Selling your digital music : Wed Apr 03, 2013 8:52 am  

I buy a CD. After a few years I am bored of it so I sell it to you. 100% legal. I buy the digital album. Ditto. Can I sell it, ever? According to a US decision, no. Having bought it, that's my money done, for ever. I own nothing that I can sell. Seems wrong in principle. If you can securely sell, as the company in the case seemingly arranged, why shouldn't I be able to sell either a hard copy or a digital copy just the same?

I buy a CD. After a few years I am bored of it so I sell it to you. 100% legal. I buy the digital album. Ditto. Can I sell it, ever? According to a US decision, no. Having bought it, that's my money done, for ever. I own nothing that I can sell. Seems wrong in principle. If you can securely sell, as the company in the case seemingly arranged, why shouldn't I be able to sell either a hard copy or a digital copy just the same?

Re: Selling your digital music : Wed Apr 03, 2013 11:20 am  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote: I buy a CD. After a few years I am bored of it so I sell it to you. 100% legal. I buy the digital album. Ditto. Can I sell it, ever? According to a US decision, no. Having bought it, that's my money done, for ever. I own nothing that I can sell. Seems wrong in principle. If you can securely sell, as the company in the case seemingly arranged, why shouldn't I be able to sell either a hard copy or a digital copy just the same? Sounds like the judge has decided that what would be sold would be a copy, even though the seller is not left with the original download. Which, by implication, must mean that what you paid for in the first place was the right to listen to that music, not for any tangible object. And a digital sequence of music isn't actually tangible anyway, is it? From my perspective, it's another reason to stick with CDs.

Ferocious Aardvark wrote: I buy a CD. After a few years I am bored of it so I sell it to you. 100% legal. I buy the digital album. Ditto. Can I sell it, ever? According to a US decision, no. Having bought it, that's my money done, for ever. I own nothing that I can sell. Seems wrong in principle. If you can securely sell, as the company in the case seemingly arranged, why shouldn't I be able to sell either a hard copy or a digital copy just the same? Sounds like the judge has decided that what would be sold would be a copy, even though the seller is not left with the original download. Which, by implication, must mean that what you paid for in the first place was the right to listen to that music, not for any tangible object. And a digital sequence of music isn't actually tangible anyway, is it? From my perspective, it's another reason to stick with CDs.

Re: Selling your digital music : Wed Apr 03, 2013 3:22 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

Sounds like the judge has decided that what would be sold would be a copy, even though the seller is not left with the original download.
Which, by implication, must mean that what you paid for in the first place was the right to listen to that music, not for any tangible object.

But you only ever had a "copy". A CD is but a copy. The physical disc and the case may be tangible physical objects, but if the judge makes that distinction, as if it was those physical objects you were paying the money for, then he's nuts. You would have had no interest at all in the disc or case except for the fact that it was so configured that if you shone a laser at it, music to your liking could be made to emerge.

El Barbudo wrote:

And a digital sequence of music isn't actually tangible anyway, is it?

Every bit as much as the sound from my hi fi.

El Barbudo wrote:

From my perspective, it's another reason to stick with CDs.

CD? You mean you sacked off the vinyl?

To underline my point:
The CD I own has a number of pits etc of various dimensions which can be read and converted into digital representations of the notes recorded.
If I download the same digital information, and want to play it on my CD player, I burn the digital info onto a physical disc. Why can't I sell that? It is my physical property and I am not selling the "music" - which is after all intangible, and thus something different from the physical disc itself that I am selling?

Re: Selling your digital music : Wed Apr 03, 2013 3:38 pm  

I know this may be hard to grasp but an American court has no jurisdiction in the UK despite the efforts of the last government.

Re: Selling your digital music : Wed Apr 03, 2013 4:21 pm  

Big Graeme wrote:

I know this may be hard to grasp but an American court has no jurisdiction in the UK despite the efforts of the last government.

I suppose the acid test would be to try listing some MP3's (that you bought) on eBay UK.

Re: Selling your digital music : Wed Apr 03, 2013 4:36 pm  

Big Graeme wrote:

I know this may be hard to grasp but an American court has no jurisdiction in the UK despite the efforts of the last government.

Indeed it hasn't, but if we were discussing jurisdiction, (we weren't) why might that be hard to grasp?

Re: Selling your digital music : Wed Apr 03, 2013 5:14 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

But you only ever had a "copy". A CD is but a copy. The physical disc and the case may be tangible physical objects, but if the judge makes that distinction, as if it was those physical objects you were paying the money for, then he's nuts. You would have had no interest at all in the disc or case except for the fact that it was so configured that if you shone a laser at it, music to your liking could be made to emerge.

A CD is a tangible source, from which a digital sequence is constructed.

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

Every bit as much as the sound from my hi fi.

The sound from your HiFi is not what you bought, it is produced from what you bought.

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

CD? You mean you sacked off the vinyl?

Yeah, I've moved on.
Early adopter, me.
Might get a microwave one day. ... actually, naaah.

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

To underline my point:
The CD I own has a number of pits etc of various dimensions which can be read and converted into digital representations of the notes recorded.
If I download the same digital information, and want to play it on my CD player, I burn the digital info onto a physical disc. Why can't I sell that? It is my physical property and I am not selling the "music" - which is after all intangible, and thus something different from the physical disc itself that I am selling?

The key here is "which can be read and converted into digital representations" ... i.e. When you bought the CD, you didn't buy the digital representation, you bought something from which you could derive a digital representation.

Despite my responses, I am not unsympathetic to your view.
Nonetheless, it does sound like the judge has decided in the way I described.

Re: Selling your digital music : Thu Apr 04, 2013 12:32 am  

My take on this: when you buy an MP3, you are sent a copy of a data package sitting on a server somewhere. You are not, presumably, permitted to copy that MP3 (just like a CD or DVD). As far as I'm aware iTunes lets you copy your purchases onto other Apple items as long as you don't distribute to anyone else, though I think this is a grey area as far as UK law is concerned?

If you then choose to resell that MP3, there is no physical way of selling the actual 'material object' that constitutes your copy. What you actually do is recreate your package of data elsewhere - thus making a copy, which as it stands is illegal. The fact the original is deleted is irrelevant. You've still created and sold a copy.

I also imagine very few courts would believe someone whizzing their online purchases elsewhere for sale has not made a copy they intend to keep. Until software exists that can prove no copy has ever been made, I don't see how the legal blurb can be negated, and even then a change in the law would be required to permit a legal transfer and deletion of data. Unfortunately I suspect this will prove impossible, as even if such software existed, all you need to do is to play the MP3 and record it - this can already be done.

For example, every CD I own, I've ripped. I also have all my music saved on a laptop, an MP3 player, an iPad and 2 external hard drives. That's 5 copies of everything, with further selected copies on my phone and my little gym MP3 player. Some was purchased online, some ripped from CDs and some from less respectable sources. I suspect most of these copies are illegal and I suspect the majority if people are in the same boat to at least some degree.

I'm torn on this issue. I'm all for protecting the intellectual property of musicians - it's their product, after all - but if I choose to sell something I purchase, I should have that right. I don't see River Island, Samsung or Nissan knocking at people's doors for selling second-hand items on eBay, but then they're tangibly the original items.

Re: Selling your digital music : Thu Apr 04, 2013 1:25 am  

Cronus wrote:

...I don't see River Island, Samsung or Nissan knocking at people's doors for selling second-hand items on eBay, but then they're tangibly the original items.

But there's a bit of an analogy there too. Did you buy the River Island gear because of the fabric it was made out of, or for the intangible combination of design and colours that appealed to you? Like a digital tune, the real value to you of what you bought is the intellectual design work, and not the base material which of itself you wouldn't have given a penny for? Would you?

Re: Selling your digital music : Thu Apr 04, 2013 2:12 am  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

But there's a bit of an analogy there too. Did you buy the River Island gear because of the fabric it was made out of, or for the intangible combination of design and colours that appealed to you? Like a digital tune, the real value to you of what you bought is the intellectual design work, and not the base material which of itself you wouldn't have given a penny for? Would you?

A combination of all of the above. I dislike certain materials and wouldn't buy them regardless of the design, and some clothing outlets offer better quality material than others. River Island is perhaps a bad example, their stuff is 'trendy' but often not the best quality.

But the point remains, by selling digital music via the web on you're creating a copy, which is currently illegal. The only loophole I can see is if you can prove it's only ever been on a single storage device that you physically deliver to the purchaser as part of the sale.