THE Australian Independent Record Labels Association (AIR) has slammed Parliament's recommendation that it implement a law allowing consumers to resell their digital music collections and ebooks.

Yesterday Federal Parliament finally released the findings of its year long IT Pricing Inquiry. (The details of the 150-page-report can be found here).

One of the recommendations it made was for "the government (to) establish a legally protected right of resale for digital content".

But the industry body that represents record labels in Australia believes the proposal "undermines the ability for creators to control their own rights and is completely impracticable and unmanageable".

"At this point AIR is absolutely against it," Nick O'Byrne General Manager of AIR told news.com.au.

According to AIR up to 50 per cent of all music sales are made online. The organisation argues that given computer files such as mp3's don't depreciate over time, the reseller would be selling a brand-new product for second-hand prices, creating a secondary market that would undercut the original creators of the music.

"Any resale scheme is unlikely to include provisions for the payment of royalties to the rights holders, even if it did I can't imagine how it would be enforced," said Mr Byrne.

"Given that there are an increasing number of industry endorsed platforms for consuming music (Spotify, YouTube, Rdio, iTunes, Bandcamp) which cost very little, I don't see how a resale market for digital music would be attractive for consumers."

media_camera Nick Champion says just because copyright holders don't like it doesn't mean the right to resell digital music isn't in the public interest.

However, Nick Champion, the chair of the IT Pricing Inquiry told news.com.au that just because some industry organisations are against the right of resale proposal "doesn't mean that it's not in the interests of consumers or the public good".

"In terms of this report I think it's pretty middle ground," he said. "We're seeking to balance the interests of consumers and content providers."

Andrew Christie, the Professor of intellectual property at the University of Melbourne agreed, describing the recommendation as "far sighted and courageous" and said complaints that it's simply "too difficult to control" are plain wrong.

"Content owners whose rights this report is likely to modify will want it to be seen that the process of doing so is so complicated that you can't change anything," he said. "That is a proposition that has to be seriously questioned."

Copyright owners are concerned that it is too easy to make multiple copies of digital files. They are worried that there aren't enough protections in place to prevent people from making more than one copy of the same file and reselling them to numerous people.

However, the technology to solve this problem already exists.

A company called Re-Digi lets you resell your digital music while ensuring that you're not storing sneaky copies of it elsewhere.

When you download the service it works by letting you select music from your iTunes account for resale. Re-Digi then verifies that the music has come from iTunes, deletes the original file from your computer after pulling it from your PC to store it in its cloud servers.

Once the music is in the cloud, Re-Digi customers can then buy it. When Re-Digi customers purchase a file, the company transfers the ownership of the file to the new customer, ensuring that the old owner can no longer access it.

media_camera Re-Digi is the first service that lets you buy and sell pre-owned digital music. However they were sued for copyright violation in April.

All good, right? Wrong.

The company was sued for copyright violation in April of this year.

Re-Digi is appealing the decision.

Copyright solicitor Stephanie Faulkner told news.com.au that there are other ways around the legalities.

"A possible way to implement it could involve a statutory licence scheme under which a right to onsell a lawfully obtained digital copy is administered by a collecting society," she said. "This would work in much the same way as the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) currently administers performing and broadcast rights in music."

She added that it could be tricky to implement such as system, as digital content often originates overseas.

"Because most digital content is controlled by large corporations based in countries outside of Australia, local legislators have limited options available to them to reform the way in which digital goods are accessed and used in Australia consistently with copyright law."

One thing is for sure, this debate is far from over.

Watch this space.

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Originally published as 'We don't want you to resell your digital music'