Last Updated on: 19th January 2018, 10:21 am
There’s not a lot of info yet, but this will be interesting to follow.
About a month ago, I wrote about a service called Redigi. They’re the ones who hope there’s a similar market for used digital music to the one that exists for second-hand CDs.
In my post I talked about some of the problems I think they may have attracting customers, but in a pretty big oversight on my part, I didn’t mention how little trouble they would likely have attracting attention. You know, the bad kind. The RIAA kind.
The Recording Industry Association of America has sent a cease and desist letter to ReDigi, which could be the first shot fired in a copyright battle over the sale of used downloads.
According to my sources, the problem that the RIAA has with ReDigi is that the company makes copies of songs that they attempt to sell for users and they can’t do this without acquiring licenses. ReDigi also allegedly uses copyrighted album art, etc.
There are laws governing the resale of physical goods in the United States, but so far there seems to be little if anything pertaining to things that aren’t actual things. Logically Redigi shouldn’t have a problem since the sensible thing would be to apply the same rights of first sale as already exist to this new form of trade, but we all know the sensible thing isn’t always the end result.
this will be one to watch closely. Depending on how far it does or perhaps doesn’t go, it could wind up shaping the future of online digital business in a major way.