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...

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...

On the Daggle blog, Danny Sullivan asks the question, “Why do Amazon & Apple hate families?” He points out that a number of the products services the companies offer are not exactly family-friendly—not in terms of inappropriate content, but because they make it harder for families to share devices. For example, lots of children like to play games on their parents’ iPhones or iPads—but since those children can’t have iTunes accounts of their own (due to child-protection laws that place limits on what information Internet sites can collect from children under the age of 13), that leads to...

Nick Harkaway has posted on the Bookseller’s “FuturEBooks” blog wondering about the possibility of selling “second-hand e-books”. He points out (as I did in this TeleRead post on the idea) that, since there is no physical artifact to depreciate, an e-book couldn’t really be considered “used”, so either people would pass on the e-book for exactly the same price as they paid for it or else they’d drive down the value of the book by selling it at a discount. Harkaway then proposes the ideas of “returning” an e-book to the seller in return for store credit...