Gently Used, Like New

The New York Times reports this morning Apple and Amazon are both planning resale markets for the digital media they sell. The systems reportedly under consideration would allow users to give up their access to digital books or movies and get (likely a cut of) resale profits.

Such a change would bring down prices, which music and book publishers wouldn't like, but the absence of a resale market is really an anomaly of the digital space. And if properly designed, a digital resale market could work well. As with physical media, some consumers would be motivated to pay full price for a new copies -- maybe to get them soon after release or when used copies available for sale are scarce. Those willing to wait or shop could get a better price.

So this all seems good, but the major problem with the plans of Apple and Amazon is that they remain the plans of Apple and Amazon. That is, these resale markets could (and it seems likely would) exist as products of license agreements with these vendors. That means that purchasers could be bound to resell their digital media within the terms set by Apple or Amazon, within their proprietary marketplaces, and with fees paid for the privilege.

Again, this could still be an improvement over the inability to resell purchased digital media, but this seems like an issue better resolved by public policy than by corporate policy. An independent digital music resale market called ReDigi is currently facing a lawsuit from Capitol Records. ReDigi allows resale of music purchased from iTunes by transferring rights from one user to another, and a court decision favorable to ReDigi could legitimize such independent marketplaces. In any case, Congress could act to clarify copyright law around digital media downloads and extend resale privileges to consumers.