system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Internet piracy is illegal while brick-and-mortar stores selling used music/movies are legal. Why is this?

I did a search for "piracy" and "piracy used stores" and found similar discussions but nothing addressing this specifically, so I apologize if I still managed to miss something.

Every logical argument I've heard against piracy is that it hurts content creators by depriving them of sales. Doesn't a used music/movies store do the same thing? There's an awesome store in my city that sells some new, mostly used music and movies from every genre imaginable on every medium imaginable from cassette tape to blu-ray. The bulk of their used inventory comes from people trading in their own music and movies for store credit or cash. Stores like Gamestop do the same thing for video games. Going off the "denying the content creators of sales" argument, I would think this would be even *worse* than piracy because when you buy Game of Thrones used on blu-ray, not only is HBO not profiting off that sale but some other third party *is* turning a profit. How is this allowed?

To be clear, I'm talking specifically about "merchants" in the traditional legal sense - namely, someone regularly dealing in the kind of goods being sold. This separates established used stores from eBay sellers or thrift stores that may sell used DVDs but don't ordinarily deal in them and aren't set up for that express purpose. My bias is that I have no bias - I don't care one way or the other about piracy. I don't pirate media personally, but really just because I'm too busy to enjoy anything I would download. Lord knows I put Limewire through it's paces back in the day.
gpt
> Doesn't a used music/movies store do the same thing?

No.  The content creator already profited from the original sale.  The fact that they don't profit from each subsequent sale is irrelevant.

Contrast with piracy where there is no original sale and the content creator gets zero profit.