Technology and media consumption have outpaced copyright law (see our previous coverage of electronic lending and reselling textbooks), and this is another area politicians and lawyers will have to grapple with soon. Technically it is illegal to sell a physical CD without wiping the files off your computer. But what consumer knows that? Who actually does that? Consumers have hundreds of billions of dollars of digital media on their computers. Most think they have bought it permanently, and are not simply “licensing” the right to use it. Should they not have the right to sell it on?
