In the spring of 2017, a judge ruled on a copyright infringement case against ReDigi.
ReDigi is a cloud-based online retailer designed to help consumer resell their legally purchased digital copies of music, books, movies and other intellectual property protected by copyright.
A record company sued ReDigi for copyright violation and the judge issued a summary judgment, flatly stating that such transactions violated U.S. copyright law.
Research this decision and answer the following question.
- If you agree with the decision, why? If you don’t, why?
- And if you don’t, what system of resell would you propose that would, based on your knowledge of law, conform with existing copyright law.
Copyright infringement means that the rights afforded to the copyright holder, such as the exclusive use of a work for a set period of time, are being breached by a third party.
Judge Richard J. Sullivan ruled in favor of Capitol Records, explaining that the transfer of digital data from one storage medium to another constituted a violation of copyright, because the copy was ultimately an unauthorized reproduction, and therefore outside of the protection of the first-sale doctrine
