World powers, Iran bid to break nuclear stalemate

ALMATY, Kazakhstan: World powers meet negotiators from Iran in Kazakhstan on Tuesday in the hope of reaching a breakthrough in the decade-long crisis over its nuclear programme, despite low expectations after years of dashed hopes.

They are hoping to coax concessions out of Iran by advancing a new offer but Tehran has already doused expectations by installing new centrifuges and saying it will not go beyond existing obligations.

The two-day meeting under the shadow of the Tien Shan mountains in the Kazakh city of Almaty comes as sanctions bite against the Islamic republic and Israel still refuses to rule out air strikes to knock out Iran's suspected nuclear weapons drive.

Little apparent progress has been made since the last such session of talks in Moscow in June 2012 ended without any breakthrough and the crux of the dispute remains Iran's insistence on not abandoning uranium enrichment operations.

"We don't expect any breakthrough. The Iranians have made different declarations in the last days. It depends if you take the positive or the negative ones," said one Western official who asked not to be named.

World powers will present Iran with a "good" offer, said Michael Mann, the spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

"We hope that Iran will seize this opportunity and come to the talks with flexibility and commitment to make concrete progress towards a confidence-building step."

A source close to the negotiations said that the world powers in their offer would stick to their insistence that Iran halts enriching uranium to 20 percent, shuts down its controversial Fordo uranium enrichment plant and sends abroad all uranium already enriched to 20 percent.

Previous reports have said that Iran could in return be offered a softening of the sanctions regime against Tehran, possibly starting with a lifting of measures against its gold industry.

The atmosphere has already been clouded by a UN nuclear watchdog report saying Iran started installing next-generation centrifuges at its Natanz nuclear plant, a move Washington said would be "provocative".

Meanwhile, chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said Saturday Tehran will not go beyond its obligations or accept anything outside its rights under the non-proliferation treaty (NPT).

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last say in all foreign policy matters, has effectively rejected the offer of direct US talks and appeared to order a tough line in Almaty.

Khamenei defiantly claimed earlier this month that even though Iran has no intention of developing nuclear weapons, the United States could not thwart Tehran if it wanted to.

The talks involve the so-called 5+1 world powers on one side -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States -- and Iran's team led by Jalili on the other.

They come with the lingering threat of Israel launching a unilateral strike on Iran just as it had done against the Osirak nuclear reactor in Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1981.

Such action would almost certainly drag the United States into a conflict it clearly wants to avoid and leave the global economy in peril due to the impact on the price of oil.

Strikes would also risk sparking a broader Middle East conflict -- a danger the region can hardly afford with the violence raging in Syria.

Analysts said Israel's "red line" would be a decision by Iran to enrich uranium above its current upper limit of 20 percent -- within reach of weapons-grade uranium but necessary for Iran's medical research.

Iran already has a nuclear power plant in the southern city of Bushehr -- built with Russian help -- but Khamenei has described atomic weapons as a "sin".

- AFP/fl

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Foursquare checks in to more revenue with credit card specials

Foursquare's latest offer: attach a Visa or MasterCard to your account and get $1 credited back to your card when spend $10 at Burger King.

(Credit:
Foursquare)

Money in the bank. That's the motivation behind a new Foursquare initiative that lets members link their Visa and MasterCard credit or debit cards and redeem money-back specials from participating merchants.

Foursquare, a company banking on check-ins to power its Explore discovery feature, aims to encourage more of its 30 million members to tell the application where they are with the additional freebies. The places-centric social network also hopes to cash in from the program. The company pockets a fee for every credit redemption it processes.

Today's announcement marks the first significant expansion to the startup's credit card specials program, which Foursquare launched exclusively with American Express two years ago. The program gives people automatic, coupon-free credit rewards for shopping at select venues.

Members can now sync Visa and MasterCard credit or debit cards with Foursquare to get $1 credited back to their accounts when they spend $10 or more at fast-food chain Burger King, the initial partner for the expanded program.

"Foursquare is in the business of connecting people with places, and places with people," Product Manager Noah Weiss told CNET. "We make money when those two parties are happy."

So how does it work, exactly? It's not simple, but it's also not terribly complicated either. People will see the Burger King credit card special when they check-in to the establishment or find it through Foursquare's Explore tab, which highlights nearby specials and places that might of be interest to individuals. After a person sync's his or her card with Foursquare, he or she can click to redeem the offer, and pay with the credit or debit card in question as they normally would -- meaning no coupon or voucher is required.

In the background, a company called First Data, Foursquare's technology partner, recognizes the transaction and offer to credit the special amount, in this case $1 at Burger King, back to the person's Visa or MasterCard account.

Foursquare still maintains a special relationship with AmEx, which has its own custom technology powering the purchase-to-credit process on Foursquare. The prestigious card company, for instance, is expanding its own presence on the location platform with a new spend-$20, get-$5-back special at AMC Theaters. Weiss said that hundreds of thousands of users have saved many millions of dollars as a result of the AmEx credit card specials. While he still considers credit card specials a "pilot" program for Foursquare, the deals, which net Foursquare a fee for each redemption, will eventually grow into a core pillar, alongside promoted updates and other to-be-announced merchant-friendly tools, of the startup's revenue model. Hopefully sooner rather than later. The Wall Street Journal reported that the company expected to bring in a measly $2 million in revenue for all of 2012.

Burger King is the first merchant partner to embrace the Visa and MasterCard credit rewards, but Weiss said that additional campaigns will be rolling out to users in the weeks ahead.

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Sharks Warn Off Predators By Wielding Light Sabers

Diminutive deep-sea sharks illuminate spines on their backs like light sabers to warn potential predators that they could get a sharp mouthful, a new study suggests.

Paradoxically, the sharks seem to produce light both to hide and to be conspicuous—a first in the world of glowing sharks. (See photos of other sea creatures that glow.)

"Three years ago we showed that velvet belly lanternsharks [(Etmopterus spinax)] are using counter-illumination," said lead study author Julien Claes, a biologist from Belgium's Catholic University of Louvain, by email.

In counter-illumination, the lanternsharks, like many deep-sea animals, light up their undersides in order to disguise their silhouette when seen from below. Brighter bellies blend in with the light filtering down from the surface. (Related: "Glowing Pygmy Shark Lights Up to Fade Away.")

Fishing the 2-foot-long (60-centimeter-long) lanternsharks up from Norwegian fjords and placing them in darkened aquarium tanks, the researchers noticed that not only do the sharks' bellies glow, but they also had glowing regions on their backs.

The sharks have two rows of light-emitting cells, called photophores, on either side of a fearsome spine on the front edges of their two dorsal fins.

Study co-author Jérôme Mallefet explained how handling the sharks and encountering their aggressive behavior hinted at the role these radiant spines play.

"Sometimes they flip around and try to hit you with their spines," said Mallefet, also from Belgium's Catholic University of Louvain. "So we thought maybe they are showing their weapon in the dark depths."

To investigate this idea, the authors analyzed the structure of the lanternshark spines and found that they were more translucent than other shark spines.

This allowed the spines to transmit around 10 percent of the light from the glowing photophores, the study said.

For Predators' Eyes Only

Based on the eyesight of various deep-sea animals, the researchers estimated that the sharks' glowing spines were visible from several meters away to predators that include harbor seals (Phoca vitulina), harbor porpoises (Phocoena phocoena), and blackmouth catsharks (Galeus melastomus).

"The spine-associated bioluminescence has all the characteristics to play the right role as a warning sign," said Mallefet.

"It's a magnificent way to say 'hello, here I am, but beware I have spines,'" he added.

But these luminous warning signals wouldn't impede the sharks' pursuit of their favorite prey, Mueller's bristle-mouth fish (Maurolicus muelleri), the study suggested. These fish have poorer vision than the sharks' predators and may only spot the sharks' dorsal illuminations at much closer range.

For now, it remains a mystery how the sharks create and control the lights on their backs. The glowing dorsal fins could respond to the same hormones that control the belly lights, suggested Mallefet, but other factors may also be involved.

"MacGyver" of Bioluminescence

Several other species use bioluminescence as a warning signal, including marine snails (Hinea brasiliana), glowworms (Lampyris noctiluca) and millipedes (Motyxia spp.).

Edith Widder, a marinebiologist from the Ocean Research and Conservation Association who was not involved in the current study, previously discovered a jellyfish whose bioluminescence rubs off on attackers that get too close.

"It's like paint packages in money bags at banks," she explained.

"Any animal that was foolish enough to go after it," she added "gets smeared all over with glowing particles that make it easy prey for its predators."

Widder also points out that glowing deep-sea animals often put their abilities to diverse uses. (Watch: "Why Deep-Sea Creatures Glow.")

"There are many examples of animals using bioluminescence for a whole range of different functions," she said.

Mallefet agrees, joking that these sharks are the "MacGyver of bioluminescence."

"Just give light to this shark species and it will use it in any possible way."

And while Widder doesn't discount the warning signal theory, "another possibility would be that it could be to attract a mate."

Lead author Julien Claes added by email, "I also discovered during my PhD thesis that velvet belly lanternsharks have glowing organs on their sexual parts."

And that, he admits, "makes it very easy, even for a human, to distinguish male and female of this species in the dark!"

The glowing shark study appeared online in the February 21 edition of Scientific Reports.

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Americans Targeted for Allegedly Running Underage Prostitution in Philippines

Arthur Benjamin is sitting at the edge of a small stage, wearing a lavender Hawaiian shirt and nursing a bottle of San Miguel Light beer. The 6-foot-6 mustachioed Texan lazily watches the half dozen or so girls dancing rather unenergetically around the stage's pole.

"I forgot your gift again, it's in the car," Benjamin says to one of the girls on stage, shouting above the pop music blaring from the speaker system.

The small, dingy bar, which Benjamin says he owns, is called Crow Bar. It's in a rundown part of the picturesque Subic Bay in the western Philippines, about a three hour drive from the capital, Manila. Home for 50 years to a United States naval base, Subic Bay has become synonymous with foreigners looking for sex in the long string of bars that line the main road along the coast.

Watch the full story on "Nightline" TONIGHT at 12:35 a.m. ET

The bars in this area are often packed with older foreign men ogling the young Filipina women available for the night for a "bar fine" of around 1,500 Filipino pesos, or just over $35. Many of the bars are owned and operated by Americans, often former military servicemen who either served on the base or whose ships docked here until the base was shuttered under political pressure in 1992.

Most of the prostitutes working in the bars are indeed 18 or older. But in the Philippines, just a small scratch to the surface can reveal a layer of young, underage girls who have mostly come from impoverished rural provinces to sell their bodies to help support their families.

Benjamin, 49, is, according to his own statements, one of the countless foreigners who has moved beyond just having sex with underage girls to owning and operating a bar where girls in scantily-clad outfits flaunt their bodies for patrons.

"My wife recently found out that I have this place," he tells an ABC News "Nightline" team, unaware they are journalists and recording the conversation on tiny hidden cameras disguised as shirt buttons.

Benjamin said that a "disgruntled waitress" had written his wife on Facebook, detailing his activities in Subic Bay.

"She sent her this thing saying that I have underage girls who stayed with me, that I [have anal sex with them], I own a bar, I've got other girls that I'm putting through high school, all this other crap," he said.

"All of which is true," he laughed. "However, I have to deny."

He sends a text message summoning his current girlfriend, a petite dark-skinned girl called Jade, who he said is just 16 years old. Benjamin says he bought the bar for her about a year ago and while most still call it Crow Bar, he officially re-named it with her last name.

"She needed a place to stay, I needed a place to do her. I bought a bar for her," he says, explaining that she lives in a house out back by the beach.

"You're not going to find anything like this in the States, not as a guy my age," he said as he looked down at Jade. "Ain't going to happen."

Benjamin is the latest target of Father Shay Cullen, a Catholic priest with a thick Irish brogue and fluency in the local language, Tagalog. Through his non-profit center called Preda, he's been crusading against underage sex trafficking in the Philippines for 40 years.

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Ancient continent hides beneath Indian Ocean

The sands of Mauritius are hiding a secret: deep beneath them lurks an ancient continent.

Trond Torsvik and colleagues at the University of Oslo, Norway, analysed grains of zircon found on the island's beaches, measuring the balance of lead and uranium isotopes to work out their age. This showed some formed almost 2 billion years ago – although the volcanic island is no more than 65 million years old.

So where did the grains come from? Torsvik thinks they are from fragments of continental crust beneath Mauritius that melted as the volcanic island formed. The team have named the proposed continent Mauritia.

It's a reasonable idea, says Michael Wysession at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. "It's hard to imagine how zircons could be there any other way."

Journal reference: Nature Geoscience, DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1736

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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Swimming: Magnussen reveals sleeping tabs 'tradition'

SYDNEY: World 100m freestyle champion James Magnussen -- who led the much-vaunted 4x100m Australian relay team which bombed spectacularly at the 2012 Olympics -- has claimed taking sleeping tablets was "a tradition".

The team last week admitted taking the prescription drug Stilnox, banned by the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC), as part of a "bonding exercise" ahead of the Games in London, where they failed even to reach the podium.

Five of the six team members took one of the sleeping tablets at a staging camp in Manchester after seeing a movie and going to dinner in a bid to build unity in the fiercely competitive team.

In an interview with Channel Seven aired late Sunday, Magnussen said during dinner that the discussion had turned to what previous relay teams had done to bond and the group had collectively decided to take the drug.

"The tradition had been, and what we did, was take Stilnox on its own with water," he said.

"We then sat around telling jokes, you know laughing, carrying on. It was really, I think, for a lot of us a chance to take a step back from the pressure."

Australian swimmers had previously used Stilnox to ensure a good night's rest before competition until the AOC banned it in the lead-up to London.

But use of the drug had been discouraged as far back as 2005, according to The Australian newspaper, which said former relay swimmers Michael Klim, Ashley Callus and Andrew Lauterstein had all denied taking it as a bonding tradition.

Recreational users of Stilnox often deliberately try to stay awake, which can induce a "high" and even cause hallucinations.

Magnussen, 21, denied he was out of control on the night when the team engaged in misbehaviour including door-knocking and prank-calling teammates but said he would not be repeating the incident.

The swimmer said he had learned "a lot about the repercussions of my behaviour" and admitted to being too arrogant before the Games.

"It has taken me a lot of reflection and a lot of time to admit that," he said. "But again I was inexperienced and I didn't know how big of a deal and how big of an event the Olympics was and how much of a part it was going to play mentally, and I didn't cope with it."

London was Australian swimming's first Games without an individual gold medal since the 1976 Montreal Olympics and marked Australia's lowest medal haul in the sport since Barcelona in 1992 with just one gold, six silver and three bronze.

Two reports into what went wrong in London found the squad lacked leadership and that "toxic" incidents such as drunkenness and bullying had gone unchecked.

-AFP/sb

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How MasterCard plans to transform mobile purchases

Pay for goods using MasterPass loaded on a smartphone.

(Credit:
MasterCard)

BARCELONA, Spain--The hype around mobile payments is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the coming transformation for how people purchase goods and services.

That's according to Ed McLaughlin, chief emerging payments officer for MasterCard, who spoke with CNET about his company's vision.
While at the Mobile World Congress conference, MasterCard unveiled its MasterPass system, which addresses not only mobile payments, but also all forms of digital transactions. MasterPass is designed for purchases made in stores, online, or on the phone.
"It's a foundation for moving to a world beyond plastic," McLaughlin said. "We're in a generational shift from the physical to the connected digital."

While other players are focusing on the traditional concept of mobile payment, or the idea of flashing your smartphone in front of a cash register to pay for clothes, food, and other items, MasterPass will attempt to unify all transactions under one system.
As a result, both the merchant and consumer have a consistent experience whether the purchase is made at the cash register with a phone or credit card, online, or through a browser on the smartphone.
"There's no e-commerce or m-commerce, there's just commerce," McLaughlin said.

That's not to say that mobile payments isn't a huge driver of what's going on in the industry, including at MasterCard. There are a few initiatives out there, on which MasterCard is also playing a part. Google, for instance, has had its Google Wallet out in the market for roughly a year and a half, but has seen limited adoption. ISIS, a joint venture between Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and T-Mobile, has started testing the service in Salt Lake City and Austin, Texas.

MasterPass is intended to tie it all together. For the consumer, MasterPass is a place to securely store credit card data, address books, and other important information in the cloud. It acts as a digital wallet that can use other branded credit cards as well. Bank, merchants, and other companies can offer their own wallets to consumers that are tied into MasterPass too. For online purchases, consumers can opt for a simpler checkout process with retailers who are participating in the program.

For merchants, MasterPass also includes a consistent method of accepting electronic payments regardless of location or device. More retailers are opting to use near-field communication, or NFC, technology to enable tap-and-pay functions at the register, as well as experimenting with different methods like the use of QR codes, and MasterPass is designed to address all of the different options.


Consumers in Australia and Canada will be able to sign up for the service through financial institutions in March. The U.S. will get access to it in the spring, the U.K. will get it in the summer, and it will gradually expand to other parts of the world, including China, Brazil and Spain.
MasterCard has lined up scores of financial institutions, including Citi and Commonwealth Bank in the U.S., merchants, and technology partners to help roll out the service.
So what's taking so long?

McLaughlin has an interesting way of describing the transition to a digital payments world: "It's happening, and it will happen when it gets better."

The seemingly contradictory statement underscores perfectly the complexity and snail's pace of progress that has weighed on the progress of mobile payments. The services and features are here, as evidenced by the initiatives of Google and the carriers, but for many people, it hasn't yet happened and things still need to get a lot better.
Just as it took a long time for consumers to warm up to the idea of paying bills through a Web site, there will be a slow progression toward getting people to take their wallet into the cloud.
It's been a journey just to get to where things are today. Previously, the carriers, banks, payment networks, and merchants all disagreed over which parties would take what cut. Ultimately, does the bank serve the customer? A merchant? Or Google? These are issues the payments industry is still settling.

MasterCard, for its part, is staying out of the fray. The company intends to stay in the background, aside from the MasterPass logo, and preserve the relationship between the merchant or bank and the consumer.

There remains, however, reluctance over the safety of these services, as well as a general lack of awareness. But ultimately, the move to digital is a good thing for consumers, McLaughlin said. For the first time, the act of paying could potentially become both easier and more secure. With traditional plastic credit cards, any effort to make things convenient often resulted in higher risks for the consumer.

Services such as MasterPass, or the ones provided by companies such as Square and Starbucks, also enable new ways to purchase items. Even now, restaurants and stores are experimenting with allowing consumers to order food or goods through mobile point-of-sale devices, allowing them to avoid checkout lines.
"It's an extension of what we've been talking about," McLaughlin said. "It's a huge leap forward."

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Picture Archive: Dorothy Lamour and Jiggs, Circa 1938

Dorothy Lamour, most famous for her Road to ... series of movies with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, never won an Oscar. In her 50-plus-year career as an actress, she never even got nominated.

Neither did Jiggs the chimpanzee, pictured here with Lamour on the set of Her Jungle Love in a photo published in the 1938 National Geographic story "Monkey Folk."

No animal has ever been nominated for an Oscar. According to Academy Award rules, only actors and actresses are eligible.

Uggie, the Jack Russell terrier from last year's best picture winner, The Artist, didn't rate a nod. The equines that portrayed Seabiscuit and War Horse, movies that were best picture contenders in their respective years, were also snubbed.

Even the seven piglets that played Babe, the eponymous star of the best picture nominee in 1998, didn't rate. And the outlook seems to be worsening for the animal kingdom's odds of ever getting its paws on that golden statuette.

This year, two movies nominated in the best picture category had creatures that were storyline drivers with significant on-screen time. Neither Beasts of the Southern Wild (which featured extinct aurochs) or Life of Pi (which featured a CGI Bengal tiger named Richard Parker) used real animals.

An Oscar's not the only way for animals to get ahead, though. Two years after this photo was published, the American Humane Association's Los Angeles Film & TV Unit was established to monitor and protect animals working on show business sets. The group's creation was spurred by the death of a horse during the filming of 1939's Jessie James.

Today, it's still the only organization that stamps "No Animals Were Harmed" onto a movie's closing credits.

Editor's note: This is part of a series of pieces that looks at the news through the lens of the National Geographic photo archives.

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Oscars 2013: 'Argo' Wins Best Picture

"Argo" took home the top prize as best picture at the Oscars Sunday night, with first lady Michelle Obama announcing the winner from the White House.

"You directed a hell of a film," co-producer Grant Heslov told director and fellow producer Ben Affleck. "I couldn't be more proud of the film and more proud of our director."

Affleck was snubbed in the directing category but humbly accepted the best picture Oscar as one of the three producers on the film. George Clooney was the third.

Affleck thanked Stephen Spielberg and the other best picture nominees and his wife Jennifer Garner for "working on our marriage."

"It's good, it's work," he said, adding, "but there's no one I'd rather work with."

For Full List of Winners

Acknowledging his last Oscar win, as a screenwriter for "Good Will Hunting," Affleck said, "I was really just a kid. I never thought I would be back here."

In the acting categories, Daniel Day-Lewis won the Oscar for best actor, being the first actor to three-peat in that category. As he accepted the award from Hollywood's greatest actress, Meryl Streep, he joked, "I had actually been committed to play Margaret Thatcher. ... Meryl was Stephen's first choice for Lincoln."

He also thanked his wife, Rebecca Miller, for "living with some very strange men," with each new role that he takes on.

"She's the versatile one in the family and she's been the perfect companion to all of them," he said.

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Jennifer Lewis won the award for best actress. She tripped on the stairs on her way to accepting her award but picked herself up and made her way to the stage, earning a standing ovation.

"You're just standing up because you feel bad that I fell and that's embarrassing," she said, before rattling off a list of thank-yous and leaving the stage looking slightly stunned.

Related: Oscars 2013 Live Blog

"Life of Pi," which had a total of 11 nominations, was another big winner of the night. Director Ang Lee took home the Oscar for best director over Stephen Spielberg and David O. Russell.

"Thank you, movie god," Lee said, accepting his award.

As expected, the film took home the first technical awards of the night for cinematography and visual effects. "Life of Pi" also won for best original score.

The first big acting awards of the night went to Christoph Waltz and Anne Hathaway in the supporting actor categories.

In one of the biggest tossups, Waltz claimed the award for supporting actor for his role in "Django Unchained." It was his second Oscar for a Quentin Tarantino film; his first was for Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds."

PHOTOS: Stars on the Red Carpet

As expected, Hathaway took home the award for best supporting actress for her role as Fantine in "Les Miserables."

"It came true," she said, launching into a breathy speech, in which she thanked the cast and crew, her team and her husband. "The greatest moment of my life was when you walked into it," she said.

Quentin Tarantino won the Oscar for best original screenplay for his slave revenge western "Django Unchained." He thanked his cast.

"I have to cast the right people," he said. "And boy this time did I do it."

Chris Terrio won the award for best adapted screenplay for "Argo," which also won for film editing.

For only the sixth time in Academy history, there was a tie at the Oscars. "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Skyfall" tied for sound editing.

See Other Ties in Academy History

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Amazon to open market in second-hand MP3s and e-books

A new market for second-hand digital downloads could let us hold virtual yard sales of our ever-growing piles of intangible possessions

WHY buy second-hand? For physical goods, the appeal is in the price – you don't mind the creases in a book or rust spots on a car if it's a bargain. Although digital objects never lose their good-as-new lustre, their very nature means there is still uncertainty about whether we actually own them in the first place, making it tricky to set up a second-hand market. Now an Amazon patent for a system to support reselling digital purchases could change that.

Amazon's move comes after last year's European Union ruling that software vendors cannot stop customers from reselling their products. But without technical support, the ruling has had no impact. In Amazon's system, customers will keep their digital purchases – such as e-books or music – in a personal data store in the cloud that only they can access, allowing them to stream or download the content.

This part is like any cloud-based digital locker except that the customer can resell previous purchases by passing the access rights to another person. Once the transaction is complete, the seller will lose access to the content. Any system for reselling an e-book, for example, would have to ensure that it is not duplicated in the transaction. That means deleting any copies the seller may have lying around on hard drives, e-book readers, and other cloud services, since that would violate copyright.

Amazon may be the biggest company to consider a second-hand market, but it is not the first. ReDigi, based in Boston, has been running a resale market for digital goods since 2011. After downloading an app, users can buy a song on ReDigi for as little as 49 cents that would costs 99 cents new on iTunes.

When users want to sell an item, they upload it to ReDigi's servers via a mechanism that ensures no copy is made during the transfer. Software checks that the seller does not retain a copy. Once transferred, the item can be bought and downloaded by another customer. ReDigi is set to launch in Europe in a few months.

Digital items on ReDigi are cheaper because they are one-offs. If your hard drive crashes and you lose your iTunes collection you can download it again. But you can only download an item from ReDigi once – there is no other copy. That is the trade-off that makes a second-hand digital market work: the risk justifies the price. The idea has ruffled a few feathers – last year EMI sued ReDigi for infringement of copyright. A judge denied the claim, but the case continues.

Used digital goods can also come with added charm. ReDigi tracks the history of the items traded so when you buy something, you can see who has owned it and when. ReDigi's second-hand marketplace has grown into a social network. According to ReDigi founder John Ossenmacher, customers like seeing who has previously listened to a song. "It's got soul like an old guitar," he says. "We've introduced this whole feeling of connectedness."

It could be good for business too if the original vendors, such as iTunes, were to support resale and take a cut of the resell price. Nevertheless, Amazon's move bucks the industry trend. Microsoft's new Xbox, for example, is expected not to work with second-hand games.

But the market could change rapidly now that Amazon's weight is behind this, says Ossenmacher. "The industry is waking up."

This article appeared in print under the headline "Old MP3, one careful owner"

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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