eBay on Thursday canceled an auction that sought to resell a music download that was purchased through Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store, saying the attempted sale violated its listing policies. The move for now brings to an end a quirky effort to dramatize some of the less obvious effects of the music industry's shift from physical media sales to digital downloads--in this case the still unresolved question of whether Internet customers can resell songs they've purchased in digital form.
Web developer George Hotelling had put the song up for auction Tuesday evening, hoping to highlight the problem. "eBay shutting down the auction for violating its terms of service doesn't have much to do with the original question of whether people can transfer legally purchased music downloads," Hotelling said in an interview Thursday. Under the "First Sale" doctrine, the owner of a lawful copy of a work is allowed to sell it without the permission of the copyright owner. But such a policy could cause complications if applied to works sold only in digital form.
In launching the iTunes store in April, Apple CEO Steve Jobs proclaimed that consumers don't want to rent music but rather own it. But restrictions on resale, if they are enforced, would seem to suggest more of a rental model than an ownership model. Apple declined to comment.
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News source: news.com
Web developer George Hotelling had put the song up for auction Tuesday evening, hoping to highlight the problem. "eBay shutting down the auction for violating its terms of service doesn't have much to do with the original question of whether people can transfer legally purchased music downloads," Hotelling said in an interview Thursday. Under the "First Sale" doctrine, the owner of a lawful copy of a work is allowed to sell it without the permission of the copyright owner. But such a policy could cause complications if applied to works sold only in digital form.
In launching the iTunes store in April, Apple CEO Steve Jobs proclaimed that consumers don't want to rent music but rather own it. But restrictions on resale, if they are enforced, would seem to suggest more of a rental model than an ownership model. Apple declined to comment.
View: The full story News source: news.com
Commercial Fellow Travellers
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The Commercial segment can move to 64-bit computing at its own pace, and run 32-bit and 64-bit software at the same time. They'll be able to "enhance productivity and multitasking" across an organisation because of HypeTransport technology and an integrated memory controller.
If I paid for it, let me sell it again..the meaning of rental and purchasing is in essence the same, but totally different.
No one had to complain about it, Ebay does have people who just spend all their time going through auctions looking for things that are not allowed. They don't find everything of course.
this story was front page on neowin, cnet, and others, so somebody at ebay heard about it a long time ago before this.
Glad we have you here to tell us these things.
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