Apple and Amazon Flirt With a Market For Used Digital Items 138
langelgjm writes "The New York Times reports that Apple and Amazon are attempting to patent methods of enabling the resale of digital items like e-books and MP3s. Establishing a large marketplace for people to buy and sell used digital items has the potential to benefit consumers enormously, but copyright holders aren't happy. Scott Turow, president of the Authors Guild, 'acknowledged it would be good for consumers — "until there were no more authors anymore."' But would the resale of digital items really be much different than the resale of physical items? Or is the problem that copyright holders just don't like resale?"
With e-books (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Resale? (Score:4, Interesting)
The simplest explanation is that Apple and Amazon are patenting the idea of dealing with used copies so that nobody can sell used stuff anymore.
The slightly more difficult explanation, if you don't consider copyright holder in the same boat as app store (a sale is a sale for both, most of the time) is that they want to use the used stuff card to cheat copyright holders on the real amount of digital stuff sold.
Other interpretations seem too far fetched :)
Re:Resale? (Score:5, Interesting)
Unless of course they figure out a way to add the coffee stains digitally. THEN we're talking.
Re:No more authors? (Score:5, Interesting)
First, you could argue that there is currently more media in the form of books, movies and music than any person could ever read/watch/listen in a single lifetime, many times over. So the "need" to create "new" content relative to each person is currently nil and has been for decades. However, this is only a quantitative argument because media evolves with its era. Science-fiction from the 1940's seems simple and prehistoric from our 2013 point of view.
The second argument would be that there will always be authors. People who love to write stories and compose music will do so with or without financial compensation. It's the same with inventors, who create things because they have the need to create. If it becomes popular and the inventor starts making money because of it, that's only a nice side-effect.
Do not confuse needs with greed. People will always create, even after this concept of "currency" is long gone.
I really see what you are doing Apple and Amazon (Score:5, Interesting)
The bottom line is any resale model will have to use DRM. There is no conceivable way to do this with non-protected content. You can't resell digital content if there is no guarantee that the original copy will no longer be used by the original owner So yes, if you value saving a few cents off a $0.99 song or app then you are going to have to embrace DRM (meaning to bend over), period.
What Apple and Amazon REALLY want to do is start charging you $30 for an app, movie, book or album under the guise of allowing you to recover some of that financial loss through resale, only to get more money for every future resell of the product. You might get $15 back by reselling a movie, but then Apple and Amazon are going to sett up their resale system to sell back the item for $20, just like the way Gamestop sells used games.
These companies are not going it for our good they are doing it to get more money out of us by ultimately charging more for content and continuing to reap a profit off of content long after it has been "sold". Anybody thinking digital content resale is a good thing is oblivious to common sense and the greed of these companies.
I would prefer the price of content to be so cheap I don't care about recovering back financial investment. There is no reason to resell a $0.99 "thing", Nobody resells a cold cup of coffee. There is every reason to resell something that costs real money and its is obvious Apple and Amazon want us to start paying more money for stuff up front under the guise of giving us an opportunity to sell it to someone else. Just sell it to use for a decent price and end this stupidity.
Simple solution (Score:4, Interesting)
The solution is simple and elegant: since these sales will take place over their stores, for items that came from Kindle/App Store anyway, they could have a small revenue share percentage with the copyright holder.
Someone should tell these guys that the alternative is what I do when I'm pissy at Amazon: Calibre to strip Digital Restrictions Management, dump to PDF, share to my heart's content.
Cheers!
E