"let customers sell their previously read eBooks, audiobooks, music and movies the same way that consumers can now sell print books, DVDs and CDs, ..." (source)
(where I originally read about this)
Redigi is a site that's already trying for legal resale of digital music, with the assurance that the song is properly removed from the original owner's devices when sold. It's not much of a stretch to extend this to ebooks.
I highly recommend Nathan's article, which goes over some of the pros/cons of such a service as well as links to some very interesting responses.
In reading the comments on one of the pages he links to (John Scalzi's blog) I also came across this tidbit of info, that Valve is being sued in Germany because it won't allow the resale of video games. I find this especially interesting given that the new XBox 720 has been designed to not allow gamers to use second hand games on their systems (and the assumption is the PlayStation 4 will have a similar lockdown when it comes out later this year).
So what do you think? Should people have the right to actually own (rather than license) their digital content, including the right to first resale (as they do with physical products)? What do you think that would do to the sales of new content (which won't be any different from the used version, just more expensive)? How do you think this would affect authors (or other artists) since they make no money from resales of their works?
I'm curious how well the software checking for backups of the files would do, since for this to work they'd have to ensure you're not making/keeping a copy and then selling your files.
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