p2p news / p2pnet: There are quite a few discussions in various forums about what you can or can’t do with music which you’ve paid for through services such as iTunes.

A question that needs to be answered is: are they “purchasing” the music in the way they do a CD which has first-sale rights (the right to loan or resell)? Or are they, as some of the conditions of these music services imply, only licensing the music for very specific uses (which could be personal use by the person who paid)?

The US courts will be contemplating this question in the case launched by Rock bands Cheap Trick and The Allman Brothers Band against Sony Music. Their intention is for this to be a class action suit including thousands of artists who are being short-changed by the major labels.

From the International Herald Tribune:

According to the suit, the record company is treating digital downloads like traditional record sales, rather than licensed music, triggering a different royalty deal.

The case was launched in the United States District Court in Manhattan on April 27.

I’m looking for more details on this case as I think it will help clarify some very interesting questions about digital music.

Personally, I have a hard time paying $.99/song for a limiting license when I could pay less to get a CD which offers me far more rights.

I suspect this case will expose the lower value of music download services compared to CDs and thus either kill that market, or cause a market correction in pricing.

Russell McOrmond - p2pnet contributing editor
[McOrmond is an independent author (software and non-software) who uses modern business models and licensing (Free/Libre and Open Source Software, Creative Commons). He’s also the CLUE policy coordinator.]

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 22nd, 2006 at 10:07 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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