Amazon Poised to Sell Used E-books

[TuralyonW3]

http://publishersweekly.com/pw/by-to...d-e-books.html

Amazon’s business model has long been dependent on resellers of used books and other merchandise. But a U.S. patent that Amazon Technologies in Reno, Nev., received last week indicates that the mega-retailer has its sights on digital resale, including used e-books and audio downloads. According to the abstract, Amazon will be able to create a secondary market for used digital objects purchased from an original vendor by a user and stored in a user’s personalized data store.

Boston-based ReDigi opened the first marketplace for pre-owned digital music, which it launched in late 2011, redigi.com. Once a lawsuit that Capitol Records filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan over the way it handles music downloads is behind it, ReDigi plans to expand into e-books and other digital items. In a press release issued yesterday, ReDigi commented that “the Amazon patent is further proof that the secondary market is the future of the digital space and that there is no turning back.”

[TuralyonW3]

This is a very slippery slope that potentially fucks the authors/creators pretty badly (see comments below article by clicking the link)

[D.]

The fuck Amazon

the fuck are you doing

Amazon

stahp

[Order 66]

Didn't know 'reselling' digital media was 'possible'.

Good news for gamestop

[Starla]

How will I tell the difference between a new ebook and a used one? Will the used be more pixelated or what?

[Order 66]

Its cum stained

[killtrocity]

long live TPB. fuck everybody

[butthurt]

lamo

[reprise85]

wut

[Sonic Johnny]

you wouldn't see Bandcamp doing this shit

[Trotskilicious]

this doesn't make a lick of sense

[Luke de Spa]

how is this any worse than reselling printed books, provided the 1:1 relationship between "copies" bought and sold persists?

(surely it's the transfer of individual legal licenses to written material that is relevant here, not the particular medium)

[Trotskilicious]

because those books are actually "used" instead of just held on someones HD with no discernable loss of quality?

[Luke de Spa]

does a story get worse after someone reads it? it doesn't seem sufficiently complete to think of "used" content sales as being mainly about the quality of the transfer medium. what people are really buying is access to information, after all.

for the sake of argument, though, what if we were to compare a "used" ebook to a used-but-indistinguishable-from-new printed book? is it okay to resell the printed book? if it is, what's the difference?

[TuralyonW3]

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/use...ors-publishers

Amazon has a patent to sell used ebooks. When I first scanned the headline, I thought it must be some Onion-esque gag, and I'm sure I wasn't alone. Used e-books? As in, rumpled up, dog-eared pdfs? Faded black-and-white kindle cover art, Calibri notes typed in the margins that you can't erase?

Barely-amusing image aside, used ebooks are for real. Or at least have a very real potential to become real. See, Amazon just cleared a patent for technology that would allow it to create an online marketplace for used ebooks--essentially, if you own an ebook, you would theoretically be able to put it up for sale on a secondary market.

The approved patent describes the process:

Digital objects including e-books, audio, video, computer applications, etc., purchased from an original vendor by a user are stored in a user's personalized data store ... When the user no longer desires to retain the right to access the now-used digital content, the user may move the used digital content to another user's personalized data store when permissible and the used digital content is deleted from the originating user's personalized data store.

Used ebook shoppers could buy your digital copy, directly from you, and Amazon would facilitate the transfer of files--and it would pocket a fee.

It's a fascinating concept, really, but it could ultimately be devastating to the publishing industry and, potentially, to authors. First, the elephant-sized absurdity in the room: a "used ebook" is identical to a new one. It is a precise digital reproduction. The file does not age, it cannot be damaged, it cannot be altered--therefore, it is worth no less than any other copy, and the only premium purchasers of "new" ebooks would be paying for would be the right to read it first.

And that's where we start running into problems. Nobody, besides die-hard fans of a given author on a big release date, would ever care enough to pay extra for digital dibs. Used ebooks would eliminate nearly all the incentive to buy "new" ebooks. And Amazon could be banking on that, even though at first blush it might appear to undercut its own business.

Bill Rosenblatt, a copyright expert and witness in numerous digital content patent cases, argues that the online retail giant may be angling to push publishers out for good with such a move. He explained his case to Wired:

Rosenblatt believes that a digital resale marketplace wouldn’t ultimately make Amazon a lot more money on books or music, at least not at first. But he thinks it would move much more of Amazon’s digital content business beyond the interference of publishers, just as publishers can’t dictate the terms of, for example, the sale of used physical books on Amazon. Just as with physical books, publishers would only have a say — or get a cut — the first time a customer buys a copy of an e-book. The second, third and fourth sales of that “same” e-book would be purely under Amazon’s control.

“If Amazon is allowed to get away with doing resale transactions without compensating publishers, then what they can do is say, ‘hey authors, sign with us and we’ll give you a piece of the resale,’” he says. “That could attract authors who might otherwise sign with traditional publishers.”

It would be an exceedingly brazen move on Amazon's part, and would likely require the combined strength of every copyright lawyer its side of the Mississippi, but it's entirely possible. And it's bad news for authors too.

Because, what if they don't sign on? Well, on the grounds that publishers and authors don't get a cut of physical used books, Amazon could easily seek to justify refusing to pay writers for secondhand transactions. That's what worries John Scalzi, the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

"I’m awfully suspicious that it means nothing good for writers who want to get paid for their work using the current compensation model," he writes on his blog. Scalzi foresees writer-led class action lawsuits aplenty should Amazon ever try to cut out author royalties on ebook resales. And Scalzi agrees that it's trouble for the traditional publishing industry, too: "if I were a publisher I really wouldn’t have any doubt Amazon wants me dead," he writes.

Still, the whole phantom of a secondhand ebook marketplace might not ever amount to much. As Marcus Wohlsen notes, Amazon may have secured the patent simply to bury it, to eliminate any possible threat of a secondhand ebook market to its standard business. It may deem the legal threats too great and deign not to push on. Or it may realize that if it ever admits to boxing out authors, consumers may revolt and just download pirated files or directly from author sites.

If Amazon does try this stunt, however, it will be attempting to seize on our nostalgic understanding of physical secondhand marketplaces: many readers love used bookstores and swapping well-worn paperbacks. Thanks to the cloud and increasingly bottomless RAM, the bookshelves of the future are near-infinite--we have no need to "swap" files. We can copy and forward them. Amazon would be relying on the notion that our habits of buying and selling tangible goods are deeply inculcated enough that we'd overlook the absurdity and potential exploitation of a secondhand ebook market.

Used ebooks are a paradoxical anachronism, a cannily capitalistic construct whose only aim is to squeeze authors and publishers. Again, it's fascinating--but it's also complete bullshit.

[TuralyonW3]

I mean when it comes down to it there's literally no such thing as a used ebook. It's impossible to exist. It's impossible to "use" an ebook, in that the data doesn't change in any significant way (beyond DRM metadata) when it's accessed on a device.

And Amazon would be trying to force this impossible-to-exist label that would undercut already dying publishers and authors (and, curiously, possibly self-cannibalize, as the article points out).

And LDS even if a used physical book is still "like new" the buyer is still getting it at least one step further down the physical distribution chain, even if the wear-and-tear is minimal. You're getting it at a discount (and usually a very minimal one if it's "like new") because you're taking the risk, however small, with regards to the integrity of the product, of not getting it directly from the publisher.

In the case of "used" ebooks there would be no incentive whatsoever to get them from the publisher or author.

Not sure if I'm saying it very well but yeah.

[TuralyonW3]

An interesting argument from the consumer perspective is that if publisher's are going to charge as much as print books for ebooks, which some are doing, then why shouldn't the buyer be able to re-sell it?

The answer of course is that it's absurd for ebooks to cost as much or more than their physical counterparts and publishers need to cut that shit out.

[Sonic Johnny]

It definitely raises some interesting points about the act of purchasing something digital ( specifically Movies, Books, Music etc etc) and how that differs from purchasing something physical. I feel like in a way it's the potential to commit piracy that changes the significance of paying money for something in the digital economy, and that raises a lot of other questions about why we kinda felt it was okay to resell those things when they were in physical format (not saying it isnt okay - just for arguments sake here).

It also really made me think about services like Steam, which many people criticise because it doesn't really "sell" you a game - it loans you data from (and requires verification from) their servers, and if that service were to dissolve you would be left with nothing. But doesn't that fragility then in some way sort of protect the developers intellectual property and right to remuneration?

[Trotskilicious]

i dunno about you guys but i blame the satanist cabal

[Sonic Johnny]

I was gonna blame Obama but they're one and the same so

[Raskolnikov]

Originally Posted by TuralyonW3

The answer of course is that it's absurd for ebooks to cost as much or more than their physical counterparts and publishers need to cut that shit out.

Precisely.

The same could be said for music... and while that's a different conversation altogether, the fact that a new album is $12 at my local CD store and $12 on iTunes is absurdity. But what's more mindboggling to me is that many people actually PREFER buying from iTunes. There's no physical product, even lossier audio quality, no resale value (which could change here too, potentially - paging Apple!) and a few hundred other reasons.

Might consider buying digital now and then if it was substantially cheaper - but then again, in that instance, why wouldn't I just torrent it? You can't torrent the experience of seeing friends at a local CD store, shopping locally, and coming home with a piece of artwork.

Ehhh, I digress...

[Raskolnikov]

Originally Posted by TuralyonW3

[url]Quote: “[T]he Amazon patent is further proof that the secondary market is the future of the digital space and that there is no turning back.”

And that's what concerns me the most about this move. It's yet another step away from me being able to buy physical media, and one more step towards digital being the only option.

[killtrocity]

It's really easy to circumvent this garbage. Pearson's gonna charge 200$ for a textbook, I'm going to get the illegal "international softcover edition", used, for 1/8 the price.

Then there are the constant edition changes - let's switch all the practice problems around and perhaps renumber a chapter so that you solution manual is harder to use! Nah that's ok I'll just stick to the "outdated" edition

or, ya know, I could say fuck you and your transparently unethical practices, I'm just going to skip the whole process and "steal" a copy online

Information should be free guys, fuck the publisher, fuck the label, fuck paying for digital media

[slunken]

i'm not even going to post in this thread i just made a political zine i give it away for free

[slunken]

COPYWRONG

[slunken]

http://images.clipartof.com/small/10...lustration.jpg

[teh b0lly!!1]

Originally Posted by butthurt

lamo

lmao

[teh b0lly!!1]

http://media.avclub.com/images/357/3...9/627.jpg?4898

[pale blue eyes]

That is some bullshit right there.

[noyen]

i fucking hate ea and their crippling of content in used games without fucking codez