I Guess I'd Better Put on Hold Future Sales of eCopies of Gal's Books

[DinoDoc]

My bad. I found it off the wiki page and was apparently a little too eager.

[Imran Siddiqui]

So why can't I sell my phonorecord to somebody else if I don't want it anymore?

Probably due to the DMCA.

As the article alludes to, digital media appears to be governed more under licensing rather than direct ownership. Therefore, it seems that selling your license is akin to subletting your apartment.

[Wiglaf]

I don't know why people can't comprehend that. "I own my phone why can't I do whatever I want with it!!" The same reason you can't do whatever you want with an apartment or a rental car, dumbasses.

[Guynemer]

I don't use pirate bay any more as the RIAA and MPAA set up fake torrents and then report your IP Address back to your ISP. It's better to use a meta search and avoid the Pirate Bay.

Here's a good meta search engine for torrents: http://torrentz.eu/

How about you just not be a ****ing *******?

[snoopy369]

The problem I have with this debate is that both sides are being disingenuous.

The content-producers ignore the fact that there's no real difference, to them, as to whether a used book or a used ebook can be resold (assuming one sale and the digital file is removed). Both have the same problem to them - ie, person #2 gets to read the book without paying the content seller for it. The argument that a used physical book wears out is largely specious; sure, it might, but that's not relevant to the actual argument [should it be legal to re-sell content you previously purchased], but rather is relevant to the argument of what external factors might affect the market [and thus perhaps might require government regulation].

The pro-resell crowd, on the other hand, ignores the fact that _any_ resale of used content is in some way hurting the content producer (in the sense that they are not being compensated at all for your purchase and use of the work), and while that's not necessarily a reason to forbid it, it is certainly a reason to ensure the process does not deprive the content producers (both the actual author, and the other folks involved in the process) from making a reasonable income off of the content. They tend to ignore that the electronic nature of mp3/ebook/mp4s means that they are more vulnerable to both explicit theft (which will exist with or without a used ebook market) and unintentional theft (used ebooks being purchased that weren't legitimately sold - the e-version of stripped cover sales). Just waving the "temporary copies made by itunes backups" argument at the problem doesn't exactly help; sure, that exposes the massive holes in the law, but it doesn't answer the question of what is the correct solution (which should most certainly not be provided by the courts, but rather by congress).

I think that there will eventually be a compromise here, but I'm not sure the compromise needs to be all that complicated. I think that currently, the biggest argument for re-sale of any books is that it is priced into the first sale; as part of the 'reverse auction' mechanism of book pricing, the first purchaser pays $25 for the hardcover, then resells it to a used bookstore for $5, who then sells it to another consumer for $8, who then resells it back for $3, who then resells it to another consumer for $5, etc. Sure, five or six people end up reading the book, and only $25 goes to the various people involved (including the retail store all the way back to the author); but that's why it is $25. If the original purchaser couldn't resell it for $5, that purchaser would have only been willing to pay $20 for the original book. The extra $5 pays for the other 4 readers of the book, plus all the other $5s that maybe didn't make it to the used bookstore. It's not exactly a one for one relationship, because economics doesn't work that way; the original purchaser would prefer only $2-$3 more and the publisher/etc. would prefer $8 more, but $5 ends up being the equilibrium price.

eBooks, currently, don't have that $5 built in. If we're going to be able to resell used books, but also want eBooks to be really cheap, well, doesn't sound reasonable, does it. A $25 hardcover costs about $2 less to make and distribute as an eBook (or less); then there's the lower retail markup [$25 -> $12.50 for each; so $12.50-2=$10.50, and then 50% markup instead of 100% means $15.50, which is the very high end of ebooks right now; most are more like $10-$13.] So are we willing to up that $3-$4, pay $15.99 for most books and even $18-$20 for the higher end ones?

Or, if not, are we willing to consider the second possibility - that of compensating content providers for second-hand sales? Used p-books wouldn't easily allow for that (though it's certainly possible), but used e-books would allow for that trivially. Treat it like covers of songs (or for that matter, usage of songs in general). Any sale of an e-Book to an end user automatically triggers a payment from the seller to the rightsholder; $2, $5, whatever makes sense for the market.

There are solutions that will work for everyone; we just have to figure out what they are.