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I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around this one. WIRED's Elliot Buskirk has a story from PC World about new laws requiring used CD stores to thumbprint some customers/sellers:

You'll need to be thumbprinted and present a driver's license before selling CDs in Florida and Utah as required by a new law that has already passed in those states, and could pass in Rhode Island and Wisconsin too (and potentially elsewhere).

Used CD stores and pawn shops in states that pass the law are also barred from paying cash for CDs, offering store credit instead, and must retain CDs for 30 days before reselling them. (Surely, RIAA lobbyists are behind this on some level).

Seriously. What. The. Hell? Used CDs require identification? Will there be a federal database of everyone who realized they'd made a poor choice in purchasing that Nickelback album? The whole point of the current copyright law is that if you legally purchase something (a book, CD, painting, what have you), then you own it, and you can do what you want with that physical copy -- the original copyright holder can't stop you from selling it or shredding it.

Except, of course, now we have laws to find out who you are.

This is the second stupidest copyright-related comment I've seen/heard today, and in the same vein. The first came this morning, on NPR, in a story about Stanford's Fair Use Project, in which the Progress and Freedom Foundation's James DeLong talked about how Fair Use was so unfair, man, and it should be "constricted" (his word, I kid you not -- 5:33 in the piece) rather than expanded. No surprise there, I suppose, since the nonprofit PFF is funded by virtually every major digital media and communication company in the country, but still: "there's too much fair use going on".

Sheesh.

UPDATE: Here's Ars Technica on the new law. Relevant quotes:

The legislation is supposed to stop the sale of counterfeit and/or stolen music CDs, despite the fact that there has been no proof that this is a particularly pressing problem for record shops in general. Yet John Mitchell, outside counsel for the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, told Billboard that this is part of "some sort of a new trend among states to support second-hand-goods legislation." And he expects it to grow.

and

Why this trend, and why now? It's difficult to say, but to be sure, there is no love lost between retailers who sell used CDs and the music industry. The Federal Trade Commission has scrutinized the music industry for putting unfair pressures on retailers who sell used CDs, following a long battle between the music industry and retailers in the mid 90s. The music industry dislikes used CD sales because they don't get a cut of subsequent sales after the first. Now, via the specter of piracy, new legislation is cropping up that will make it even less desirable to sell second-hand goods.

Interesting to note that this has absolutely nothing to do with p2p piracy, but that the recording industry is leveraging that threat to get this effective change to copyright law. The question to ask, I suppose, is whether the First Sale Doctrine (under federal copyright law) trumps a state's ability to regulate its own commerce (ostensibly the purpose of the new laws, even if that's clearly not what they're designed to do)?

Labels: copyright, fair use, first sale doctrine, law

posted by Gus at 4:02 PM | |