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...

I’ve mentioned a $6,200 Kindle e-book before (discounted from a $7,800 print book), but here’s some Amazon pricing that has that beat by a long shot. A few weeks ago, Michael Eisen noticed a very odd pricing pattern in a couple of Amazon resellers of the biology textbook The Making of a Fly. Whereas used copies of the book started around $35, a couple of resellers offering new copies were asking millions of dollars for it. The price eventually peaked at $23,698,655.93 before someone noticed and reset the price back down. The reason for this had to do...

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...