Downloading Vs. Buying used
 

Sony announced last week (or so) that they were going to start charging a fee to access online content of their games if the game was purchased second-hand.
This little bit of info prompted a lengthy conversation in my house about the legality of buying used albums (where the artist and label recieve no money) vs. downloading an album from a torrent site etc. (again, no money)

My question, then, or at least idea for the thread, is not necessarily why one is legal and one isn't, but why one has become such a normal part of society (pawn shops, amazon, ebay, used record stores) and one is still the source of many unnecessary lawsuits against largely young people who just want to hear a good song.

a physical CD has but one owner at a time. once it is purchased, it may be re-sold a few times before it dies, but most CDs on the planet have only had a few owners. so if you single out 10,000 people who have owned a particular album, you've got at least 7,000 original purchases, and probably more than that.

digital is completely different. a single CD can be purchased, then disseminated to 10,000 people who don't pay a dime for their copy.

see the difference?

Simply put: Because one is a physical product and one is not. When buying/selling a used CD, there is no assumption about whether or not the previous owner is still using the music or not. So all it is is a product that anyone in possession of it can choose to sell.

I buy most of my CDs used and yes I feel bad that the artist isn't getting paid, but at least I'm buying something that someone else somewhere paid for and at some point the artist was supported. Not an mp3 that maybe came from a CD 10,000 people back. Or came from a demo leak that no one bought. But really it's more about me wanting the physical copy and not just the mp3s.

If it was up to the music industry they'd make selling second hand albums illegal.

And don't think they've not tried to in the past.

OH yeah, I know. I've worked in record stores the majority of my teenage and adult life. I remeber a time when they were tyring to get us to PAY to play an artists music in the store!

They tend to view albums as intellectual property rather than commodities, which is somewhat baffling considering how commodified the music industry has become. Have you seen disclaimers they throw on the back of CDs?

I purchase almost all my music from independent record stores so I don't feel too bad when half of them are secondhand when the money is still going to support independent retailers.

Truth.

And yeah it's insane how they've tried to make used CD sales illegal, and trying to charge stores for playing music in stores. LOL. You want to promote our music? That'll cost ya! Hahaha.

As shocking as that should be out of sheer cheek I have to say that doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

I think the legality of the issue is why one's "a normal part of society" and the other is the source of "unnecessary lawsuits." On one side you have ownership of a tangible product, the CD, and ownership is passed to another person with the help of eBay, Amazon etc. The other side deals with the reproduction and dissemination of something which is govern by copryright laws. The latter, "downloading an album from a torrent site etc. (again, no money)," is seen by both the artist and the industry as an infridgement of copyright laws. It is a strange arguement because when you buy a CD you can do anything you want with it, leave it factory sealed and not play it, or play it a thousand times, it doesn't matter to the RIAA; and one is allowed to make a copy of it, or lend it to a friend. P2P is very close to making a copy of it and lending to it as a friend at the same time. But take a few million people with a few thousand albums and you have a few billion albums reproduced by ordinary people using thier computers in lieu of the recording industry doing it. I don't know the actual figures or the amount of money lost, but by their standpoint it is a big problem. I heard 10,000 songs is the limit, I not sure if whether if that is the limit to downloaded songs paid for, not paid for or both. I have to look that up.

No, you're not. That's the point.