Wired Threat Level:
A one-of-a-kind website enabling the online sale of pre-owned digital-music files got a legal boost late Monday when a federal judge refused to shutter it at the request of Capitol Records.
The brief ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan of New York did not clearly outline the reason for the decision. But in a transcript of a court proceeding Monday, he said that Capitol is likely to prevail at trial.
“Used MP3s”? Sounds shaky at best…
My first reaction to this was “wow, what a great idea. Getting money back for the MP3’s you’ve purchased and no longer want”. But then, of course, comes the question of how someone putting their MP3’s up for sale on a site would prove that they actually got rid of the MP3 after selling it, because if they didn’t delete it from their computer and any other device they own, plus destroy any CD they made containing the MP3 then you would just be reselling something that isn’t your’s to sell.
I know, I stated the obvious. So what.
They’re not “used MP3s”, though. That’s shaky reporting by Wired, at best.
The key thing is that the only audio files ReDigi accepts are songs purchased from iTunes, so are AAC audio files which have embedded metadata that confirms you were the person that bought the music. (Apple embeds this information in all purchased music.) You can’t just rip a song an sell it. ReDigi say their software deletes all copies once a song’s uploaded for sale, including on synced devices, so they do appear to genuinely be trying to make sure the user doesn’t just sell a copy and keep the song for later listening.
How effective this deletion is is an interesting question. Assuming it passes legal muster, the case then becomes much more about the doctrine of first sale and what rights you have to do what you wish with something once you’ve bought it; whether the music is actually sold or merely licensed; that sort of thing.
It’s analogous to selling your old CDs (or DVDs or books), which the content industries would also dearly love to stop you from doing if they could. Oh, how much more money they could make – and control they could exert – if they could kill the secondhand market!
The right to resell something you’ve bought is an important right to have, and just because the product you bought is digital rather than physical it shouldn’t mean having to give up this right.