Bitcoins booming?
...
Rising from roughly $13 at the beginning of the year, the price of a single bitcoin blasted through the $100 barrier last week, according to Mt. Gox, a site where users can swap bitcoins for more traditional currencies.
On Tuesday, the price of a single bitcoin had topped $200. On Wednesday, it hit $266 before a flash crash dragged it back down to just over $100. By Thursday, bitcoins were trading for around $150.
...
With Bitcoin, “I can access my money from any computing device at any time and do whatever the heck I want with it,” he said. “Once you move your money into the cloud why would you ever go back to putting your money in the bank?”
Many Wall Street veterans are skeptical — and they may feel vindicated after Bitcoin’s latest tumble.
“Trading tulips in real time,” is how longtime UBS stockbroker Art Cashin described Bitcoin’s vertiginous rise, comparing it to the now-unfathomable craze that saw 17th-century Dutch speculators trade spectacular sums of money for a single flower bulb.
...
Whose MP3s Are They, Anyway?
...
Launched in 2011, ReDigi is basically a digital version of a used-record store. You can sell the company your old MP3s, and you can buy "used" MP3s that other people have sold.
...
But, not surprisingly, record labels don't like the idea of people buying and selling used MP3s.
...
Do you really own something if it's just a bunch of ones and zeroes on your computer? If you take a digital song and you move someplace else, did you actually move it or did you just make a copy and destroy the original?
...
So does that mean you can't sell your MP3s? No. It just means that you can't sell them on ReDigi.
The judge said that the first sale doctrine does apply to digital works, but it only protects the sale of that " 'particular' phonorecord, be it a computer hard disk, iPod, or other memory device onto which the file was originally downloaded."
...
--Andy
