Digital Letdown.

I got home from a nerve-racking afternoon of thoughts revolving around fair use and first sale doctrines, technical/technological protection/prevention measures (with an environmental road trip to the North-Side Divide) to an evening with my mom greeting me with a "the internet's dead" line. (Hey, what happened to "how was your day?")

So yeah, it's down. Well, actually, not really. It's just slower than usual. So slow that the router can't pick up any signal to distribute around the network. And even with a direct connection to the modem, I was having a difficult time loading the images of Castle Age. (But I still attacked the monster as a valiant knight should! Yeah, I'm no damsel in distress.)

I would have probably checked on my Mafia Wars and Vampire Wars, but alas, the faulty connection and the time do not permit. But I just needed to mention Vampire Wars, because I remember having received an event invitation from a gaming acquaintance. He said that he was retiring from Vampire Wars and was scouting for a friend to donate his items to. Yes, even in the virtual world, people take these things seriously.

Which reminds me of the first sale doctrine incorporated in the US copyright law. (Kind of far from the topic of donation... Well, maybe it's not that off-tangent, in a way. Anyway...)This doctrine allows the purchaser to resell his copy of the copyrighted work without having to gain permission from the copyright owner. All right, that's so third person. Here's an example: Let's say I buy a Coldplay CD. For some insane reason I realized I don't like it, so I sell it to you. Coldplay or their recording studio can't restrict me from reselling it. But how about if I bought the album from iTunes? The digital first sale doctrine is problematic to claim as a limitation to the copyright granted to Coldplay. Digital tracks downloaded/bought from online stores are embedded with technical protection measures that are unlocked only for the purchaser of the particular copy. So how do you go about reselling a digital track? I think one would be hard-put to divulge his online music store credentials (possibly the username and API key) to the prospective buyer, right?

14th entry of Awi Mayuga