L ess than a week ago, we reported that George Hotelling was trying to resell an AAC file that he purchased from the iTunes Music Store in an attempt to draw attention to the issue of property rights in the digital age. eBay claimed that the sale violated its Downloadable Media Policy and dumped the auction, but not before Hotellingis auction had made something of a splash. In addition to getting the brief attention of a chunk of the inet community, the auction caught Appleis attention.
In an article at C|Net, Appleis director of marketing for applications and services, Peter Lowe, is quoted as saying that while reselling an iTMS song would be impractical, it may be well within oneis rights to do so. Lowe goes on to explain how a person would go about transferring a song, but dodged the question of whether or not such a transfer would violate the iTMS terms of service. From C|Net:
"Appleis position is that it is impractical, though perhaps within someoneis rights, to sell music purchased online," Peter Lowe, Appleis director of marketing for applications and services, told CNET News.com in an interview.
[...]
Under the "First Sale" doctrine, the owner of a lawful copy of a work is allowed to sell it without the permission of the copyright owner. But legal interpretations of the doctrine, most recently from the U.S. Copyright Office, have found that the doctrine does not apply to digital goods, according to online copyright experts.
[...]
Appleis Lowe left unaddressed the question of whether a transfer would violate iTunesi terms-of-service contract, focusing instead on technical and other barriers to such a sale. "They would have to somehow give their account info to the person they were selling to in order to get their Mac authorized to play the music being sold," he said.
Thereis more information in the full article at C|Netis Web site.