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iTunes Song Successfully (Though Not Easily) Resold
from the good-for-him dept
After the much hyped iTunes song selling test was shut down by eBay, George Hotelling continued the process of testing whether or not he could sell a song he thought he had legally bought. Giving up on the auction idea, he just sold the song to a friend. However, as Apple said yesterday, the process was not easy or particularly practical. He switched the credit card associated with the account to a prepaid card, used up all the money on the card (mostly donating to the EFF) and then transferred the entire account to his friend (for $0.50). He then deleted the song from his hard drive. He's not sure if what he's done is going to be considered piracy. Apple says they're meeting today to discuss this issue should it come up again in the future.
Reader Comments
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A couple of intersting observations....
1 - The "7/11" debit card was discontinued; it apparently lives on at other locations. Interestingly, it requires a SSN now. There as an intersting post on the geek mailing list several years ago about how this card was designed for "undocumentables"... interstingly the geeks digest is no longer available to the public.
2 - Hotelling probably violated some laws, not by selling his legally purchased music, but by providing false information to the credit company. He also had to risk someone intercepting his card (and what if there *is* a 123 Fake St.?). Of course since this was a throw-away, only to be used to make the music files legitimate on the buyers machine, then there's no problem.
3 - ~$30 just to transfer the music? You're going to need to sell a lot of iTunes to make it worth while... probably in the neighborhood of 300 to 500 songs. Does the music industry really want this kind of grass roots agregration?
The over all verdict? Why use iTunes; I think I'll just keep renting and ripping (or traiding and ripping, if you don't live under a reasonable legal regiem).
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iTunes sucks, SACD sucks, DVD-A sucks, corrupted C
I stick to rippable older CDs, or as a minimum safety measure, not Universals if they are from 2001 or newer
http://www.fatchucks.com/
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Apple's thinking
notice that Apple said they are meeting to discuss what it means. Instead of flat out forbidding re-sale of itunes songs, they are actually taking it seriously, and thinking about it. Interesting to see.
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