Digital file exchange and sales on tradebit.com
May 26, 2007 PC Tips, Reviews, Web Programming 1 Comment
Yesterday, while looking online for some information on a 33 year old motorcycle, I happened upon tradebit.com, a site that allows users to upload files that they wish to sell, then brokers them and integrates the listing with search engine capability and PayPal payment options.
As you might expect, the digital versions of repair manuals and other such things are much cheaper through a digital download than in the print form, where time and physical wear have destroyed many copies of older works. For the particular manual I was looked at, the download cost was $8.99, as compared to eBay listings of $30-60 for a print version of the same manual, in various states of disrepair.
The download itself was very easy, and consisted of simply giving my PayPal info to tradebit (you can also use a major credit card through PayPal, so that’s still an option). The 50mb file streamed relatively quickly (<5 min) and was a good scan of the original, a manual which was clearly in good condition.
Of course, with a user-contributed site like tradebit, you always have to wonder whether or not you'll always get a quality product for your money. I haven't uploaded anything to tradebit, so I'm not really sure how well they police whether or not the downloads are what they claim to be. I'm sure there's some sort of customer service structure in place, where you can complain if the download was misrepresented, but that would be the major question mark still in my mind about how successful a service like tradebit will be.
The other issue which occurred to me almost immediately was copyright. After all, people could simply scan copyrighted material into their computer, then upload it to tradebit and profit mightily from the purchase and consequent multiple resale of a single copy of the work. The site offers a 7-day free trial of their uploading service, so I'm going to find my old thesis on German punk rock and try to sell it for a reasonable price on tradebit. Hopefully I'll get a better idea of their copyright safeguards and how the selling works in general, then I can post on that aspect of the tradebit site.