So a court has ruled that "reselling mp3's" is copyright infringement. We talked about this not too long ago here on this blog. In fact, I just looked over that post and it's pretty much the same rant I was about to make today. After 250+ posts I've found that indeed, I have run out of arguments.
Suffice to say for now that, once again, data is not stuff. Trying to treat it like actual stuff will not, cannot, ever work. At some point, ordinary folks are going to realize they've been taken for a ride, and the thousands of dollars many of spent on electronic stuff was completely, utterly, wasted.
"Buy it today!" the commercials shriek about the latest movie or pop album. But when you try to "resell" it, well, you don't "own" it any more. You were just licensing it. You didn't know that. You are going to be pissed.
I still think ReDigi, the company trying to set up an mp3 resale shop, has got to be a bit of a tongue in cheek operation. They know what they are doing is preposterous, but they are playing along with the content industry's ideas of treating data like stuff.
The whole idea is ludicrous. For example, presumably, when you "resell" and mp3 you "bought" you must make sure you delete it from your hard drive, or you're a dirty thief. But if "reselling" an mp3 is preposterous, how can the original "sale" be any different?
A friend linked me to this image which discusses how pricing works in the human mind:
http://imgur.com/gallery/To97rNL
I think the whole "buying and selling" of digital data is a thing very much along those lines. People aren't trained to think about it correctly, and so they are ridiculously easy to fool.
Which is why I'm here :-) You're welcome! lol.
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