on mon NUMBER NUMBER NUMBER at NUMBER NUMBER mike masnick wrote in which world are we talking about that may be true for the first sale but once something is out in the world the creator loses control if i buy a chair you built and then decide to give it away to my neighbor by you re definition he just stole from you there are specific statutory exemptions to the first sale principle of fair use in the us for example audio recordings have such an exemption dating from the early NUMBERs iirc which is why you can t legally be in the business of renting audio cds the creators can control what you do with it after they ve sold it to you certain industries would like to extend similar exemptions to other products there is no theoretical limit to what congress could revoke such privileges on access to free stuff often helps to sell other stuff just because you and the entertainment industry it seems can t be creative enough to come up with a business model to leverage free stuff into paid stuff don t take it out on the rest of us the problem with the entertainment industry is that they engage in business and pricing tactics that make anything microsoft was ever accused of pale in comparison if they can t figure out how to make money doing something they ll actually burn money to make sure no industry outsider can either for all intents and purposes control is more important than maximizing profit as long as they can make a profit they don t need your carrot so they only engage in reasonable business behavior when you are carrying a very large stick and few people swing a stick large enough they are being chronically investigated by the doj for anti trust collusion and similar activities but that is mostly just for show which isn t to say that the entertainment industry won t fall victim to its own stupidity but their ability to do arbitrary and capricious price manipulation with impunity is going to make it a slow decline james rogers jamesr URL URL 