Discussion:
What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state? CA
Not sure if this is the proper forum,...but here goes..
There are several internet music distribution companies that obtain
barcode licenses, and then sell them to individual music artists in
order to enable them to sell their music CDs. These companies are
legally able to do this. They in effect become the distributor and
the artist is the publisher. If one were to obtain a barcode in such
a way, and instead of putting on a CD, were to put that on a
self-published book that were put on sale on Amazon, would that
violate any law? To further define the scenario, there would be *no*
music cds sold. And the barcode obtained for the music cd *is*
compatible with the barcode required by Amazon. The barcode bought
thru the music distributor is approx $40, whereas buying a barcode from
the UPC Council is $700 (but you get 10K codes)...so for small budget
publishers, this would be a huge savings. Is there anything wrong
with doing this? Are there any kind of law being broken by doing so?
Thank you,
mambo2000
Answer:
What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state? CA
Not sure if this is the proper forum,...but here goes..
There are several internet music distribution companies that obtain
barcode licenses, and then sell them to individual music artists in
order to enable them to sell their music CDs. These companies are
legally able to do this. They in effect become the distributor and
the artist is the publisher. If one were to obtain a barcode in such
a way, and instead of putting on a CD, were to put that on a
self-published book that were put on sale on Amazon, would that
violate any law? To further define the scenario, there would be *no*
music cds sold. And the barcode obtained for the music cd *is*
compatible with the barcode required by Amazon. The barcode bought
thru the music distributor is approx $40, whereas buying a barcode from
the UPC Council is $700 (but you get 10K codes)...so for small budget
publishers, this would be a huge savings. Is there anything wrong
with doing this? Are there any kind of law being broken by doing so?
Thank you,
mambo2000 This is simply a question of contract law. If the music distributor says that the barcode can only be used for music CD's, then if you use it on a book, then you would most likely be liable for breaching the contact you have with the music distributor. You won't go to jail, but you could be liable for damages -- it all depends on the contract.