Linked by Paul Cesarini on Mon 8th Sep 2003 03:02 UTC
Thanks to a provision in the 1976 Copyright Act, U.S. law allows the first purchaser of copyrighted material (a book, CD, etc) to subsequently re-sell that item without the copyright owner's consent. In this age of online distribution and the budding, halting attempts at legitimizing it, is the the right to re-sell going to be upheld?
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It does seem strange that you can't rent CDs, when you can also rent VHS tapes, which can be copied about as easily as a CD can.
As for the article, people have to realize that when you buy a digital song or movie, it's not the same thing as owning the original CD or VHS/DVD. If it were, then the pundits who say that pirating movies/music would be the exact same thing as walking into a store and stealing a copy would be right.
So, the question is ... is it the same, or isn't it?