Comments on: Amazon wins broad patent to create marketplace for used digital content

By: Emmett McAuliffe

Emmett McAuliffe — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 17:17:31 +0000

Erica, I support you in part, but only in part. If your publisher put a legal clause in the front of the book making reselling of a physical book at a used bookstore illegal, would you support that based on the “principle”? Because it is the same principle. You’re exercising dictatorial control over what someone can do with their own property, years, decades and centuries after they purchased it.

You wrote: “I’m not supporting this market place Amazon may or may not be planning. One of my publisher is already re-formatting all of their ebooks to include a legal clause to make reselling of the title unauthorized. If that doesn’t work, I’ll support them in removing the ebooks altogether from Amazon, even if it means I’ll make less money. It’s the principle.

By: Erica

Erica — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 12:23:32 +0000

“Moreover, would ebooks given away as a free, limited time promotion also be eligible for “resale”?”

That’s actually a good point, like many of your other points.

Maybe they’ll only make some books resalable like only some books are lend-able based on publisher restriction? In any case, I hope none of my books will be resalable. I’m new to the market and I’m writing for a small niche market, so I’d make even less money than I already am (and I’m making very little as it is). However, if the author was compensated for a resale, it might be better than the whole piracy out there, where we get nothing at all. However, I very much doubt piracy would stop just because people could buy the “used” ebooks cheap, because pirates seem to have a very distorted mindset when it comes to rights with all sorts of silly justifications.

I’m not supporting this market place Amazon may or may not be planning. One of my publisher is already re-formatting all of their ebooks to include a legal clause to make reselling of the title unauthorized. If that doesn’t work, I’ll support them in removing the ebooks altogether from Amazon, even if it means I’ll make less money. It’s the principle. I’m very sure they won’t be the only publisher to take such action. If enough publishers take action, Amazon should be forced to reconsider (or maybe not, they seem to have a one way direction and won’t let anyone stop them).

By: Emmett McAuliffe

Emmett McAuliffe — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 03:27:51 +0000

@Guest In addition, Redigi has no earthly idea whether the song that it is putting in a users account was legally purchased or not. Therefore their act of removal of the song upon sale or other transfer is just an empty gesture. EMI, meanwhile is being equally disingenuous. They say that there is absolutely no way to tell whether a song was legally purchased or not. Wrong! Jeez, do you think Apple knows who bought their 25 billion* itunes songs? Or did they just spread them out like confetti from an airplane? Of course they know. And they could spit out a list of who owns all 25 billion of those songs in about 5 minutes.

*http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/06/tech/mobile/25-billion-itunes/index.html

By: Emmett McAuliffe

Emmett McAuliffe — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 02:10:41 +0000

What if I tell Amazon, “Hey Amazon, instead of sending me that CD I just ordered, go ahead and keep it in your fulfillment center, but turn on my access to the rips”.

Anyway, it’s not altogether clear that the DMCA bans digital reselling. And even if it does, the DMCA was written 16 years ago. Do you think Tip O’Neill, Jesse Helms and the boys were really on top of the digital reselling issue?

Does it make sense to keep pressing physical CDs and DVDs, just to serve as a “token” of physical purchase that sits til kingdom come in an Amazon fulfillment center somewhere, just to satisfy Jesse Helms and Tip O’Neill?

By: Emmett McAuliffe

Emmett McAuliffe — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 01:32:37 +0000

There is no earthly reason for authors not to get paid on every resale … and I hope it happens. But right now, the people to whom they unwisely assigned their copyright, are seemingly stuck on the idea that resales are “bad” and the best way for the industry to make $ is to make users pay over and over for the same content. Like with music: first vinyl, then cassette, then CD, then Spotify. Voila … you just got hoodwinked into buying Born to Run four times!

But as you seemingly realize Stephanie, there is much more potential money in a central, frictionless resale system. Market pricing, making “full ownership” no longer the province of physical units lessens the need for brick and mortar … the efficiencies go on and on…

By: Emmett McAuliffe

Emmett McAuliffe — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:55:34 +0000

“Sounds like it starts out at least as a closed system for exchange of AMZN’s digital products.”

My point is: There is no reason it can't be an "open system" very quickly. I ought to be able to exchange my "Apple digital product" for my "Amazon digital product". They are all fungible commodities. That would be be like saying that I can only buy stocks of General Motors" from one brokerage house, and then I can only exchange them with buyers who use brokers from that same house.

By: Emmett McAuliffe

Emmett McAuliffe — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:39:59 +0000

“is the fact for amazons redistribution scheme to work the content will need to be encased in an Amazon drm scheme.” < we know this how, exactly?

By: Guest

Guest — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 16:15:10 +0000

This is just another way to avoid paying the creators for use of their content. Redigi claims they make sure the original purchaser doesn’t retain a copy of the file. How can they know it wasn’t copied to a different hard drive or to a CD-ROM, etc.? Anyway we saw for sale on Redigi files of our music which had never been sold as digital downloads. The only way they could have gotten the music was by ripping a CD, which they claim they do not do. The whole scheme is a fraud and yet another way to rip off musicians and writers.

By: Rowena Cherry

Rowena Cherry — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 12:12:37 +0000

First sale rights do not apply to e-books, because e-books are content, and an author does not sell the copyright to her work for somewhere between $0.00 and $9.99.

If she did, one person could purchase an ebook and publish and distribute that one copy millions of times for less than the contracted minimum selling price on a legal ebook-retailing site.

I’ve not seen this reference to a “threshold” number of resales, before. Does this mean that, not only will Amazon allow one illegal resale of ebooks, but multiple illegal resales without the consent and without compensation to the copyright owner? Will Amazon determine how many times an e-book can be resold?

Not every e-book that Amazon has “sold” has been legally “sold” by Amazon, and many authors have not been paid even for the first “sale” of e-books sold by Amazon. Moreover, would ebooks given away as a free, limited time promotion also be eligible for “resale”?

By: dkline

dkline — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 19:08:43 +0000

You’re absolutely right, Nevea Lane — but only where software is concerned. And it was an appeals court, not the Supreme Court, that shot down the idea of first-sale doctrine rights and ruled in Autodesk’s favor — but again, only and specifically in the sale of software.

The precedent for this, of course, goes back to the Computer Software Rental Act of 1990, which prohibited individual purchasers of software from subsequently renting, leasing, or lending that software to others for commercial gain. Individuals, however, could still make personal copies for their own use, and libraries were permitted to lend software.