Can You Sell Used Content Online? Capitol Records and ReDigi Battle It Out

In the real-world, reselling used books and CDs is not only legal, but the way most of us got through college. But what does

In the real-world, reselling used books and CDs is not only legal, but the way most of us got through college. But what does a re-sell Model look like in the virtual world?

EMI’s Capitol Records is currently seeking an injunction against ReDigi, a start-up that claims to sell “used” digital tracks. The site scans user’s hard drives to make sure their digital tracks were bought legally, lets users upload them to the site, and then erases the track from their hard drive.

The technology is both ingenious and creepy, but the there’s no word yet on whether it’s legal. Capitol Records claims that that there’s no way of knowing whether users have copied the file for themselves before the site erases it, and this is basically a service that sneaks through current anti-piracy loopholes (seriously–when is someone going to come up with a reasonable anti-piracy bill?).

Written content faces the same conundrum–even if your readers can’t print out your content, they can always print their screen and get a hard copy to distribute. But who hasn’t photocopied an article for a friend or copied a movie onto a VHS tape?

However, digital content is far easier to copy than any other medium. Content creators may need to create rules that are more flexible instead of traditional rules that were black-and-white but turned a blind eye to minor infringements. Instead of installing the anti-copying encryption that most DVDs have, what if content creators coded digital products to allow a certain number of copies? Since word-of-mouth is the best marketing, especially for Millennials, such a solution might be the rare win-win we need.

Update: Google apparently tried to advocate for ReDigi, to almost farcical effect. Read “Google Can’t Weigh In On ‘Used’ Digital Music Case” and then look up the definition of hubris.

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