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Comment by bcohen5055 | Hacker News Reader

Just currious... Say someone purchased the album and then sold duplicates, would Wu-Tang be able to sue? Technically there are no damages, Wu-Tang isn't out any money from missing album sales and the seller is just trying to make a decent ROI on his 5 million dollar asset.

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Nope, in fact, that's precisely one of the avenues mentioned in other articles. That perhaps a major label or a large, unrelated brand will buy it to distribute it either for sale or for promotional purposes. Like, drop into a Puma store, the only place you can listen to the album, sorta thing.

How would that differ from duplicating any other album without permission? (Unless the buyer also buys the right to distribute copies.)

In that there is no way to argue that the artist lost sales due to the copies, thus, no harm made.

"Lost sales" is not a necessary component of copyright infringement, if I recall.

It is a component when calculating any damages, though.

Is it? How do they figure? Or do they just use whatever number RIAA gives them?

The difference is, that the buyer would actually own the original, with all the associated rights. Maybe see to it that a few singles get lots of radio play, and then resell the complete original at auction - sounds fair to me.

The copyright does not follow the original.

If true, I would argue that limiting reproduction rights significantly diminishes the principle of ownership.

That would lead to the first correctly directed DCMA takedown notice since they know exactly who leaked it!

In such case punitive damages would probably be awarded. At least that would be the common sense thing to do.

If you bought it, you bought it and its yours. Don't pay millions unless you own the rights.

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