Bopaboo Launches ‘Legal’ MP3 Trading Service

One of the problems with buying music tracks online is that they have zero resale value. Unlike with, say, a CD that you can trade in at the local music shop, you can’t legally trade tracks you no longer listen to for other ones. Until now—or at least that’s the hope of Bopaboo, which has created a digital marketplace where users operate mini download stores, as CNET News reports.

The company’s tagline is “stop illegally sharing, and start legally selling.” iTunes Store buyers are out of luck, because Bopaboo (naturally) won’t take any DRM-encoded tracks. That’s because they won’t work on another person’s iPod or iPhone without having access to the first person’s account. But any legally-purchased MP3 files from Amazon MP3, eMusic, Napster, Rhapsody, Lala, and others that play on any music-enabled cell phone are game.

The question here is whether, as the report puts it, the recording industry is going to sue Bopaboo into oblivion. They shouldn’t, since people who purchase those MP3s legally own them. (The “license to listen to them” argument is BS, because it doesn’t apply to used CDs, after all.) Still, time will tell.

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