When Pete Brown got tired of his Don Henley album, he did what music fans have done for decades. He sold it.
But Brown’s version of the rock classic was digital. The 31-year-old liquor distributor from Indianapolis downloaded it from Apple’s iTunes music store and resold it on ReDigi.com, the Web’s first consignment shop for digital music, which a Cambridge start-up launched in October.
Comments
I think that the way to look at this is that when you buy a song from iTunes, you buy a license to play the song and to copy the song from an iTunes server. The when you sell the song to someone else, you sell the license with the same benefits. In comparison, when you but a CD, you are really buying two things: the physical media and the license to play the music on your equipment. The difference: physical media vs. electronic image. Note that "license" here means a legal right to ownership, not the "license" that iTunes provides with its music.
Please refer to TIME Techland's 2-part interview with ReDigi Founder, John Ossenmacher for a detailed and accurate representation of ReDigi's technology: http://techland.time.com/2012/06/26/redigi-lets-you-resell-used-digital-music-but-is-it-legal/ http://techland.time.com/2012/06/27/how-redigi-lets-you-resell-digital-music-and-why-its-a-big-deal/
I hope ReGigi wins the suit. Music studios and publishing houses aren't the artists. They are the ones who have been ripping off authors, artists, and consumers for years and for them to sit there and play the victim is a joke. It got worse when Apple jumped in to act as the strong armed bully. Hopefully the courts will see them for the parasites they truly are.