Good news for “used digital music” reseller ReDigi: the district court judge handling the case has denied EMI’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the company, which would have shut it down during the trial. Citing the “fascinating” technological and legal issues involved, U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan said he is inclined to let the case go to trial. "We are grateful for the judge's decision in our favor," said John Ossenmacher, ReDigi's CEO, said in a statement. The company added that "ReDigi is breaking down the barriers that have kept consumers from enjoying their intrinsic...

ReDigi has filed a response to the EMI lawsuit seeking to prevent the company from reselling “used” digital music files, Ars Technica reports. In EMI’s suit, it accuses ReDigi of making illegal copies as part of the process of selling this music. In the response, the company claims that any copying that does take place is either fair use or covered by a section of the copyright code that permits copying in situations where it is an “essential step” to making fair use of digital content (such as copying an MP3 into computer memory in order to play it). ...

Since the ReDigi lawsuit surfaced a few days ago, some of the e-book blogs have been taking notice. EbookNewser simply asks “Could selling used e-books work?” (The answer is, probably about as well as ReDigi’s idea of selling used e-music. In the unlikely event courts bless it, then yes, we might very well see a used e-splosion. Wouldn’t hold my breath, though.) TeleRead has already looked at these issues a couple of times, with a reprint of a post on first sale by Marilynn Byerly and my own look at digital resale efforts that didn’t get off the...

And so it begins. In October, “used digital music” reseller ReDigi began operations. A month later, the RIAA demanded that it cease and desist its “infringing” activities and make its records available as evidence in the lawsuits that were undoubtedly soon to come. Now, one of those lawsuits has arrived. Greg Sandoval reports on CNET that record label EMI has filed suit against ReDigi, In its 18-page complaint, filed in a New York federal court, EMI alleged that to operate its business, ReDigi must make numerous unauthorized copies of songs and that that...

Marketing guru Seth Godin has a piece on PaidContent (reposted from his Domino Project blog) responding to an interview with the head of Ingram Books about the future of books and publishing. In the interview, Ingram CEO David “Skip” Prichard trots out some of the usual predictions about the future of the book—multimedia extras, print-on-demand, physical bookstores finding “niches” to adapt to, and print publishers still being necessary. Godin calls Prichard’s views “economically ridiculous,” basing his argument on Chris Anderson’s “long tail” theory. Godin suggests that the broad consumer choice the long tail makes possible will drive down production...

On PaidContent, Bill Rosenblatt looks at whether we can ever expect a universal format for e-books, equivalent to “MP3” for audio. He doesn’t think so. For one thing, he points out that MP3s aren’t actually used all that much in digital music sales. Apple uses AAC, which has generally better sound quality. The only major commercial market for MP3s is Amazon, and it only has 10% of the music market. And whereas MP3 had a number of advantages over the competing CD format (in particular, it was much smaller and easier to transfer digitally), EPUB doesn’t offer...

I had been planning to leave this story alone for a while, given that it’s not directly about e-books. But Universal made a really dumb move that should remind us all about the dangers of giving the content industry a bigger padlock to slap onto our digital printing presses, whichever medium we use. Remember that Megaupload music video that Universal slapped with a DMCA takedown? Tom Merritt of the daily news video blog Tech News Today covered the controversy on Monday, including the use of a couple of clips of the Megaupload video in question. By Monday night,...

Perhaps it’s a sign of how the digitization of media has changed the marketplace that its misuse can be interjected into a complaint over the pricing of traditional media—and misinterpreted. A complaint by Elvis Costello that his record company is pricing his new album too high has been interpreted by BoingBoing and Techdirt to mean he thinks fans should pirate the album. However, the evidence on the site suggests this interpretation is not quite accurate. On the 18th, Costello posted an entry to his blog entitled “Steal This Record.” decrying the price of over $200 for his...

ReDigi, that startup that aimed to allow people to buy and re-sell “used” digital music, has come under fire from the RIAA. Ars Technica reports that the RIAA has sent company a letter demanding that it cease and desist all “infringing activities” and make its records available to the RIAA as evidence. I can’t say I’m terribly surprised; I expected it would come to this when the company announced its plans back in February, let alone when it started buying tracks in October. The company does bend over backward to try to make sure that the resold copies weren’t...

TechCrunch reports that digital music resale firm ReDigi, who I mentioned back in February, is actually launching its eMarketplace to allow people to buy and sell “pre-owned” digital music. ReDigi claims that it has consulted with lawyers and determined what it’s doing is legal, but I’m not so sure. ReDigi hopes to succeed where others have failed by designing a marketplace that is not about file sharing, but is instead a method of “facilitating the legal transfer of music between two parties”. Really, the key here is that the startup’s technology is able to actually verify...

From the JISC website.  Blockquotes omitted: Fragile treasures of 16 century music are now freely available online, thanks to a partnership between Royal Holloway, University of London, the British Library and JISC. The Early Music Online project has digitised more than 300 books of the world’s earliest printed music from holdings at the British Library. Some of the books date back as far as the 1500s and, due to their fragile nature, would not be freely available to researchers, but thanks to this digitization project, musicians from around the world can now source the original...

Last year, we reported on Brazil’s copyright law forbidding the use of DRM to block fair use. It appeared at the time that Brazil was developing a very progressive and open stance on copyright reform, even licensing the contents of its state website under Creative Commons. There was even a movement to legalize file sharing. However, after a new administration was elected, Brazil’s stance on copyright seems to have gone through a screeching U-turn. Mike Masnick at Techdirt reports that the country’s new Culture Minister ordered the removal of the CC license from the website shortly after taking office,...