Hacker News Reader

Comment by larrik | Hacker News Reader

It seems to me that deleting the original file is hardly good enough.

I think that a secondary market for digital works is something that will just never work like it does for physical media, and that's something we just have to accept and move on with.

My biggest worry is that ReDigi is going to end up losing a lawsuit that sets a bad precedent and makes future better technologies impossible.

That said, the RIAA's ownership vs licence vs access debate is BS, and they never even stick to it.

The RIAA needs to change course soon, because unlike the book and movie industries, I can easily imagine a future without a music industry at all.

As for Amazon vs. the authors? I think they are pretty much both wrong, and I'm staying out of it.

View on HN

MDY v Blizzard [1] already set an (absurd, unconscionable) precedent that people who purchased World of Warcraft did not own their copy of the digital work, but were licensees -- regardless of whether they ever agreed to the EULA or the service's Terms of Use.

Further, the court held that copying a digital work into in-system memory by any program not 'unauthorized' by the rights-holder constituted infringement and the operator thus subject to statutory penalties. (Seriously. Let that and its implications sink in.)

So the bad precedent already exists. And not only does it set some troublesome legal hurdles for future technologies, but a large swath of current technologies are suddenly in a very tenuous (and expensive) legal situation.

If the RIAA sticks to this 'license' argument, they could hold that not only is it infringement to copy your DRM-free iTunes tracks out of iTunes, but so much as playing your iTunes-purchased tracks via software other than iTunes is infringement (as it necessarily requires loading a copy of that digital work into memory).

[1] http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/arizona...

That's not unreasonable - you don't own World of Warcraft you own a license to play it.

If you owned it you could reuse the characters in your own game, produce your own movie of the game and so on - not bad for a $50 investment. Think of the same with a book - you don't own the IP in the book and paying $0.99 on amazon doesn't give you the right to produce your own HP movie franchise.

Redigi's business model is exactly the same as you ripping your CDs to mp3 and then selling the disks, does anyone really think that people selling their downloads aren't keeping a copy?

You agree to a license to a piece of art work - you buy whatever the copyright holder decides is the deal. If that means only listening to it on an Apple hardware, only listening at home, or not letting your neighbor watch the movie with you - well that's tough, find a different artist.

The famous French scientist Louis Pasteur refused to allow his book on yeast and brewing to be read in Germany, he was mad at them for the 1870 war with France. It's his book - his rules. German beer doesn't seem to have suffered too much as a consequence (not sure what America's excuse is!)

not sure what America's excuse is!

Say what?

Since they presumably had access to Pasteur's book (even if it was in French) and so knew how to grow the correct yeast for beer - how did they manage to produce Budweiser and Miller ?

The answer to that would be the 18th Amendment.

Clever - so having failed to ban alcohol they just let market forces take their natural course and produce a beer that nobody would want to drink.

Even if you disliked the original comment, this one is trying to clarify a joke. Now a serious question - is humor discouraged on HN? Because it's not the first time I run into something like this.

Insightful Humor? No. Humor just for it's own sake? Often. Shallow, 'meme' or mock-wit humor? Pretty much every time.

The rule of thumb is: If it doesn't add to the discussion, better hold on to it.

Humour seems to track with sun position. When the sun is above GMT votes for humour go up, once it reaches GMT-5 to GMT-8 humour get's downvoted.

That's not unreasonable - you don't own World of Warcraft you own a license to play it.

The distinction being made here is not between holding copyright and holding a license. It is between owning a copy and holding a license.

But this is why the concept of the software licence was developed. It is explicitly developed so that you don't take ownership of the item in the same way you take ownership of a DVD or printed book.

Holding copyright is not the same as owning an item. The parent comment is factually correct.

And yet, used game sales -- to specifically take on the parent's example -- are legal, much to the consternation of the game industry. The fact that they're legal is what prompted the development of online activation systems: to make an end-run around the resellers.

Whether they should be legal is a different and murkier question. And resale of digital music files is clearly pretty ridiculous, since you could just follow this plan for free stuff:

    1. Copy the file.
    2. Upload it to the reseller.
    3. Profit!

They definitely should be legal. Online activations should be forced to accept it, as well.

Especially when you consider that a lot of games go out of print and get impossible to find just months after release. Which is bad for someone like me who never pays attention to games that aren't already out, and may take years to get around to playing a game. Used games are often my only recourse.

I think that in 100 years, we'll all look back at this time period of intellectual property hoarding as something akin to the dark ages.

Unless the RIAA wins, in which case 100 years from now will be the dark ages.

This is why I wished EFF or an organization like that would participate in those hearings. They seem to take "piracy" for granted, and if you pirate/copy files without authorization, you're clearly a criminal. I think there needs to be a more in-depth debate about that, because I'm not so sure piracy should be a criminal act.

Just think about it. Why is piracy so hard to eliminate, if not impossible. Why does it grow in 10 other places when one place is eliminated. Could it be that it's a fundamental principle of the Internet, and what they really need to do is to adapt to this new reality, rather than keep wasting resources for decades to fight it, and create more draconian laws in the process that only end up serving other purposes?

There has been a lot of research on pirate markets, from illegal downloads to counterfeit designer clothes, and it's pretty well understood.

Pirate markets appear when the cost of a good in a market is way above the perceived value, and a pirated version can be produced for a fraction of the cost. Legit goods cost only money, but pirate goods instead cost time or uneasiness of breaking the law. Consumers then make cost-benefit analyses as to which version they want, and as long as enough consumers choose the pirated version, the pirate market is sustained.

The way to beat a pirate market is to simply treat it as a legit competitor and out-market it. iTunes music store is so incredibly successful, because it is out-marketing illegaly downloaded music. Netflix is so incredibly successful, because it is out-marketing illegaly downloaded movies. They simply provide cheaper and better service than the previous legal alternatives.

> It seems to me that deleting the original file is hardly good enough.

Especially since iTunes will allow you to redownload content!

> and that's something we just have to accept and move on with.

You haven't said why.

True.

It just seems hypocritical to me to demand that the RIAA and other old guard industries adapt their businesses to new technologies, and then sit here and complain we can't lend or resell digital copies the same way we can with physical ones.

It seems that the only way to enforce fair lending or reselling is with restrictive online DRM, and I'd rather have the technological freedom to use my files where and when I wish in return for a moral and legal obligation to not just hand other people's work out to everyone for free.

I should note that I am NOT one of those people who think that music should be free and artists should make it up with touring or with donations or whatever. Why? Because I like albums, and I don't like concerts that much. So, I'd (selfishly) much prefer a situation where artists are encouraged to record more and tour less, which honestly is not the situation with either the standard music contract NOR the apparent future of the web.

(Just to be clear, I'm not really anti-piracy. I'd probably own zero albums if it wasn't for Napster back in the day which let me try out all sorts of music and find what I like. I don't like the radio. Before Napster, I just didn't listen to music. I'm just not pro-piracy either.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com