Musicadium Blog

I came across this on Hype Bot a few days ago. It’s about this website, Bopaboo, who are claiming that, if you do not want a MP3 anymore, you can put it back up (upload it) on the site and re-sell it.  Basically, a pawn shop for used MP3s.

From Hype Bot: Still in private beta, bopaboo provides a simple marketplace to buy and sell mp3’s and potentially other digital content. In a test, I was able to upload a random mp3 and have it on sale for 45 cents (a typical price) in seconds. Using a bopaboo provided $1 credit, I bought another mp3 and downloaded it easily.  Seconds later, since it was still in my online locker (bopabox) as well as on my computer, I had the same track back up for sale.

As brought up by Hype Bot, does the website confirm the origin of the “used” MP3?  The track could be illegally downloaded via P2P channels or torrented. Essentially, this allows people to make 100% profit on something they did not own in the first place, let alone consider or pay the original artist. The website states on its blog that they do have the copyright holder’s interests at heart, but how is this true?

From Bopaboo Blog: Importantly, bopaboo is not ignoring the right of the copyright-holders. We had always envisioned that our model would include an appropriate arrangement with copyright holders. We are encouraged by our meetings with content providers so far and look forward to completing those arrangements. Look for further announcements relating to our experienced management team and advisors, as well as partnerships with key content providers!

Rather than fix the problem of illegal P2P file sharing, does this not take it one step further??

We at Musicadium are very apprehensive about this.  The idea of a “used MP3″ store where a user can essentially strip the artist of all of their copyrights seems highly unethical to us, not to mention illegal, though, somehow, the site seems to be getting off the ground.

In our minds, there is no way in the world that EVERY copyright holder in the world can be considered in this arrangement.  They say they are putting the consumer first and are trying to provide a legal alternative to P2P sharing. If users in large numbers are uploading, ala youtube, there is no way to check every file at the upload stage, unless you had a warehouse of people checking files around the clock as they were added.  A user could obviously flag a copyright infringement, but that may be way too late for a user, whose song has just been distributed, possibly to hundreds, if not thousands of people and not seen a cent for it.

Hype Bot are posting an interview with the Bopaboo people very soon, it will be very interesting to see what their response is.

I also found this great blog, LockerGnome, who brought up this great point.

I also spent some time reading over the terms of service. You, more or less, are promising your uploads are legal. You are assuming responsibility. That should not surprise anyone. Is that enough though? Will that protect bopaboo from any liability if it is not a legal “used” mp3?

What do you think?  Leave a comment below.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 19th, 2008 at 2:32 pm and is filed under A Call to Arms. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.