selling your ipod w/music on it?

[queenlives]

being a two-ipod family (~3,700 songs loaded, a bit more to go...), i've often wondered if it's legal to sell your ipod already "loaded"... this is mentioned (but not really discussed) in the article below:


http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/ptech/11/07/refurbished.ipods.reut/index.html

 

[ChopsJazz]

Why not? If the songs are already paid for by the oiriginal owner it seems to me that there would be no copyright violation.

 

[menuserve]

well yes and no... are the songs loaded on this ipod also loaded on your other ipod? you don't own the rights to distribution of the songs or resale rights...

i would say that you can do this if you break up your cd's and don't have other copies of the same song on your other ipod.

not that anyone is going to come after you though

 

[Gansan]

Actually, the way I understand how iTunes works, if you connect an iPod that already has someone else's music on it to your computer, it won't copy the songs back onto your hard drive. It will instead offer to erase what is there and copy your computer's library of songs on it instead. There is no "merging" of collections. Although it is easy to get around this restriction by using one of a number of utility programs that lets you copy the songs from the iPod into your computer, this is one of the features that lets the music industry be at peace with the idea of the iPod.

 

[queenlives]

Why not? If the songs are already paid for by the oiriginal owner it seems to me that there would be no copyright violation.

i understand what you're saying, *but*, the ipod / itunes eula may restrict duplication / distribution rights. can't say/don't know, but my bet is you can't legally run an internet based radio station using your collection of cd-copied files without paying some organization; likewise, i think it's unlikely that end users are entitled to buy ipods, then load them with their libraries, then sell them without some form of restrictions.

due to the sea-changes occuring in technology/society, i find this a really interesting area.

 

[NsXMas]

Probably not legal. I wouldn't do it. I don't want to subject anyone else to my bad music taste.

 

[ChopsJazz]

Are you going to charge extra for the loaded ipod, or are you just charging fair market value for the used unit? It seems to me that if you are not charging for the uploaded tunes you shouldn't be infringing on any copyrights.

 

[davidkimchee]

I think this would all depend on how you got the music in there....
much like selling a used PC with an operating system. If you paid for the OS and are selling the system with the OS included thats legal....as long as you arent keeping the OS for yourself as well.

If you PAID to fill your Ipod and are selling it with all songs included I dont see why that would be illegal....unless you are also keeping a copy of all the songs for yourself or never previously paid for the songs.

Did I just make sense? beats me.

 

[queenlives]

Are you going to charge extra for the loaded ipod, or are you just charging fair market value for the used unit? It seems to me that if you are not charging for the uploaded tunes you shouldn't be infringing on any copyrights.

ken,

this is a hypothetical situation for me, but my take is itunes/ipod probably has some form of restrictions on how itunes may be used in this situation (don't know/can't say). my thinking along these lines is it's unlikely they would support someone buying ipods, then stuffing them with a library of music, then selling the loaded ipods for fair market value based on the hardware. that said, there's no practical means of enforcing a paper-based limitation; in fact, there's a pretty good argument for apple to avert their eyes while this grey market develops.

interesting discussion (at least to me

 

[heySkippy]

iTunes won't sync that iPod with another computer unless it can erase the contents first. Of course there are easy methods to get the MP3 files off without iTunes so that's not a deal killer.

There's little doubt that sending your copyrighted songs off to a new owner would be illegal under copyright law (assuming you don't send the original CD's too) but you have about a 99.99999% chance of getting away with it.

Songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store won't play on an unauthorized computer.

 

[jond]

IF they could access the music on the ipod, it would def not be legal.
But supposidly itunes protects against this. If you sell it with the assumption that itunes will do its job and not allow them to see/play your music, then I would think you're fine. If they bypass itunes protection then they're the ones breaking the law.

Im not a lawyer though....
Personally I would just wipe it.

 

[Hugh]

Songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store won't play on an unauthorized computer.

Are you sure?

From Wikipedia.

Music sharing

iTunes Library songs can be shared over a local network using Bonjour (formerly Rendezvous)—Apple's implementation of the Zeroconf (zero configuration required) open network standard—which allows shared lists of songs within the same subnet to be automatically detected. When a song is shared, iTunes can stream the song but won't save it on the local hard drive, in order to prevent copying. Songs in Protected AAC format can also be accessed but authentication is required.

Originally with iTunes 4.0, users could freely access shared music anywhere over the internet, in addition to one's own subnet, by specifying IP addresses of remote shared song libraries. Apple quickly removed this feature with version 4.0.1, claiming that users were violating the EULA.

Music sharing uses the Digital Audio Access Protocol (DAAP), created by Apple for this purpose. [2] DAAP has been reverse-engineered and is now used to stream playlists from non-Apple software.

Just days after the Windows version of iTunes was released, William Zeller, a 20-year-old Trinity College student, wrote myTunes, a program which allows Windows users to circumvent the iTunes restriction and download music from an iTunes shared playlist over a network. MyTunes quickly became popular and is now widely used. There also exists a similar open source Java client, called ourTunes. Yet another approach is used by iSyncTunes. This application does not use DAAP and only depends on external interfaces to transfer music between computers. It transfers the songs, saves them on the local hard drive and creates a song list that can be imported into your local library.