The fucktards at the RIAA have a new cause; Reselling the digital music you rightfully bought and paid for. A new online service called Bopaboo offers music lovers a place to sell or trade their digital music. We, the universal we, have always had the right, known as the first-right of sale, to sell our unwanted cd's without permission from the copyright owner. The RIAA wants to halt this practice for digital music also known as Mp3's. From CNet:
As for the legal questions involved with MP3 resales, Meshkin, 28, argues that the law allows consumers to sell digital media files in the same way they do physical media. That's not all together accurate. Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that supports Internet-user rights, says to the best of his knowledge, the issue has never been addressed in court.
Even von Lohmann, a well-known champion of the technology sector, sees potential problems with Bopaboo's legal argument. He says while its true that under the first-sale law people are allowed to sell CDs and other physical goods, it hasn't been established whether the law covers digital media. The good news says von Lohmann is that Bopaboo could raise the public's awareness about what may one day be an important issue for digital music.
"We shouldn't lose our first-sale rights just because the second-hand stores involved are online," von Lohmann said. "Up to now, there hasn't been a huge opportunity for people to spend large amounts of money on digital music, but as time goes on some music fans will have thousands of dollars invested in their digital libraries or audio-book collections. It would be a big change if you weren't allowed to sell them."
You know the RIAA will throw millions of dollars at this issue. So really, as far as they are concerned we merely rent the music, we don't buy it....ever!
I call bullshit on this crap right here and now. But will it do any good with courts loaded full of BushCo judges?
Only time will tell....
