Selling second hand CDs? What are you, some kind of terrorist?

The record industry has been grumbling about the second hand CD market for years now - all those discs, being sold legitimately, and they're not seeing a red cent from them. Trouble is, people have always had the right to sell their own property, should they wish, so flogging your old records has always been legal.

That's starting to change, reports Scientific American. New laws in Florida and Wisconsin, and planned for other states, is making the current system of selling your discs (queue up, bloke goes through your offered records into three mysterious piles, picks up the smallest of the three and says he'll give you a heartbreakingly small sum of money) a little more complex:

In Florida, the new legislation requires all stores buying second-hand merchandise for resale to apply for a permit and file security in the form of a $10,000 bond with the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. In addition, stores would be required to thumb-print customers selling used CDs, and acquire a copy of state-issued identity documents such as a driver's license. Furthermore, stores could issue only store credit -- not cash -- in exchange for traded CDs, and would be required to hold discs for 30 days before reselling them.

Yep, in Florida, you can't offload that double copy of B*Witched's Relax and Breathe without having your dabs taken. Clearly, this is a lot more effort than its worth - both for the store, forced to hold the records for a month before they can sell them (what is that, quarantine? To check they've not got cooties?) - and for the seller, who can no longer turn his unwanted discs into vodka, cigarettes or rent.

Second hand stores are already having trouble competing with plummeting CD prices and eBay; the inability to buy stock for cold hard cash could make it harder for them to attract stuff people might want to buy. The second hand CD industry is one of the shining, successful lights of recycling - so why would anyone seek to kill it?