I found this to be very interesting and time will tell if this will become a trend on ebay, one of the world's largest resellers of collectible vinyl records.
Ever see one of those discs, stamped with “Promotional copy” or “Not for sale” on the label? They’ve been around since the vinyl days. Now Universal Music Group is throwing a tantrum about these things turning up on eBay.
UMG is a big company, biggest of the big four music companies. That, strangely, hasn’t prevented them from being jerks, apparently led by their lawyers into an attack on an eBay secondhand record specialist.
The BBC sets the scene:
It all began in May 2007 when Universal Music Group (UMG), the largest of the Big Four companies that dominate the music industry worldwide, sued a Los Angeles-based trader on the eBay online auction site.
The target of the legal action, Troy Augusto, runs a business called Roast Beast Music Collectables.
He makes his living by snapping up rare albums in second-hand record shops and selling them on eBay.
Universal is taking him to task for copyright infringement, saying some of the items he offered for sale online were promotional copies and not authorised for sale to the public.
But digital rights lobby group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has taken up cudgels on Mr Augusto's behalf and is counter-suing Universal.
"UMG seems to think that the promotional use only label somehow gives it eternal ownership over the CD," says the EFF.
"While this might make sense to a goblin living in Harry Potter's world, it's not the law under the Copyright Act."
It’s not commercial law, or common law, either. Sale of goods is something quite else.
A record, by definition, is property, like a chair, for the purposes of ownership. If Mr. Augusto owns the record lawfully, and didn’t steal it, it’s property. If he bought the record in a secondhand record shop, it’s property.
More to the point, it’s his property. He owns the thing.
Even the music industry, in its endless insanity, can’t claim the right to prevent people buying and selling their own property.
Copyright may exist over any item offered for sale, in fact, it usually does. Furniture designs are copyright, too. So are electrical appliances. That in no way affects the right of people to buy and sell them.
The “promotional use only” angle is largely negated by the fact that all record companies, since time immemorial, have thrown out excess stock. I have test pressings, promo copies, old radio station playlist copies, you name it. You go into any reasonable size secondhand record shop and you’ll find quite a few.
If you throw something out, are you claiming copyright in perpetuity? Or just clearing out the stockroom?
If these things were so vital to the emotional stability of UMG, why weren’t they kept?
Why has it taken until 2007-8 for this revelation to occur?
eBay has taken a stance which seems to imply that anybody can claim copyright on anything, and eBay will take responsibility for items being sold as the service provider.
In theory, that means that if anything stolen is ever sold on eBay (as if that were possible) they are similarly liable for that.
Because that’s the implication of UMG’s claim to goods which have already been bought and sold however many times a secondhand record changes hands.
Mysterious as eBay’s position may be, they’ve been sending interesting letters to sellers. This tale from an eBay seller is roughly the tone they’re taking:
"I was clearing out some cupboards and decided to list a CD single on eBay that had been handed to me by a friend quite some time ago.
"The very next day, the listing was removed and I was astounded to get an e-mail from eBay, bristling with terms such as 'illegal, pirated, copyright law, violation, content protection' and so forth.
"I can understand it if I had been selling a crateload of bootleg live CDs, or had burnt off albums worth of official studio stuff and was trying to sell them as if they were new and originals.
"There was also a sinister hint from eBay that if I ever put on a promo single again, then I could have my account with them suspended."
The BBC couldn’t quite figure out eBay’s policy, either.
All that seems certain is that it’s not older promo records from the 60s or 70s involved, sold by people like Sotheby’s who can afford decent lawyers who can read or write, but newer ones.
The question, however, remains.
Why is there a music industry?
You could achieve roughly the same social, legal, and cultural effect with a few empty Mars Bar wrappers.
Because that’s all it is.
Empty packaging.
When a breeze blows, it rattles around, making a noise.
That's about as close to doing anything musical as it's ever been.
Source: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/255643
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