsewhere from iTunes servers. So it is, in some ways, an inferior product. And its illegal, and once you make the cost and the penalties fair, people will understand. There will always be a few who pirate, but that isn't the issue here; THOSE PEOPLE ARE ALREADY PIRATING MUSIC, and will continue to do so. Furthermore, those people are not lost sales, but that is an argument for another day.
Re:I'm fine with this but... (Score:4, Informative)
See all of Valve's latest experiments, where for instance everybody told them "you cant' sell in Russia, its full of pirates." When they started doing proper, good localizations to Russian, and started releasing games there at the same time as the States, piracy completely fell off the map. They're still making 3x as much money in Russia as any analyst expects them to.
Or the steam sales, where offering a product at a fair price to market perception caused UNBELIEVABLE number of purchases. Valve's minds are literally blown by how much more games sell when you slash the price in half. I mean, a sale traditionally increases how much people buy, but we're talking over a hundred-fold more. Thats why you've seen sale after sale after sale on Steam; by charging LESS, they actually make MORE.
Sensationalist Headline (Score:5, Informative)
The linked story is from some fly-by-night news site that cites a Yahoo! news posting that totally misinterprets an ArsTechnica posting that actually analyzes the actual decision (which is hosted on Wired.) Somehow in this online news game of telephone, it went from the actual story, posted accurately earlier in the day by NewYorkCountryLawyer, that the judge denied the plaintiff's motion for an injunction to the sensationalist story that the judge had ruled in favor of the defendant and ruled that their business is legal. Denying the injunction means that ReDigi gets to keep doing business during the trial. That's it, nothing more. They could still lose at trial. The trial hasn't even started, let alone been decided in a way that would mean that reselling mp3s is legal.
In short, this is a misinformed dupe of the story posted by NewYorkCountryLawyer earlier in the day. Read and comment on that one because this is sensationalist garbage. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Re:If selling is legal.. (Score:5, Informative)
So, there are 5 links in the summary. One is a previous slashdot story, one is ReDigi's homepage, two are just links to law texts, and the last one is, I guess, TFA. So I followed it, and found a shady ass blog post hosted on some random site on port 82. It had links though, mostly the same links as TFS, but it added what seemed like a source hosted on a Yahoo blog. Better, but still not really reliable, and the facts were starting to change. So I followed that blogs source, and got to Ars. OK, now something vaguely reliable. But the facts were a lot murkier, and it sounded a lot like the same story from two days ago, linked in TFS. Ars has two relevant, recent links. One is to Wired, so now it really starts to sound legit, except the Wired article is from February 2nd, and says "a ruling could come any day now". The other Ars link is to a pdf ruling. Finally, the truth will be revealed. Here is the text of the brief, in it's entirety:
RICHARD J. SULLIVAN, District Judge:
For the reasons stated on the record at today's conference, Plaintiffs motion for a preliminary injunction is HEREBY DENIED.
As directed by the Court at today's conference, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED THAT, by Monday, February 20, 2012 at 4:00 p.m., the parties shall submit a proposed case management plan and scheduling to my chambers at the following email address: sullivannysdchambers@nysd.uscourts.gov. A template for the order is available at http://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/cases/show.php?db=judge_info&id=347 [uscourts.gov]. SO ORDERED.
Dated: February 6, 2012 New York, New York
Isn't Internet news great?
Re:Sensationalist Headline (Score:2, Informative)
Agreed.
This should have been story-modded "-1 Dupe" and "-1 Troll" and probably "-15 Irrational Wish Fulfillment".
Apparently, the illustrious Slashdot Story Pipeline works as well as the rest of the "editorial" system.
I find myself wishing someone had just posted a pointer to a (hypothetical) Florian Mueller blog-dropping about the case instead of this tripe.
Seriously. Please stop reading this story and read NYCL's submission [slashdot.org] instead. It has the virtue of being grounded in reality and based on fact.
Re:If selling is legal.. (Score:5, Informative)
If I recall correctly, the law distinguishes between those copies that are only a technical requirement of storing or playing the work, like RAID1 or copying it to RAM and the sound card buffer, and those that functionally create two copies. Perhaps you can with specialized software argue that this temporary duplication is an technical implementation detail in moving a file, but I doubt your average P2P software would apply. I would think you must show that the software will transfer the bits only once to one person and delete them upon confirmation, which is not the typical mode of operation.
Re:If selling is legal.. (Score:5, Informative)