ENTRIES TAGGED "John Wiley & Sons"
Content ownership and resale
Amazon's AutoRip service could further complicate matters
Over the past few weeks we’ve seen some landmark decisions on whether you really own that content you bought and if you can resell it. First, in the Kirtsaeng vs. Wiley case we learned that it’s OK to buy low-priced print books from overseas, ship them to the U.S. and resell them for a profit. That’s a victory for the middleman entrepreneur and everyone frustrated with high-priced textbooks. Well, it’s a victory till publishers raise their overseas prices to be more in line with U.S. prices, at which point students in those foreign countries lose.
Next, we have the federal ruling against ReDigi on the digital content resale front. I’m hoping ReDigi appeals but for now this means you can’t sell your iTunes library, for example. That ruling is considered a victory for labels (and publishers as ReDigi is looking to move into used ebook sales) and a loss for consumers.