True or not?

The problem with reading stuff on April 1st is that you're never quite sure whether it's real or whether someone is trying to pull a quick one on you.

This post from Tech Dirt is either a well-crafted April Fools, or an example of an increasingly scary trend in the world of business.

We've been noticing a trend in recent years of companies that sell physical goods trying to figure out ways to have those goods get some of the "advantages" of digital goods. For example, with physical products, once you sell it, in theory, the seller no longer owns a piece of the good. But with digital goods, they still hold the copyright, and often try to limit what you can do with the product even though you thought you "bought" it. So we've been disturbed by the rise of things like artist resale rights, which take away the right of first sale on artwork, and require you to pay the original artist every time you sell the product.