The past few days there has been a little buzz here and there about the guy who tried to auction a song he bought for $0.99 from the iTunes music store. The price got up to some ridiculous value before eBay deep-sixed the auction. Today, there is this BusinessWeek article carrying a comment on the matter from Apple. In a nutshell, the Apple spokesman said "it might be legal, but it's probably technically not feasible".
I have a couple of things to say about this. The first is that I really like how Apple spokespeople so rarely sound like mindless corporate business robots. They understand that consumers don't take well to billion dollar companies whining like babies. I'd go so far as to say that it almost seems as though Apple likes their customers, and at times takes steps to protect their customers' interests, not just their own.
But the real thing that I want to say here is that the position that Apple took on this issue is short-sighted. Sure, it might be a little tough for me to sell you a song I bought at the iTunes store, but not if Apple got involved. They could charge a small license transfer fee and revamp their DRM to allow a license to be revoked (although wouldn't a lot of people get up in arms about that. I think it makes good sense. Not necessarily one song at a time, but if I have several albums worth of tunes to sell, I'm sure I could find a buyer at 50 cents per track. Why shouldn't I be allowed to sell it?
Update: Read the end of the story here. Great quote from the guy: "If digital distribution is the future of music it needs to start acting like it."
Posted by Brent Marykuca at September 8, 2003 06:20 PM