A new lawsuit between music conglomerate EMI and upstart “Redigi” introduces an interesting new question – Is it possible to resell digital goods?
Redigi is in the business of selling “preowned” MP3’s. The way it works is simply, you download software that sniffs around your music library for legal digital music. After it finds the songs it deems legal you are given the option to resell the song. If you decide to proceed your song is wiped off your hard drive and uploaded to Redigi. Once your song is sold you get a 20% cut of the price. The biggest difference between buying the MP3s “new” versus preowned is that- the customer pays only 60% of what a “new” music download would cost.
Of course record companies are understandably upset about this, saying that the practice is ripe for copyright infringement. In their lawsuit EMI is demanding 150,000USD per song sold on Redigi’s website. However Redigi is not very concerned (at least that is how they act) saying that their software insures only legal use. They even have plans for entering the e-book business. I find this case very difficult to take a side with. I am very impressed with Redigi’s creativity with this new concept. This really could change the way we buy music. Right now I personally rarely buy music online. I find buying the tangible CD used off of eBay or amazon is usually cheaper. However computers and software are easily malleable and there should not be people getting rich off of copyright infringement.
sources:
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=b070120f-2db3-4c0d-8792-6b4d715c97b1