Reselling digital music

mi5moav

mi5moav

Registered
Ok,

Real is selling their songs for 49 cents. Music Stores Sell their singles for about 2.99 to 3.99 some a bit less Apple's is at 99. So, what are the illegalities of Purchasing 10 million songs at 49 cents and then reselling them on ebay or what not. Heck I could probably sell them to Apple, since they probably have 77 cents in each song anyway. What are the laws on reselling music that you have never opened or listened to. I am just downloading them from my pc to my macs HD, not even going to open the digital wrapper since they will be on the mac, and harmony doesn't work on a mac. So, I spend 5 or 6 million on a few songs then sell them to Joe Schmo or the rest of the world at at 9 cent markup. So, lets say I net 2 cents on the 10,000,000 songs I just bought I could probably make 150k to 200k in a few weeks. Especially, since no one is doing this all the damn papers will be advertising for me. Heck, I may only buy the top 100 songs and that way I won't have any problem selling 100,000 of each. Now, if Apple where to purchase 2 billion songs from Real(which would be kinda dumb) they would put a nice billion dollar debt in their pocket, lets see them crawl out of that hole. I remember a few years back when that one guy did sell a song on ebay... what ever was the outcome of that? Please do not reply since this is a computer generated message using... ithink version .87. Actually, I'm just using Apple's built in text summarization features.
 
Silly Goose you never bought them, you just licensed them and that license is non-transferable. This purchase word you keep using does not apply to digital music.

Now if you could "purchase" a song then you could transfer ownership of that song to another party without problems.

Remember freedom is slavery. ;)
 
Well, even books, not ebooks but books printed on paper, have notes about forbiddign the resale of them ... :-/
 
That depends on where you live. In the US and many other countries the doctrine of first sale says that the rights of a copyright owner to control a tangible item end at the point of first sale. That is once I buy a book it is mine and I can sell again if I want.

Now people can and do print all sorts of non-binding BS that claim to limit what you can do with something you have bought. They are just trying to bully you into doing something they have no power or right to expect, and lots of people acquiesce.

This is really a very important aspect of our lives in "meat space" which we are being denied in the digital realm. OK before I get going too much it is time for my morning coffee... and calm thoughts.... calm mellow thoughts....
 
What you are suggesting, mi5, is what China and other music-pirating countries do on a regular basis. It is ILLEGAL and is clearly stated on any cd you buy.

At least you didn't mention any body parts in this post. :)
 
lurk, have you ever held a copyright or trademark on a product? If you did, you too would want to protect as much of the profitability of your product; and I KNOW you wouldn't want joe-schmo reselling what you made to other people.

The legal deal, in the US and elsewhere folks, is that you can purchase something but even though you "own" that property, you are not allowed to "redistribute or resell" that item to anyone else. Sure, you can throw it in the used bin for someone else to buy, but you cannot mass distribute it.

This follows for tv shows, movies—anything that's owned by someone else.
 
I am not copying music... I am buying music and then reselling that one licensed copy. I go to walmart pick up a cd and then sell it at a my garage sale or over the internet. I buy an itunes track never listen to it and then resell it destroying the only original which I sold. If I were to pirate I would buy one license and then recopy that same license... I want to buy software at a store then resell and unopened package that I have never used? Why is that illegal?

so, If I go to real download 1000 copies of a yo daddy I got an orange, by Bo Jo, I should be able to resell those 1000 copies as long as I don't keep any. That wouldn't make sense if Real paid to distribute the music and then I had to turn around and relicense the same exact music everytime. So, the artist would get paid twice for the same song. That's why used CD and Book stores don't have to pay royalties...Same thing. I am not copying anything I am just taking item 1 that I bought and selling item 1 not copy a of item 1. If I buy the same song 500 times I should be able to resell it 500 times. If I by it once I should be allowed to sell it once. If I buy it and listen to it and keep a copy I shouldn't be able to resell it.
 
Natobasso said:
lurk, have you ever held a copyright or trademark on a product? If you did, you too would want to protect as much of the profitability of your product; and I KNOW you wouldn't want joe-schmo reselling what you made to other people.
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Careful talking down to people you don't know, you may embarrass yourself. The IP I generate is what feeds my kids and pays my mortgage so I am more than aware of the role of copyright in getting paid. However, there is no right to profitability that should allow me to interfere with the freedoms of my customers in any arbitrary way I please. Imaging if car companies could just state in the owner's manual that you cannot sell the car to a third party and have that stick. That is a great way to maximize profitability since there would be no used car market to compete with.

The legal deal, in the US and elsewhere folks, is that you can purchase something but even though you "own" that property, you are not allowed to "redistribute or resell" that item to anyone else. Sure, you can throw it in the used bin for someone else to buy, but you cannot mass distribute it.
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You have some things confused here and I think that is what is making you put the quotes around the word "own". I assume that you were just a bit sloppy in your wording and the contradictions were accidental but just to clarify things.

So here is the real deal folks, in the US and elsewhere if you purchase something and own it you can do whatever you want with it. The idea that you are prevented from selling it, giving it to your dog or whatever that Natobasso is claiming is totally false. This is why if one buys a book or CD you can resell it to a used book store that can then resell it again and so on. The creator is only entitled to profit from the first sale and not every subsequent one. Just like Ford can't ask for a piece of every used car sold.

Now Natobasso was correct in that I cannot "mass distribute" but only because doing so would require me to duplicate or copy the item. This is where we get "Copyright" from, it is a state granted monopoly on the ability to copy and that is all.

An accident of the way computers and CD players work is that they need to make copies of the bits in order to process them. This was ruled to be governed by copyright and is the basis of the requirement for you to have a license to use them. You need the license to make the copy in memory or on the hard drive.

Now this is an interesting situation because one of the results of the need to copy something digital in order to use it means that we have to have permission to use it in every instance regardless of ownership. This gives a copyright owner incredible power that a manufacturer of a normal product would never have. This is why it can be perfectly legal for me to sell you the CD for a program but you cannot in turn run the program because the license that I was given is non-transferrable. I can sell it but you cannot legally run it.

This follows for tv shows, movies—anything that's owned by someone else.
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"Own" is a word with some very specific meanings and you are using it very sloppily. None of those things are owned by anyone in the way that you imply. For instance, I own my iPod and I have licensed a number of songs through the iTMS. Those licenses were provided by the companies that own the right to control copying of those works. If you think about it hard you may see that nobody actually "owns" the song itself.
 
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