FIM

Created in October 2011 and locat­ed in Boston, Massachusetts, the ReDigi web­site acquires and resells second-​hand MP3 files. By invest­ing in this mar­ket, ReDigi clear­ly pos­es the issue of the rel­e­vance of the “second-​hand music” con­cept in the dig­i­tal world.

When con­sumers sub­scribe to ReDigi ser­vices, they are allo­cat­ed a stor­age space in the cloud where it is pos­si­ble to trans­fer the tracks they choose from their library (pro­vid­ed these have been acquired from iTunes). An “in-​house” soft­ware cleans the customer’s var­i­ous devices of all copies of tracks thus cho­sen. Once in the cloud, a track may be put up for sale at the customer’s ini­tia­tive and dis­ap­pears from the stor­age space once the trans­ac­tion has been car­ried out.

Between trans­fer of prop­er­ty and acqui­si­tion of a right to listen

An EMI Major label, Capitol Records request­ed that, as an inter­im mea­sure, an order should be made to imme­di­ate­ly close down the ReDigi site for breach of copy­right leg­is­la­tion. “It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing sub­ject which rais­es numer­ous tech­no­log­i­cal and legal issues”, says Judge Richard Sullivan of the New York District Federal Court, who reject­ed Capital Records’ request.

The deci­sion has been wide­ly com­ment­ed on and high­lights the hybrid sta­tus of pur­chas­ing MP3 files, between trans­fer of prop­er­ty and acqui­si­tion of a right to lis­ten which one might, by anal­o­gy, describe as a sort of rental for an unspec­i­fied dura­tion. Recognizing a right to resale, would bring it clos­er to a con­ven­tion­al act of pur­chas­ing, which would prob­a­bly be clear­er in the customer’s mind. In addi­tion, ReDigi says it will redis­trib­ute to artists a pro­por­tion of earn­ings received.