Is It Legal To Sell Your Old MP3s?

NPR ^ | March 20, 2013 | CAITLIN KENNEY

[TSgt]

My heart doesn’t bleed for textbook publishers.

It wasn’t that long ago that I had to buy a 4th edition English book. I didn’t know the language had changed so much since the previous year.

Colleges rape students when it comes to books.

Then they rape their minds.

[listenhillary]

Foreign owned so called US publishers rape student for college textbooks.

[Zeneta]

The thing about Microsoft and their software.

It is my understanding that you buy/license the OS, but can use it on different PCs, but not at the same time.

So, if you bought a PC with Windows* and that machine crashes, you can reload the OS to a new/different machine.

Since most PCs come with the Microsoft OS preloaded, they have a sticker on the box with the registration/license code. You can pick up an old or inoperable PC pretty cheap, much less than the cost to buy the OS as a stand alone program.

So, if you need a new/newer or a version of Microsoft’s OS, you may want to look at buying a used machine.

[discostu]

Legally the principle is the same, but logistically it’s very different. If I sell a book I don’t have the book anymore, I may have copied it but copies lose quality. If I sell a CD I don’t have it anymore, I may have copied it, but again on some level I’ve lost quality if only on the cover and liner notes. If I sell an MP3 chances are I still have it, even if they’re buying software deletes it from my system I have other completely identical copies (guaranteed, I always have at least 2 versions of my MP3, the one I use, the backup and until I do my periodic cleanup the source).

It’s the copy fidelity that’s the problem. For things up until files copies lose some kind of fidelity, so if you sell your original but keep your backup you’re keeping an inferior product. An MP3 is an MP3 is an MP3, my backup is completely identical to the original, and in fact even in selling the original I’m really making another copy, I’m not selling those sectors on my HD, I’m selling that sequence of ones and zeros to your HD. It does matter to the legal principle, because now you’re selling copies not the original, and only the copyright holder is allowed to sell copies.

[Bon of Babble]

Yeah, now they tell us!!

I had to pay over $300 for my son’s Discrete math book at his university — new copies were ALL that were available — and no rentals to be had. Found out later the Chinese kids were downloading the book FOR FREE from China!!

At least the math book will be used over 3 courses.

[Political Junkie Too]

I didn’t know the language had changed so much since the previous year.

They had to add "IM'ing" and "sexting" to the lexicon.

-PJ

[discostu]

That’s not my legal theory. I’m pointing to the physical reality. If I rip a CD and sell the original I’m still losing something, I probably ripped to a lower bit rate, and even if I didn’t I’m losing liner notes and cover art, I may have scanned those but that’s an analog process which ALWAYS loses fidelity in copying. So one way or the other by selling the original I have lost it, I now am left with a lesser copy.

If I copy an MP3 file and sell the original I’ve lost nothing, I have an exact copy of those ones and zeros. And also remember how selling of files works, really you NEVER sell the original, the “original” is that sequence of ones and zeros on your HD, when you sell that you keep the sectors, the ones and zeros get copied to somebody else’s HD, they might get deleted from yours but you still sold a COPY not the original.

Redigi will lose because they say they’re doing something they can’t. They’ll get up in court and say they make sure the original is gone and can’t be used again, and then the RIAA will bring up a rebuttal witness that will describe the dozens of different ways there are around that, and their defense will be gone. They’re attempting to leverage copy protection that everybody in the industry knows doesn’t actually work, and that will be the counter. It’s unfortunate because the idea they have isn’t a bad one, but the physical reality of how these things works and the legal reality of how they interact with copyright law will kill them.

[Political Junkie Too]

The real historical reality of this is that the music chickens are coming home to roost.

In the beginning, we were told that CD's were expensive because there were so few CD manufacturing plants in the USA because it was such new technology, but that the costs would come down as more CD plants were built. The prices never came down.

Then the industry realized that it could cut out its manufacturing and distribution costs by offloading the pressing of CDs to the consumer by virtue of CD writers on all the new PCs. The record companies no longer had to create the printed CD, they could send the digital copies to the customer to burn the CDs themselves. The prices never came down, but the brick-and-mortar storefonts began to disappear.

Then the miniaturization of technology produced the iPod and other MP3 players, so the physical CD was no longer necessary since the digital source could be played directly. The prices never came down, but the idea of selling a bundle of songs as an "album" changed back to the 1950's model of buying singles.

So now that the industry was able to cut its manufacturing and distribution costs because of technology by offloading the work to their customers, they're now going after those customers for doing what the industry asked them to do.

-PJ

[discostu]

Due to inflation the prices functionally came down, as $17 wasn’t worth as much as $17 had been.

The record companies had nothing to do with CD burners in PCs, in fact they were against them. Attempting to get a surtax added to all blank CDs sold (which they’d successfully done with cassettes back in the 80s, while everybody was paying attention to the PMRC the cassette tax got passed in another room).

And the record companies stood against iPods and similar. It was a long hard road for Apple to get any of the companies to sign on, and they wanted lots of copy protection assurances. Original Apple files couldn’t be copied to anything but iPods, couldn’t even re-arrange them on your computer or they’d “expire”. Which of course everybody figured out how to circumvent. And of course in the meantime CDs have come WAY down in price, especially when you consider inflation.

All that stuff you’re saying was the industry offloading work is actually stuff the industry was against even happening.

[BuckeyeTexan]

FReepmail me to subscribe to or unsubscribe from the SCOTUS ping list.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

Cause aproxamatly $350 million just ain’t enough from your friends in low places.

[Bikkuri]

hehe, think they would ship to Japan? .. hmm.. on second thought, scratch that :p

[esoxmagnum]

300 is a steal on books nowadays!

pre-med books can go as high as $1,200, and you MUST have the current one, which they check. the only thing my kid can see that changes is the ISBN code and the cover.

[rwfromkansas]

That is true...a digital copy is not the same as a book photocopy etc. in terms of quality.