So you listen only to MP3s. You have a crate of old records in the garage, a box of half-melted 8-tracks and cassettes in the attic, and stacks of dusty CDs in the bedroom. It would be a crime to music (not to mention a total loss of your initial investment) if you just tossed them all.

There’s Craigslist or eBay or pawn shops or thrift stores or used music stores or flea markets. Those plus a little time and effort and you can make as much as ten cents on your original dollar. More like five cents, actually. But you’ve preserved the music.

But what do you do with last year’s MP3s? If you stayed away from BearShare and LimeWire and other Gnutella clients and paid real money for your MP3s, it may have suddenly struck you that you are no longer purchasing music as much as you’re renting it.

That’s right, rented music. It’s an electronic file, after all, prone to eventual destabilization. Even if you burn it to some form of vinyl disc (yes, CDs are made of vinyl as well), it’ll only end up under a layer of dust before Mom or your significant other or your ex chucks it.

Your MP3 player will eventually break or be replaced, and how many of those MP3s will make the cut and end up on your new player?

But wait - what’s this? I can re-sell my old MP3 just like an old record? Hallelujah!

Bopaboo promises to offer just such a service. Bopaboo has been in public development for most of 2008, and posts its updates at its blog site. Maybe I should use the past tense, as there hasn’t been any recent activity there.

The basics of the service involve an eBay-like forum through which you may sell your “used” MP3 files at discount rates. All of the money received will go to Bopaboo, and the seller would receive a portion of the sale in the form of a credit toward their own purchase of any MP3 file - new or used - on Bopaboo.

One problem, of course, is verification. How can Bopaboo verify that you have sold the only copy of your easily duplicated MP3 file?

Although this is just my opinion (shared no doubt by the Federal Trade Commission), Bopaboo is a MAJOR scam. An MP3 file can only be sold once before its integrity as a tangible product is compromised, as far as any reasonable person can imagine. And Bopaboo keeps ALL the money! Give me a break!

If this “service” manages to open to the public before its criminally creative founder Alex Meshkin takes his FBI perp walk, steer clear. You’ll only be making it easier for him to pay his lawyers.

Scrud Kelley

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