Say you buy a pre-owned (second-hand) copy of a movie on a website like, say, Amazon.
AFAIK, no one who made the film or distributed it will ever see the color of your money, therefore, the prejudice and losses are comparable, if not worse (because they are a much larger scale system) to piracy. But Amazon, on the other hand, will make a profit.
Now, when you bought it brand new, there might even have been a message telling you to not resell it on the box or as a roll-up before the film. I understand that you shouldn't be able to resell, and that the user who would buy it would have to buy it new, which would make the distributors and the rights holders make profit (not sure what you should do with your copy though, trash it?).
And yet thousands of dollars (probably more) are made everyday by people and by amazon through the sale of second hand media (also books, audio tapes, etc). (And sometimes second-hand media sells for as little as 1 cent of a dollar on sites like these, which makes its price value even smaller for the sellers and the website, and the price difference for the buyer versus "buying new" impossible to fight.)
Yet, no one talks about this when people mention online piracy and circulation of copyrighted media that doesn't profit the copyright holders.
So, is there an understanding between Amazon and copyright holders that no one is aware of? Are second-hand physical goods not concerned by copyright laws? Is it impossible to enforce, and on what grounds? (every transaction has been recorded on a server and includes people's addresses, etc). Or is Amazon (and the likes, such as eBay, etc) such a giant and powerful company, that big media companies find it easier to target piracy websites "first" than these kinds of distribution websites?