Saturday, October 6, 2012

Reselling mp3's

If the title of this post seems totally insane to you, then congratulations, you understand digital media better than the people who make it.

ReDigi is a web site that allows people to resell their mp3's.  They are being sued by the content industry for having the temerity to enable people to resell what they have purchased, legally.

Layers upon layers of stupidity and insanity to wade through here, so I'll just have to do my best.

The whole notion of loaning or selling digital media is preposterous.  I have talked about this before.  (Note that a service selling convenient access to it is not, but not one is really serious about that, yet.  The thing itself is without value, however, sorry.)

But let's assume for a moment that it is not.  Would it not be reasonable to then re-sell what you have purchased, as you can do with movie and music discs, books, etc.?  I mean, if we are pretending that digital media is just like regular stuff, this makes sense, right?

But the content industry wants it both ways.  They want to say that you only license the music when you purchase an mp3.  Or something.  It's not very coherent.

If you are one of the millions of people stupid enough (sorry, the truth hurts) to have bought much in the way of digital media, this law suit should be proof enough that you have been screwed.

It should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention the past few years that the entertainment industry simply wants to have it's cake and eat it, too.  Digital media is just exactly like physical objects one minute, and only an ephemerally licensed fantasy when it does not please them for it to be so.  They are stupid greedy liars, and their stupidity is already destroying the American internet.

Internet Service Providers are initiating bandwidth caps nationwide to stop file sharing and competing online services.  There is no real competition for home ISP's, resulting in ever increasing prices (which should be falling over time in a proper competitive environment).  And of course they are in cahoots with the entertainment industry to actually listen in on your phone calls internet use to make sure you're not doing anything wrong.

In the final analysis, they need to be stopped by any means necessary.  Without a free internet, the future is going to be bleak indeed.

Did you know that South Korea has optic fiber internet laid to almost every home?  But here in the country that invented the internet, we are stuck in the 1990's.

The military invented it, geeks brought it to the masses, and we're going to let a piddling industry (which is doing better and better by the way, despite "piracy")  bring it to its knees in this country, destroying our future with it.


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