It seems to me (from First Sale Doctrine) that copyright protects against increasing the number of copies, not passing copies around.
Prior to easy copying, these would have been the same thing (copying a book being difficult), but it's worth thinking about the distinction for digital media.
Redistribution in this context would mean using ones copy to create further copies. If the number of copies you bought is the number you sold then you're simply further distributed the originals (allowed by First-Sale). The draftees would need to add a note in the interpretations section of the legislation to avoid such a discrepancy.
That reminds me of another bug in US copyright law: apparently there is consensus that first sale does not apply to "pure digital" works that are not delivered on physical media. There's some argument that making a copy and deleting the original is different from selling the original.
Fair point, the word "redistribution" probably isn't the right one. As you say, it is the generation of additional copies that pass to others that is against the spirit of copyright, not merely transferring the original copy in its entirety.
Yes, but while it's easy to see that, in spirit emailing an mp3 to a friend (and deleting mine)is "giving my copy", note that it looks a lot like "making a new copy".
That's why I think the distinction is quite important for digital media - giving your copy looks very similar to making a new one.
Again, a fair point, but I think we have to keep in mind that no law like this will succeed through enforcement alone, simply because the resources to do so robustly and with due process would be too great.
Rather, I think we should try to do what we did with drink driving here in the UK a few years ago: raise public awareness with simple, logical, objective arguments, so that behaviour that crosses the line becomes socially unacceptable and most people stop doing it voluntarily. Then you can leave alone those who are acting reasonably but not crossing the line, overlook the occasional mild infringement because you can't go after everyone, but throw the book at the minority who repeatedly go well over the line.
I think if you set out a system where the kind of personal, non-multiplicative use we have been discussing was clearly allowed, but making additional copies and sharing them with others was not, then that would be understood by and socially acceptable to the majority. For best results, throw in some long-overdue price-fixing penalties for certain Big Media organisations, because another major reason people feel entitled to copy anything they want is because they think they've been ripped off for years, but they don't notice that not everyone whose material they're copying was part of the big rip-off scams. I think for the general public to accept a reasonable degree of copyright as fair, you probably have to show that Big Media are also paying the price for systematically over-charging people for things like CDs for years.
I can't remember the details now, but there was an interesting survey into public attitudes not so long ago, IIRC by one of the consumer groups here in the UK. It did show a very sharp distinction between people who thought it should be legal to do whatever you wanted with stuff you'd paid for properly (almost everyone) and people who thought it should be legal to copy the material and offer it to unknown other people who hadn't paid for it via P2P networks (only 20-something percent). The same survey showed that in general, people weren't (or at least weren't admitting to) sharing material as widely as the anti-copyright brigade were claiming, but certain niches (typically students and children) had a very high proportion of infringers. The most common reason given by those people was that although they knew it was wrong, they thought they'd get away with it anyway.
The reason I describe all of that is that I think it makes the problem you mentioned a moot point. If there is general acceptance that multiple-copying and redistribution isn't allowed, then you can probably ignore the kind of one-off transfer you mentioned, because it will either be legal or an infringement of little consequence anyway. It's much more important to cut down the exponential distribution of illegal copies where each new recipient shares with many more, and it's fairly easy to identify likely cases because the chances of someone legitimately e-mail that MP3 to 15 different people on the same day are slim.
It seems to me (from First Sale Doctrine) that copyright protects against increasing the number of copies, not passing copies around.
Prior to easy copying, these would have been the same thing (copying a book being difficult), but it's worth thinking about the distinction for digital media.