>>"Basically what has happened is that the media industry spent years complaining that digital downloding would destroy the world, much in the same way that cassettes did, VHS did, etc."
Surely, that's what any pressure group would do - focus on the worst case and try to do what they could to prevent it (however unlikely they might think it) or get the best advantage in general?
You'd *expect* a worst-case scenario irrespective of how much less worse the likeliest outcome would be, so seeing exaggeration doesn't prove that they have no case, simply that you can't believe everything they say, which is the case in any number of other situations with any number of other lobbying groups.
>>"But it's only a matter of time before the average buyer realised that they have lost their money at point of sale by buying something with zero resale value. Not long to wait, really. Then the shit/fan thing happens."
Well, it only really hits the fan if enough people care.
I think most people I know, and I'd *guess* the 'average buyer' in general tends not to sell *CDs* they've bought, or at least doesn't factor resale in to purchasing decisions even if logically they maybe should do, and for people like that, not currently being able to resell MP3s probably isn't much of an issue.
>>"Well they wouldn't, would they. Then they get all itchy when someone starts up a second-hand mp3 website. OMG the world will end. But again, it won't. Just like VHS saved Hollywood, downloads will save the music industry."
I guess a lot depends what mechanisms there are to stop the 'same' track being sold/swapped multiple times by someone.
If there was indelible watermarking in the MP3s *and* all resale sites shared watermarking information, such 'duplication' could be detected, but otherwise it's not obvious how it could be stopped.
eg if I buy a track from Amazon that isn't one of the fraction which is explicitly-labelled and trackable to me, that file is apparently identical to the same track bought by anyone else. There's nothing obviously in the track to stop me giving a copy to 20 mates, and all of us selling it or trading it for something else, or for someone I trade it to doing that.
Unless, for instance, I was only allowed to resell Amazon tracks via an Amazon-run marketplace, or some other linked marketplace which knew knew how many copies I had bought and had a right to re-sell, and could updates record of how many I owned if I sold, bought, or traded tracks.
As far as I can see, only Amazon could do the record-keeping without meaningfully infringing my privacy (after all, they already know I'd bought a copy).
But would they want to, if it made it easy for me to buy a few tracks and then keep trading them for different tracks while keeping copies of everything to play?
Without some reliable method of verifying my right-to-sell, few of which methods I might be keen on from a privacy point of view, the situation would seem an objectively worse one for the record company than CDs, since though I can give away copies of ripped tracks from CDs to people, and keep tracks I've ripped after selling the original CD, I can at least only sell the original CD once.
Also, the CD resale value at any time is likely to be lower than the new value at that time due to many people preferring a new CD (even if in reality they're buying exactly the same data if they buy a used one instead).
Not only that, but if selling online, postage costs (and commissions) put a basic natural minimum cost and delay on a transaction which does discourage people from repeatedly buying and selling CDs while keeping the tracks.
The record companies may well be hyping up the danger compared to what is *likely* to happen, but the worst-case scenario does seem to be somewhat worse than the CD situation, or previous analogue-copying ones.
Possibly there are technical methods to allow the reliable verification of right-to sell and enable the transfer of that right which prevent it being duplicated and which don't infringe privacy, putting MP3s on the same footing as CDs
If so, it'd be interesting to see what the music companies' arguments against MP3 trading would be *then*.