TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics » used e-books

The digital resale controversy, in the New York Times

Dan Eldridge — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 19:34:13 +0000

The New York Times ran an interesting and fairly informative feature story on March 7; it covers the digital publishing industry’s current digital resale controversy, which was sparked largely by the work of John Ossenmacher, the founder and CEO of ReDigi — a company that refers to itself as ‘The World’s First Pre-Owned Digital Marketplace.’ The story [...]

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The Digital Reselling Issue: What about the customer’s rights?

Joanna Cabot — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 15:00:23 +0000

Yesterday, TeleRead published two thoughtful essays on the digital reselling issue (here, and here) from author Marilynn Byerly. I appreciate her desire to ensure that any used digital market is fair to authors. I don’t, however, think Amazon is—as she asserts—about to ‘break the law.’ Why not? Because while many have tried to interpret the [...]

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More on Amazon’s used e-books controversy

Marilynn Byerly — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 20:00:35 +0000

Digital products like e-books are licensed—not sold—to a buyer, so they can’t be legally resold, shared, or loaned. (See my article on e-books and the first sale doctrine for more information.) A group called the Owners’ Rights Initiative wants to change that. The ORI believes that the owner of a digital book should be allowed to [...]

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Is Amazon About to Break the Law?

Marilynn Byerly — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 15:04:07 +0000

Amazon has patented a means to sell used e-books within the Kindle system. A book will be branded within the system when it is bought, and when the buyer puts it up for resale at the Kindle store, it will be removed from his account and transferred to the buyer’s account. Amazon will receive a [...]

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Morning Links — Used e-books are getting closer

Joanna Cabot — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 14:25:57 +0000

Project Gutenberg Adds Dropbox Support (Lifehacker) Sales of Used eBooks Getting Closer (Publisher’s Weekly) eBook Challenges in Japan (Good e-Reader) Amazon’s Digital Metamorphosis: eBooks Up 70% (The Verge) Kindle Daily Deals: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy (and 3 others)

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Amazon scores broad patent on reselling ‘used’ digital content

Chris Meadows — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 01:32:10 +0000

I’ve written quite a few pieces here about the various attempts to try to create a workable digital resale market—most recently with digital music resale firm ReDigi, which is currently engaged in a legal dispute with music label EMI over its activities. Now it looks as if, as with a lot of its digital media [...]

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Would used e-books work, redux

Chris Meadows — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:15:00 +0000

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 [...]

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Ninth Circuit rules EULA licensing restrictions on digital content enforceable

Chris Meadows — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 15:15:00 +0000

The matter of first sale and imports I mentioned yesterday is not the only recent Ninth Circuit decision with unpleasant first-sale implications. Ars Technica reported yesterday that the Ninth Circuit ruled in a long-standing case concerning End-User Licensing Agreements on computer software—and from a consumer rights standpoint (and that includes e-book consumers), the ruling was [...]

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Are ‘second-hand e-books’ possible?

Chris Meadows — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 16:17:39 +0000

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 [...]

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