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Wow, a judge that actually wants a case like this to go to trial because of the "fascinating technological and legal questions" it involves? This is going to be good. Popcorn anyone?
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Judge Denies EMI's Bid to Halt Resale of Digital Music
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BoogerBomb
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I can see where music companies would have a problem with this as it is simply a file that can be copied limitless times. In traditional used goods sales, the original owner no longer has the goods themselves which is not the case here.
clarkkent57
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Both companies have legitimate arguments.
ReDigi scans your drive and makes a copy of the song before it deletes the track from your computer. However, this is the technicality EMI is exploiting, and not necessarily what I think they should be concentrating on. Their argument is that the song is copied prior to deletion, making the copy, albeit briefly, illegal. This would easily be countered with a file "move" instead of "copy-then-delete".
If I was EMI, I think that I would press ReDigi into developing software technology that constantly monitors for an illegal copy of that particular file after it's been absorbed by ReDigi. Of course, that doesn't mean it can't be circumvented, but until ReDigi doesn't formulate and deploy such software, they cannot legitimately state that they've done everything they can to prevent "after the fact piracy."
EMI would have to cite monetary damages for their claim to have any court merit whatsover. In a digital resale situation, neither EMI nor the artists can legitimately claim they're being directly ripped off by ReDigi, regardless, any more than anyone who sells a used record or CD is ripping them off.
ReDigi scans your drive and makes a copy of the song before it deletes the track from your computer. However, this is the technicality EMI is exploiting, and not necessarily what I think they should be concentrating on. Their argument is that the song is copied prior to deletion, making the copy, albeit briefly, illegal. This would easily be countered with a file "move" instead of "copy-then-delete".
If I was EMI, I think that I would press ReDigi into developing software technology that constantly monitors for an illegal copy of that particular file after it's been absorbed by ReDigi. Of course, that doesn't mean it can't be circumvented, but until ReDigi doesn't formulate and deploy such software, they cannot legitimately state that they've done everything they can to prevent "after the fact piracy."
EMI would have to cite monetary damages for their claim to have any court merit whatsover. In a digital resale situation, neither EMI nor the artists can legitimately claim they're being directly ripped off by ReDigi, regardless, any more than anyone who sells a used record or CD is ripping them off.
We REALLY need to get rid of this idea that one person = one sale. All ebooks I buy i strip of DRM and pass out to my family. Is this wrong? No. Illegal? maybe. Do I give a shit about obeying laws that are bought and paid for ? No.
I grow fucking weary of watching CONTENT PROVIDERS dictating the direction of technology.
BoogerBomb
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So as an artist you would be perfectly happy with one sale of an mp3 that is copied millions of times and distributed freely with you only being compensated for the one original sale of 99¢?
clarkkent57
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I think the answer would be somewhere in between. Are the family members also members of your household? I think, if so, the answer to sharing should be "legal," much the same as if the record, cd, movie, and/or book were residing on a shelf in your house.
Lending to family members or friends outside your house begins to get fuzzy...but, realistically, if everyone keeps their mouth shut...who can check?
Outside of that...well...yeah. Friends of relatives, friends of friends...Obviously there would be a legitimate problem, and in more than one direction than just the loss of the copyright holder.
Look at it this way...if YOU paid for the original medium...how fair is it to you to not be reimbursed if someone uses an unauthorized copy of something you had bought then LENT them, knowing that, if caught, the stiffer penalty goes to the lender vs the pirate? Or if your copy comes back ruined?
They aren't making millions of copies and simply handing them out. They are taking the files that you legally own moving it to their service and letting someone else buy it from them.
It would be the same thing if I could "digitally copy" an item and put it up on ebay for sell. After the sell the buyer then could have the item materialize after they bought it.
Its the same thing as a fax. You put the sheet of paper in the fax machine <magic happens> and poof it comes out the other side and then you destroy the original.
What happens if you get a custom RV made. You bought and paid for the thing, and then you decide you don't want it. The builder comes in an says...ehh nope can't do that you can't just "copy this house" to another person that would be "copyright infringement".
Sue all the libraries then
. He bought the media he should be able to do whatever he wants with it.If you buy a movie and you are lucky enough to have a huge house that seats 200 people and you have all of your fiends over are you legally obligated to have a copy for each person?
clarkkent57
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The only problem with that is that it assumes guilty unless proven innocent, something that, ironically, still isn't going over well in court. (Thank God.)
Again...I think that ReDigi is responsible to make every reasonable effort to make sure there are not illegitimate copies prior to their buying. One measure would be to make sure that the item was legitimately purchased by the second seller, and notifying the original seller of the intent to purchase prior to, and the transfer in rights after. Another would be to scan eMule, Torrent, etc, to make sure there are no active copies that can be traced back to the original buyer. (Of course...by the time it gets out there, it's usually stripped of any identifying info, but that's not ReDigi's fault.)
It's really not about piracy; it's about the right of ownership to buy and resell an item in a digital medium after you've taken reasonable precautions to make sure everything is kosher.
Again...I think that ReDigi is responsible to make every reasonable effort to make sure there are not illegitimate copies prior to their buying. One measure would be to make sure that the item was legitimately purchased by the second seller, and notifying the original seller of the intent to purchase prior to, and the transfer in rights after. Another would be to scan eMule, Torrent, etc, to make sure there are no active copies that can be traced back to the original buyer. (Of course...by the time it gets out there, it's usually stripped of any identifying info, but that's not ReDigi's fault.)
It's really not about piracy; it's about the right of ownership to buy and resell an item in a digital medium after you've taken reasonable precautions to make sure everything is kosher.
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clarkkent57
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Sue all the libraries then
If you buy a movie and you are lucky enough to have a huge house that seats 200 people and you have all of your fiends over are you legally obligated to have a copy for each person?
Of course not, but you're stupid if you don't charge for soda and popcorn!
clarkkent57
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I DID notice, however, that you said "fiends" and not "friends". Freudian slip?
sfsuphysics
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I like this, prevents a large company from essentially strong arming a small one into bankruptcy by forcing them to stop business while it gets resolved in court.
BoogerBomb
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You cannot compare a physical, tangible item to an item that is only bits of data that can be copied and manipulated in limitless ways. You can't make a copy of the RV you bought by clicking a button and selling the copy. When you sell that physical tangible item you no longer have it in your possession, with a digital one you do however maintain the original item so you in effect are selling someone else's product.
We are in a transitional period where we are trying to apply laws intended for physical items to digital ones and have to sort out the mess. The only way to do that is through court cases like this one.
Sue all the libraries then
If you buy a movie and you are lucky enough to have a huge house that seats 200 people and you have all of your fiends over are you legally obligated to have a copy for each person?
You rang?
clarkkent57
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I think you should be able to, actually.
A while ago, I once sold my Diablo Treasure Chest (or whatever they call it) on eBay, and also supplied the buyer with a signed and dated agreement relinquishing all my rights to the game.
At no point did I ever copy the game, loan it out, or hack the "need a disk to play" feature.
Blizzard had no problem with honoring the agreement, a copy of which the buyer provided to them prior to attempting to register, along with the "bill of sale" eBay screenshot.
I mean, yeah, it's a bit more of a hassle...but it's worth it if you don't want to leave it mouldering in the closet and want to get a few $$$ out of.
These days, EULAs have changed to the point that you must agree to certain rules which often seem to prevent you from doing this. Honestly, I don't think this should be legal. You should be able to legally transfer your rights to anything, if you so desire.
Which doesn't mean, "I should be able to do anything I want with it." Intellectual property laws don't work that way, and, as a songwriter, I respect that. I just don't think that these laws should be interpreted to protect the large corporations more than they should protect the artist...because without the artists, the big corporations would have nothing to sell. As long as companies rip off artists, as well as fail to keep up financially/technologically [Too slow to market in the face of piracy, and if it costs you less to send it out digitally, you should charge less for it], they shouldn't complain about getting ripped off, and using the poor starving artist as the excuse...knowing damn well that they don't intend to pay the artist either.
sfsuphysics
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And this is where the company's legal footing stands. If they in fact only sold a single copy of a digital item, then they should be good to go. If however they sold multiple digital copies, they're fucked... proper style.
And yes you should be able to sell Steam games too, simply have the "ownership" through Steam transfer to another person. Oh what about those who play in offline mode who don't need to connect? What about those who don't uninstall a game when they sell a CD?
whats the difference in that and me buying a CD ripping it and selling the CD?
clarkkent57
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ReDigi isn't the end user, and is only the mediary entity for resell. They should only be held to reasonable standards in assuring another copy doesn't exist online prior to buying, and notifying the originating company that they've bought it. This would seem to be reasonable due diligence.
(Did you check to make sure to bought the only copy of a legitimately owned mp3, ReDigi, to the best of your ability to scan the computer and the web? Did you afterwards inform the original seller, iTunes, that you now own the rights to it?)
If ReDigi did their due diligence, then they've done the best they can. They can't be held responsible for someone who legally copied their mp3 as a backup, sold the original, and held onto the backup, unless they knew beforehand. An agreement with the seller might be enough. "I, XXXX, transfer all my rights to this digital XXX to ReDigi, and swear that I have not retained a backup. Signed and dated, XXX" However, to go the extra distance and actually autmatically scour the web for the same file using a CRC and digitalwatermark, shows they actually actively sought to make sure it was ok.
Bear in mind that this thread is way off-track of EMI's argument. EMI is arguing that ReDigi's copy of their purchase is illegal for the precious moments between copying and deleting the file, in that two copies co-exist briefly. If indeed this was upheld by the judge, then ReDigi's software could just as easily perform a "move", which renders either copy unusable until the process is complete.
"EMI said that for ReDigi to operate its business, it must make copies of the music it finds on hard drives and this makes them unauthorized copies, a violation of copyright law. For this reason, there can be no claim of "First Sale" rights because the songs being sold are not legally obtained. "
Does ReDigi make a copy to magnetic media (long term storage) first, or to RAM (or equivilant) before deleting the file? If it's to RAM, then I'd like to know when EMI is going to sue everyone who's ever played digital music.
Does ReDigi make a copy to magnetic media (long term storage) first, or to RAM (or equivilant) before deleting the file? If it's to RAM, then I'd like to know when EMI is going to sue everyone who's ever played digital music.
[hint: digital music is copied to ram every time it's played, scanned for viruses, defragmented etc.]
[Don't forgot about iTunes/Amazon etc, so you have a copy on your mp3 player, it's ram, your hard drive, it was a copy on the itunes server's RAM, it was buffered in memory on some NICs, some routers etc.]
westrock2000
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Wasn't this how Blizzard won against the automated bot programs in court? It wasn't that the bots were altering the client, its that they were making "unauthorized" copies of the client in memory.
*I do not condone botting, I am glad they were all but eliminated from the game back then*
fattypants
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Same thing applies to physical media, though. How can you guarantee that the previous owner didn't make copies?
It's not the same thing. Pawn shops wouldn't take a homemade disc. It is one thing to create a copy from physical media, but it's a completely different thing to make a copy from digital media.
The only way this would work is if there was some sort of DRM implemented so that there was a way to keep track of of who is licensed for what.
WBurchnall
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Your right about us being in a transitional period. Have you seen that new technology out there where you get a raw can of 'raw materials' and a machine builds it layer by layer together at the macro level? People are using that to basically take an auto-cad drawing of say a larger than legally allowed ammunition clip or chainmail armor(for all those medieval times enthusiasts) and building an actual replica.
Of course, at the moment, it is limited by the capacity/size of the machine and can only make small objects reliably. Fast forward 20 years and you might find kids going down to their parents office workplace to use their 'nano-printer' to 'print off' an 'auto-cad' they downloaded of this super-rad skateboard, bike, headphones, whatever... or perhaps an RV for the cost of the raw materials if the mom/dad own a factory/work at a factory.
Right now -- this case deals with instant-copying of a digital item. Already though, we can make instant-copies of small non-digital real-world items. It won't be that much longer till small changes to medium and medium to large and large to very large items.
I would, that just means that my music is out there and people seem to like it.
I'll make my money playing live.
clarkkent57
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Which is exactly how most musicians make money. Rarely do contracts ever make them rich.
Case in point: The Eagles reunion. The main reason for it was to provide financial security for the non-writing band members who were struggling once there was no touring and weren't drawing residuals or releasing successful albums on their own.
Having been a working musician, all I can say is that it would have been nice if it had paid enough to feed, clothe, house, and pay medical bills. That would have been a nice life, even if I was "poor".
clarkkent57
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Sorry, but the argument here is keeping a copy and selling the original. Counterfeiting is a whole different issue, albeit a valid one.
clarkkent57
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Perhaps today's article can shed some more light on this:
http://www.mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=150990
...Prof. Larry Rudolph, ReDigi's CTO. "Our advanced technology can distinguish legally acquired online music files from those ripped from a CD or file shared, but more significantly, our use of cloud computing and other modern computer techniques makes transfer of ownership compatible with copyright regulations."
Again...if this is true, the ReDigi is doing it's due diligence, before and after the fact. This invalidates anyone's post here about selling rips or shared music. Essentially, it has to retain the unbroken digital watermark to prequalify as a purchase for ReDigi.
Again, Capitol/EMI's whole case depends on the the brief interim process where the file co-exists in two places at one, a problem easily rectified through a change in copy practice, if this hasn't been changed already...or even existed in the first place.
It's not about a user making and retaining a copy previously...something that is obviously beyond ReDigi's scope of ability (or anyone's for that matter) to detect. Upon the sale of the item, as a condition of the sales agreement, the user likely attests that they have not done that. At that point, if they have, it becomes an issue with RIAA vs the end user, not the middleman who incurred the cost of software security and verification, bought in good faith, and did everything in their power to assure it was true.
http://www.mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=150990
...Prof. Larry Rudolph, ReDigi's CTO. "Our advanced technology can distinguish legally acquired online music files from those ripped from a CD or file shared, but more significantly, our use of cloud computing and other modern computer techniques makes transfer of ownership compatible with copyright regulations."
Again...if this is true, the ReDigi is doing it's due diligence, before and after the fact. This invalidates anyone's post here about selling rips or shared music. Essentially, it has to retain the unbroken digital watermark to prequalify as a purchase for ReDigi.
Again, Capitol/EMI's whole case depends on the the brief interim process where the file co-exists in two places at one, a problem easily rectified through a change in copy practice, if this hasn't been changed already...or even existed in the first place.
It's not about a user making and retaining a copy previously...something that is obviously beyond ReDigi's scope of ability (or anyone's for that matter) to detect. Upon the sale of the item, as a condition of the sales agreement, the user likely attests that they have not done that. At that point, if they have, it becomes an issue with RIAA vs the end user, not the middleman who incurred the cost of software security and verification, bought in good faith, and did everything in their power to assure it was true.
issue here is economics as we seem them now go out the window
you get in a Singularity type economics
what should be given for free what should you have earn?
at that point should basics food, home, cloths, education, internet, a basic computer be free?
think Startrek here
when you can make things for practically nothing money becomes nearly pointless and we may be closer to that then we thing