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First-Sale Doctrine Lost Overseas
Max Hyre writes "In a 4-4 decision, the US Supreme court let
stand the Ninth Circuit's decision that
the First-Sale Doctrine (which says once you buy something, the maker
gets no say in what you do with it) only applies to goods
made in the US. That Omega watch you bought in Switzerland last
year? It's yours now—forever. You can't sell
it without Omega's permission."
That is the most absurd and arbitrary distinction I've ever heard. A law of convenience if I ever heard of one. One step closer to stripping our rights in the name of international legal harmony.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
"In a 4-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme court let stand the Ninth Circuit's decision that the First-Sale Doctrine (which says once you buy something, the maker gets no say in what you do with it) only applies to goods made in the US. That Omega watch you bought in Switzerland last year? It's yours now—forever. You can't sell it without Omega's permission."
How are those last two sentences related to the rest of the summary?
And you can't pass it on without my permission!
that they based it on copyright law: an Omega logo on the watch.
I thought it would be something like a signed contract, or buying from a foreign wholesaler, then importing to the US.
But the copyright on the logo?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
It seems like the dominant trend in U.S. legislation is that if favors rich corporiations and individuals, at the cost of what seem like basic freedoms of common citizens.
Does anyone know, historically, whether all countries have this trend? And if so, historically, what things (if any) have lead to the reversa of these trends? I.e., does it require a reboot (i.e., full-blown revoluion), or is even that never enough?
only applies to goods made in the US.
So nothing then? Why pick a Swiss watch? Why not go with something like a Nike football. Good ole' American Nike making American football, right? Wrong. I bet all the clothes on me right now came from Vietnam or Cambodia or Thailand or some other Asian fabric powerhouse. Donating them to a Goodwill store to be resold would be ... illegal?
Furthermore the article notes CostCo but what about Wal-Mart and Target. They resell these same articles of clothing as a middleman. Do they have some special contract protecting them from the largest copyright lawsuit to ever hit the retail industry?
This is so bizarre and just another indication of how copyright is seriously broken. If I understand the article, it's just because there's an Omega emblem on the watch? So since CostCo now owns that watch, they can chip the logo off and sell it for whatever price they want? This makes about as much logical sense as smearing my face with my own feces before a job interview.
Is there any lawyer out there with some background in this that might tell me what implications this holds for something like clothing being sold at Wal-Mart on the cheap? Or does it need to have an MSRP on it? How does this apply to software developed here but pressed overseas? So many questions I could dream up to ask about this new court decision.
My work here is dung.
Like speeding, just because a law exists doesn't mean I will obey it. If I want to convert my Watch to cash, I will find a way to do it.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Nothing illustrates the collective ridiculousness of the current Supreme Court than this decision.
So now, foreign companies have vastly greater control of their products in your home than American companies do.
That is not exactly a decision that is in the best interest of the American people.
The headline is overstating things a lot. The First-Sale Doctrine isn't lost overseas. Since this is a 4-4 tie decision by the Supreme Court, only the lower court decision is upheld. There is no precedential force behind the decision at all. Thus, the only thing that can be said about this is that Costco loses this particular instance, but the right of First-Sale overseas remains in effect since this decision isn't useful for any subsequent precedent.
http://www.slate.com/id/2109077/ --- A good analysis of what happens when a tied decision occurs.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
Does it applies to leaks ?
Do they really think that anyone is going to care? You will see those watches resold. Good luck trying to stop people from reselling tangible goods.
Palm trees and 8
What does a 4-4 decision mean, anyway? TFA called this a "non-decision" but if that's the case, what are we reading about besides some remarks on the issue? Anybody got any clarification, because the folks at Forbes' sure don't.
I'm disabling ads until because I choose not to reward redesigns that are less usable than "view source".
I bought my Omaega watch from Kazakhstan!
Laws are legal, after all.
Blar.
Lol. Even in Iran you are allowed sell your stuff second hand without permission. What the fuck is going on over there in the states? I thought Obama would bring a new age of freedom, not bend you all over and make you give 2 good coughs.
The problem with allowing third-party imports to be sold is that consumers will buy the items, expecting the manufacturer to support them (providing warranty service at a minimum). If the product in question is not sold directly domestically, then the manufacturer may not be prepared for the support. Further, the product may have been sold in a country where the cost and level of support is different.
The solution is to require that any imports not authorized by the manufacturer must be clearly advertised as not supported by the manufacturer, with all service provided by the importer.
Since it's only appled to goods made in the US, wouldn't it have been simpler for them to just list them? As in: {} (the null set)
is the reason for the 4-4 split. She recused herself because of having been the solicitor general of the US.
Having argued so many other cases for the RIAA^H^H^H^H Obama Administration, she'll be recusing herself a lot as cases work their way up to the court.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
They've posted the audio and transcript of the oral argument online.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio_detail.aspx?argument=08-1423
http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/08-1423.pdf
One might actually learn something from the actual arguments about what the decision means. The actual decision itself is uninformative: it just declares the circuit court's decision affirmed by a 4-4 vote. It doesn't even say who voted which way, though I bet you could infer it from looking at the transcript.
"prevent U.S. retailers from selling goods they obtained overseas."
There is a difference between "produced overseas" and "obtained overseas".
Everyone making ridiculous claims that this applies to all goods manufactured outside the US take a Chill pill. If it can be legally imported for sale to the US then the doctrine still applies. It's goods that are NOT imported for sale that cannot necessarily be resold. The summary is false and misleading.
-- Adam McCormick
Until people wake up and realize that they do not owe copyright owners anything, nothing will change. I had a conversation a few weeks ago with a person who used to work for the recording industry, and when I suggested that there might not be any ethical problem with downloading unauthorized copies of music and movies, he became so emotional that the conversation ended with him demanding that I never speak to him again. When the people "on the other side" of the issue are fighting like it is a matter of life and death, what hope do the rest of us have when most people just do not see copyright as being a particularly big deal?
Palm trees and 8
while supplies last !
Yours In St. Petersburg,
Kilgore Trout, C.E.O.
The US' legal lap-dog.
"Such an even split among the Justices has the effect of upholding the lower court decision at issue, without setting a nationwide precedent."
What would that be? RTFAA? :(
So the Dell notebook that's made in China cannot be resold? The article says this indecision would trigger more companies to move manufacturing overseas--way to go if they do that. I guess most corn-based products are safe but they're one-use.
What does a tie like this imply? The Supreme Court will hear a similar case again or they will ignore it?
The summary is written is misleading. The distinction made by the Ninth Circuit depends both on where an item was made as well as where it was sold. If you legally purchase a foreign made product in the US (ie from an authorized reseller like Walmart), then the right of first sale still applies. However, you can't buy foreign products in a foreign country and then resell them in the US without permission.
I still think it's a bad decision but the summary makes it out to be even worse.
The following sentence from TFA might be worth pointing out:
The decision [...] has serious implications for U.S. retailers that obtain their goods on the gray market.
As fas as I see you are still free to sell you watch if you please. What you can't do is to turn selling watches into a business while getting these goods from the gray market.
Who refused to recuse himself when presiding over a case involving his good friend and hunting buddy, Dick Cheney.
Meanwhile "conservatives" lose their collective mind that Kagan might "support the RIAA/Hollywood" when in fact she behaves properly.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
There they have a different system where creators have more control of their works.
I'm a bit confused by the wording of the ruling, does this apply to goods purchased online via a company outside of the country and shipped to me? For example, if I purchase a video games and/or consoles from a source outside my own country/region, does this mean I won't be able to sell these items at some later date if I so desire?
FUCK YOU .gov
Get your guns Davey....Liberty is on a thin thread.
Facism [fay-siz-uhm]
Discrimination based on Physiognomy
But wait, it gets better! This decision is based on a copyright claim over the tiny fucking logo on the back of the watch! Ridiculous barely begins to describe it.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
WTF? Nothing is made in the USA anymore, how does this help anyone?
But still....
I hope anyone wishing to sell something belonging to them goes right ahead in spite of anti-American (anti-freedom) laws that American politicians pass and courts unwisely uphold. Exercise civil disobedience!
I'm guessing this has more to do with companies who go overseas, buy goods there at cheaper prices than a parent company would like to see them sold in the US (either new or used from people in that country who bought them) and then brings them back into the US to sell.
Think how inconvenient it would be for companies if they prices their goods differently in different countries and then someone circumvents that by moving the goods from a cheap market back into an expensive one. I'm guessing that's what's really at stake here, not whether someone can sell a souvenir they picked up in Europe (although of course the intent and the actual impact of things like this are often not the same... like too many things, selling the souvenir may be technically problematic and just overlooked because it is insignificant economically. Until someone in power wants to bother someone they don't like using the legal system, of course...)
It only affects games which have a logo. Shit, that's all of them.
and the power falls to the people of the United States when it is clear the government and the courts no longer are not only not in sync with the wishes of the people that give them permission to govern, but so far out that I, and indeed no sane man woman or child is ever only going to not follow their rules because they are so patently ridiculous and invoke 0 fear that any sane jury of my peers would ever find anyone guilty of a crime....ever. I've heard of a kangaroo court and now think a new term should be coined. A jester government. A government that makes laws that are so stupid and ridiculous that all you can do is scratch your head, laugh and move on. I don't know of anyone who would follow this law if they even were able to believe it was credulous. It doesn't even pass the laugh test.
It's like Ford or Dodge telling you that you cannot sell your vehicle.
I am sure someone has done a good job of making the water muddy on the specifics, but when you get down to it the manufactures never want you to own anything. The permanent dream is for you to always have to pay in pure rental agreement. Basically its the software model being forced onto the physical property model.
Yep just sitting here watching the idiots lose their freedoms one at a time while they continue to vote for their parties like there is a real different. Both seek to take your liberty away, they merely disagree on how to accomplish that!
I believe there is more here than Omega watches, imagine this applied to other 'copyrighted' items, like a Sony game, a Warner Bros Movie, a Telarc CD, a Apple computer.....
If this decision was broadly applied to all resale (new or used) its a mess that only the corporations could love, in effect it invalidates ownership and turns it into licensing.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
Why? Partly because she was the Solicitor General:
SHAPIRO: How common is it for a new justice to have to recuse from the number of cases that Kagan is recusing herself from?
TOTENBERG: Well, it's not common because, at least more recently, we haven't had top Justice Department officials migrating to the court. But it's happened many times in our history. Justice Thurgood Marshall, who was solicitor general, for example, recused himself from about half the cases the court heard in his first year. But that high number was largely because he remained SG until he was confirmed.
And Kagan didn't do that. She stopped being SG right after her nomination. So, this high number of recusals, I think, is front loaded. She'll probably be recused from about a third of the docket this year, and then next year her recusals will plummet to zero or something close to that.
One interesting thing, Ari, is that there are a number of cases that she's reused herself from that she really had nothing to do with. And these are cases that generally involve commercial disputes. And the Justice Department filed a notice that it was taking no position, and these are just routine evaluations. They're done by lower-level lawyers but she signed the filing, so she's taking herself out of those cases.
SHAPIRO: And when she's recused and there are eight justices on the Supreme Court, what happens then?
TOTENBERG: Well, the case goes forward, as usual. And if there's a four-to-four tie, the lower court opinion is automatically affirmed without the Supreme Court issued any opinion, then presumably the issue can come up in another case, later, where Kagan can participate.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
So a company, for example a book publisher, can move manufacturing overseas and require distributors to purchase from their overseas location? Then those books can be prohibited from resale?
Wouldn't this provide a major financial incentive to move any remaining manufacture and sales out of the U.S.?
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
First, no court has yet ruled whether the watches are covered by the Copyright Act simply because of the log on them. See the government's amicus brief urging the petition being denied at pp. 20-21 (25-26 in the PDF). Costco's misuse-of-copyright defense has yet to be evaluated - the court may ultimately rule that logos do not place an imported product under the umbrella of the copyright act.
Second, the Ninth Circuit decision specifically calls out several specific factors of this case, including that the firm in question clearly did not set up shop outside the U.S. to gain the protection of the bar on import present in Section 602 of the Copyright Act. The scary hypotheticals people are raising have not been ruled on.
I'd be interested to hear what people think the import ban actually protects against if the first sale doctrine applies to sales outside the U.S. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any protection the ban on imports adds iif it is not a carve-out from the first sale doctrine. Illegally copied works are already covered by other provisions of the act. Infringing in two ways (import and distribution) doesn't increase the damages a plaintiff could protect. On a first blush analysis, a contrary decision seems to render the Section 602 import ban meaningless - something courts are loathe to do when interpreting law. Again, though, I haven't done more than a superficial analysis on this point.
None of this is to say the policy outcome is good, or even that the court made the right decision. I just want to clarify that the decision is not nearly as bad as the summary makes it sound, even without taking into account the fact that this is non-binding precedent except in the Ninth Circuit.
How exactly is what you described any better? You are still basically saying that if I have in my possession an item that I purchased overseas, I am not legally allowed to sell it to anyone else, even though I would be legally allowed to sell it if I had purchased it in America.
It is ludicrous either way. Nobody is going to stop and think, "Did I buy this in another country? Am I allowed to sell it to someone else?" People are going to continue to exercise their natural right to transfer ownership of their property to other people, at whatever price they see fit. Any decision or law to the contrary is a bad idea, it is unenforceable, and it will just result in even more of a disconnect between the law and the average person.
Palm trees and 8
... before physical products were effectively leased and came with software style EULA's that said basically that you were paying a usage fee.
And while this isn't quite getting us to that point, we're a lot closer now...
Check your premises.
Imagine a computer with a copyrighted brand stamp on it.
Imagine a memory chip or a video card . . .
Congress will fix this, because it's just commercially TOO crazy.
That money I paid for it? It’s yours now. Forever. You can’t spend it without my permission.
Distributed Denial of APK: It takes 15 seconds to reply to him anonymously, but wastes tons of his time if we all do it.
Isn't the point of having 9 members on the Supreme Court to avoid ties? If they can't ALL take part they shouldn't be dealing with the case until they ALL can...
All music CDs, books, DVDs, etc sold in the US will be produced outside the US.
Nobody is going to take you through the courts for selling your grandfather's Rolex. But if you form a watch company and get a sweet deal on 5000 Rolexes through some intermediary company in Asia, and they offer you another 5000 when you've sold the first lot, then you might get a court summons. These are the people the orginal manufacturers are upset about. They want their expensive looking shops in the premier end of the mall selling their products at a high mark up, and they get upset when a bulk distributor like Costco manages a deal and undercuts the places on Fifth Avenue.
It's the Fifth Avenue shops that will be the ones who've got this one into the courts; they know people will stop shopping there if Costco do a better deal and they are terrified the online traders like Amazon will jump on board next.
Will overseas manufacturers be able to stop pawn shops from reselling user trader foreign goods and force them to check that the individual had the permission to resell? I can only see this being used by over aggressive DA's in the US to put pressure on pawn shops they don't like in case they illegally bought a foreign made/sold object. So great. Gotta be careful you're not breaking the law buying that new watch from a small business or the police might be able to repossess your items in the name of them being used in a crime.
The Ninth Circuit has rendered its decision. Now let them try to enforce it.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Slashdot is over-sensationalizing a bit, or a lot.
This does not appear to have any impact on individual rights. You buy something in the US, is yours, you do as you please, including resell it. This covers a different situation where a company goes and buys foreign products in a foreign market, perhaps even with an agreement explicit or implicit as to what they can do with them, but then brings them over to the US for sale. That is what is at issue here. Costco said "We can do that if we want," the 9th Circuit said "No you can't," and the SC is split. That's rather different than an individual doing anything. If an individual bought one of those watches from a US store, they could then do as they liked.
So this isn't an issue for rights for you as an individual, don't worry. It is an issue for differential pricing. A company might wish to sell a product for different prices in different markets. Say a product costs $5 to make and get to a country for sale, $5 total cost, everything after that is profit. In the US, they discover they can sell it for $25, because the product is unique and people have money. In India they can't get that, people have less money, they have to sell it for $7 which they still make a little on, but not as much. These are all wholesale prices.
Well what someone like Costco might want to do is go and buy the product in India and import it. There is an arbitrage opportunity. Let's say it costs Costco $10 to buy retail, and $5/item to get them and ship them over. That still puts there per item cost at $15, well below the $25 they'd have to pay normally. That of course lets them undercut competitors.
That is what is trying to be stopped here. The companies don't want them to do that, they want to be able to have different pricing in different markets. Costco fought back arguing first sale, that after they sold it they can't tell Costco what to do.
I'm not saying the courts have made the right decision, but as the parent notes, this is not an issue for your and my individual rights. We go to a store (or online) in the US and buy something, first sale applies same as ever this has nothing to do with it.
Awesome protectionism in the former home of capitalism and free trade...
With all the recent development the U.S. should be hornest and finally give itself an honest name.
"People's Republic of America" might be a start.
All this means is that export product produced in wholesale lots for overseas buyers cannot be re-exported for retail sale in the U.S. without the consent of the manufacturer. If you want to stock genuine Omega watches, with genuine Omega logos, product designed by Omega for the American market, you must deal with Omega's U.S. distributors.
As I see it, there are 3 factors going on here.
1st is Copyright. Foreign Copyright, if duplicated in the US, trade-agreed w/ the US, or NOT, must now be honored by US citizens. I don't recall agreeing to this arrangement when I purchased any good. Also, unless foreign countries with which we have Trade and Copyright agreements with, are reciprocating the same level of oversight with which this ruling precipitates, this is unilateral trade extortion for being the richest country on the planet. Are we reaping what we sow? Could ACTA make this better, worse, irrelevant?
2nd is First-sale. The distinction with this ruling, is where do "US made goods", begin and end. Presumably now, any good purchased outside the US, and brought back, is subject to all Copyright after the initial sale. It's true that Copyright is not the same as a License, however this scenario makes the argument that the 2 are now equal, and physical goods have imaginary boundary. Is every pawn shop, internet resale posting, and classified ad in the US now illegal?
3rd is Freedom. As a free citizen, I must be allowed to participate in commerce between parties, both public and private. As I see it, we are now legally required to get external authorization from a party which has already profited from a sale, and must now give OK for commerce which would otherwise exist independent of the party knowing. They're now lumping the 3rd party into sales of goods, which for decades and possibly centuries, hasn't needed the OK. This is an ACTIVE assault on a basic freedom to exist and participate in trade in a presumably free society. International trade is now effecting your abilities to participate in free trade within the US. That is of course, if you care, and feel this law is representative of you.
Overall effect of this? Let the Copyright lawsuits ensue. I imagine an exponential increase in the amount of lawsuits brought to the courts of East Texas. As a Texan, I'm curious how the 'states rights' and small Gov. Republicans here and in the US, view such a ruling.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
He was right when he dressed down the supreme court publicly before and he needs to do it again. This kind of crap is outrageous. What kind on nonsense says when you buy something the company you purchased it from has the right to tell you what you can do with it? How out of touch with reality can they possibly be? I guess when I buy ground beef I have to get Winn Dixie's permission to use it to make meatloaf? It's so preposterous I can barely conceive of something like this being seriously allowed.
prices can go UP UP UP and away.......for everyone.... Merry ho ho form the supreme court of the usa
While the 9th Circuit's ruling is unfortunate, it's not quite as bad as not being allowed to resell any items manufactured overseas. Whereas the 9th Circuit's decision applies to goods obtained overseas, goods legally imported into the United States would still be protected by the first-sale doctrine.
The decision still sucks, though. Not only do I think it's a perversion of copyright law to add a copyrighted logo to a watch in order to prevent importation that would otherwise be perfectly legitimate, but I also think it's a perversion of justice for copyright law to bar unauthorized importation of nonpiratical copies the way it currently does.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Outside the US.
The downside of being killed is the upside of being dead.
"You're right, poor choice of words. It's about good made outside the US, not bought outside the US. Thanks for clarifying..."
Wrong. It's not about goods made outside the US, but about goods imported illegally into the US. Read the 9th Circuit's decision if you don't yet understand the distinction.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
There was a 50/50 split on this?! How and why would anyone conclude that the first-sale doctrine should only apply to locally produced items? Much less 4 supreme court justices. These are dark times we are living in.
So does this mean no more importing video games or movies from other countries? How our rights have eroded indeed. I know game companies don't want me to be playing their RPGs in Japanese, but this is rediculous. It's an extension of regioning.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
but what about the store / supplies that first payed for it?
Second, the application of 109(a) after foreign sales would "`render 602 virtually meaningless'" as a tool against the unauthorized importation of nonpiratical copies because importation is almost always preceded by at least one lawful foreign sale that will have exhausted the distribution right on which 602(a) is premised. Id. at 319-20 (quoting Scorpio, 569 F.Supp. at 49).
The watches found their way to Costco via "unidentified third parties,"
Costco obtained watches bearing the copyrighted design from the "gray market"[1] in the following manner: Omega first sold the watches to authorized distributors overseas. Unidentified third parties eventually purchased the watches and sold them to ENE Limited, a New York company, which in turn sold them to Costco.
I am inferring from this that Costco could not prove that these were authorized replications of Omega's copyrighted material. By ruling in favor of Costco they set a precident which could allow me to sell pirate CDs I bought from 'an unspecified 3rd party' wholesaler in China and claiming 'First sale doctrine, bro; I'm just a reseller.' I get that, kind of, if were were talking about CDs, books, or movies.
Here is the part that is fucking retarded: Omega isn't talking about the watch, the watch isn't copyrighted. They are claiming infringement on their logo, the "Omega Globe Design," which just happens engraved on the watch, and which they hold a US copyright on. So by my read, Costco is free to file off the logo and sell them however they want.
PJ O'Rourke wrote a great book on politics and economics called Eat The Rich. In his book, he examines a number of different political systems and concludes that so long as there is rule of law and private property rights, almost any political system can function. This is true of capitalism, socialism, communism, and even fascism. Take away either of those two components -- rule of law or private property rights -- and you've got trouble.
This story is just another example of our disappearing private property rights. The basic test of ownership is disposal. If you have the right to dispose of an item in some way, through sale, donation, alteration, or destruction (safely, of course), then you own it. If you are prohibited from doing any of these things, then it is not really yours.
Proverbs 21:19
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/
> goods imported illegally
Pray tell, where in the decision is that limitation made? I don't see it anywhere. The summary of the facts at the beginning of the decision only talks about "gray market", not "illicit market", and does not state that the goods were (necessarily) illegally imported. They may have been, but AFAICS, the decision doesn't depend on that.
Just because the brand owner didn't authorize the importation, doesn't make it illegal.
Not yet.... it seems that the countdown has started, tho.
Does buying wholesale mean that the product comes with manufacturer approval to resell? If not, could this mean a lot of manufacturers could sue anyone who purchases at, Costco for example, and resells?
From 17 U.S.C. 602(a):
"Importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies ... of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies ... under section 106, actionable under section 501."
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
wtf is going on with our court system? every day is something more absurd.
this country is being dragged & held down by these idiot politicians & greedy law-makers.
To the law, there's no difference between selling one watch on Craig's list or selling thousands at Costco. The only difference is how likely you are to get caught.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Since my view of the case hinges on the chain of custody between the rights holder and the distributor getting murky and Omega claiming they were unlawful copies; I'm curious how they would have ruled if Costco bought the watches overseas themselves, and resold them here. If I am understanding them, this should be permissible.
17 U.S.C. 602(a):
"Importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies ... of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies ... under section 106, actionable under section 501."
It sucks, but it's the law.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Ummm... but that already applied. I'm in Canada. I once had a laptop produced for the U.S. market (my sister won it for high sales at work, in a U.S. chain that had storefronts in Canada). The warranty for the laptop - as written - applied only to the product within the U.S. That's why there are lots of laptops that have an "international" warranty now, so that if you take your laptop with you overseas and it breaks, it can be fixed in the country you are in. If not, you'll have to find somebody back in your home country to ship the laptop to, and have them handle the warranty work then ship it back to you.
It's not just the cost/level of support, it's the business presence and shipping costs. Fast-shipping a product replacement/repair from USA->USA is a bit different than from USA->Country X, and I've always just accepted it as such. If I needed an international warranty, I bought a product which stipulated it had one.
I see no reason why I couldn't resell my laptop from "country X" in the USA or Canada or whatever, so long as I'm not misrepresenting that the warranty applies in my own country, and there's nothing in the product itself that would be illegal in my own country. A bigger issue with that last one might be that different countries have different emissions, toxicity, and other such laws. A wifi card for certain countries may have an output level that's illegal in others, and a cosmetic product may contain levels of materials that aren't legal in some places. The solution I could see for that is that whomever sells it IN the USA had better be sure that it's a legal product for the USA...
If pills made in Canada have copyrighted symbols on them, you can no longer import them into the USA and sell them without the copyright holder's permission. Now Canada's negotiated low drug prices are unavailable to USA buyers. All medicine will now be produced outside the USA.
In EU the laws are better then the USA!
The consequence of this of course, will be the same as it always is when the law diminishes the rights of the people in favor of other interests. The people will disregard it. Whether the government reverses itself will depend solely on whether more money comes from oppressing the people (like the war on drugs: private prisons, law enforcement, fines, militarized police departments, permanent state of quasi-war on the lower classes) or not (like prohibition repeal: taxing liquor is easy since it's hard to make your own).
But that doesn't matter. We've gotten to the point where people are becoming (or long ago became) used to being criminals by default. We simply hide our illicit activities and proceed with our daily lives. The further the state pushes in this direction, the less and less people will respect the righteousness/necessity of the state. And one day, when it needs us desperately, we will not be there. In the words (WAY out of context) of Rorschach:
"...all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"... and [we'll] whisper "no.""
Costco obtained watches bearing the copyrighted design from the "gray market"[1] in the following manner: Omega first sold the watches to authorized distributors overseas. Unidentified third parties eventually purchased the watches and sold them to ENE Limited, a New York company, which in turn sold them to Costco.
Omega claims that the copies of the design were not "lawfully made under [Title 17]" in these circumstances. 17 U.S.C. 109(a).
Costco bought the watches from a company who can't say where they got them. I believe Omega is using the US copyright on their 'Omega Globe' engraving to try and stop what they believe to be the resale of counterfeit/stolen watches. This would not work for your ASUS example because those motherboards were legally imported.
Ordinarily, decisions by the Roberts Court are along idealogical lines. "Conservatives" on the court vote as a block, and the "Liberals" vote against them. On hearing the rendered decision, one can usually say, without having to look it up, which justices voted for and against the decision simply by identifying whether the decision pleases "Conservatives" or "Liberals". This decision, however, mystifies me. I cannot guess which justices voted to let the the 9th Circuit's decision stand, and which voted to hear the case and have the opportunity to fix the 9th's mistake. This is therefore a great opportunity to sort out the justices on a criterion other than partisan ideology. I am going to look up who voted each way, and then I'll know which justices are the idiots.
So a company can now do this:
Sell in the USA a Widget at 200 dollars. Sell the same Widget in Mexico for 100 dollars. Widget Made in Mexico.
So Company A does this.
Company B comes along and buys X number of Widgets in Mexico for 100 dollars, then sells them in US for 150 dollars, 50 dollars cheaper than Company A.
This is NOW illegal.
If you MADE the item in the USA, this would not apply and would still be legal... its more incentive for companies to move jobs out of the USA.
WTG.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
Sounds like they should stop selling their product cheaply to other distributors then - redress which is completely within their rights and within their abilities.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Remember that other nations do NOT have the same laws as the US. They have the right to make their own rules. Something that is 100% legal in the US can get you in trouble in another country.
As a practical matter with a single time they'd never know, but I really don't know the legality of the situation. If you go to another country and the law there is "You buy something, you can't resell it," well then doing so could potentially be violating the law. I doubt they'd charge you and if they did I doubt the US would extradite, but it could be.
Your individual rights vary per the country you are in. However if you are buying from US stores in the US, then first sale applies since it is all covered by US law.
If you want some kind of global guarantee, sorry the world doesn't work that way.
I agree. I am not sure how it works. I think though you might find they agree certain prices for certain markets and they don't like it when items get moved between markets.
When I was in India I noticed that the computer bookshops had local imprints of O'Reilly books for a fraction of the price back home (maybe 10-20% of the cost). They are printed under licence by a local printer and on the back they said 'only for sale in the Indian subcontinent.... illegal for sale outside of these countries.' or something like that. Paper is a bit thinner than the European printing, but the its the same text, same content etc. Naturally on my last day I scooped up an armful of the titles that I'd always quite liked to have a look at but couldn't justify buying and brought them home with me. I think it might be the same situation here.
I had some ebay items removed for "violating" a trademark. They were HK (Heckler & Koch) auto decals that I legally obtained. HK filed a complant with ebay. Pretty lame when you can't sell stuff you bought and own because someone else made it.
I do not play in the middle of the road
A vast difference, especially when you check the sorts of cases in which Justices Thomas and Scalia have failed to recuse themselves.
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/
Took 5 seconds of googling. Here is an analysis of why he should have recused himself rather than writing a poorly reasoned "excuse" to stay on the bench:
United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia should be commended for writing an extraordinarily detailed memorandum explaining his reasons for refusing to recuse himself from a case in which his duck hunting partner, Vice President Richard Cheney, is a named party. The Sierra Club alleges in the litigation that energy industry officials were de facto members of the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG), a federal energy task force chaired by Cheney, and that NEPDG’s records and minutes therefore must be made public pursuant to the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The statutory basis for recusal is 28 U.S.C. sec. 455(a), which provides that any judge “shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
This will give Nikon, Cannon, etc all the clout they need to prevent places like 47th Street Photo from selling gray market cameras in the US at prices lower than everybody else.
nearly equivalent to his allotment, for personal use.
Chicken feed. There is no law, nor any basis in the Constitution to set a limit on farming chickens.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If I had the power to destroy one fiendishly wrong-headed notion before I die, the following would be on the short list:
The justices did what they were supposed to do: Enforce the law as written.
Sigh. Have you seen the inscriptions over the Court? ""Equal Justice Under Law" coming, "Justice, the Guardian of Liberty" going. Maybe you've seen the statue of the blind-folded chick? Wanna take a guess what her name is?
The ultimate job of the Court is not just "to follow the rules." A third-grade hall monitor would be sufficient for that. The ultimate job of the Court is to find what is Just. It is the job of a god in the hands of flawed, fallible men. This is the reason why we are supposed to find our nine finest legal minds, our nine wisest elders.
In our finest legal traditions, we have found that the beginning of Justice, the bare minimum, is to keep the Strong from preying on the Weak, and that is why Dred Scott is such a famously reprehensible decision. We don't condemn the Sharia judges for stoning women to death because they're misapplying the rules. We condemn them for the evil they do by refusing to look beyond the rulebook. The Dred Scott Court cannot excuse themselves by crying "We were just following the rules" any more than other famously evil men can.
When we put guns in the hands of 18-year-old kids and tell them to go and kill in our name, we give them a warning. If the rules conflict with your conscience, if you do something you know is wrong by following the rules, you will one day be held accountable, and crying "I was just doing what the rules said I should," will not save you.
The job of the Court is to find Justice as best Humanity can in the year 2010. It is their black-letter job to stand in the gap and say "This rule, written by the Strong to steal from the Weak, is wrong and we will not abide it."
The Court is supposed to be the Conscience of our Nation, not nine bureaucrats bludgeoning people with the results of lobbies and politics.
The job of the Dred Scott Court was to keep men free. to be the "Guardians of Liberty" as inscribed, not to safeguard the pocketbooks of their kidnappers and rapists. The Dred Scott judges were not "Bad men, but good judges." They were evil men and bad judges as well.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Just cover the logo with a generic tag. If the buyer removes the tag and exposes the logo, that's their problem.
Dude, that ain't polygamy... that's cannibalism.
(Actually it's usually more like organ theft, since so many "body" parts wind up getting discarded in the process.)
I'd be willing to support a model where musicians get good salaries and bonuses, then we all make their recordings public domain --- sort of like government-funded academic research. But I'm not sure who's going to pay for it.
I supported exactly such a model with $50 three months ago. See a recent story about Musopen.
In the other direction, if copyright of your work extends to three generations, and you have the opportunity and talent, you can invest twenty years of your life in the holodeck project
But then you can't draw from other people's work still under copyright because you don't know who currently owns the legal right to sell you a license.
with the incentive of being able to provide financially not only for your self, but also for your grandchildren.
If you want life insurance, buy life insurance. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Copyright need not be.
I'd propose the consolidation of patents, trademarks, copyright and any similar intellectual innovation to a single bill.
Mr. Stallman would disagree.
Omega sold that watch to a distributor.
The distributor sold it to Costco.
Somewhere along the line it was imported to the US. According to this ruling, any of the purchases/sales along the way from the OEM to your wrist can be forbidden if Omega says so.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
You mean all 3 of them? This will be overturned as lunacy.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Sorry, but this first-sale-doctrine ship began taking on water decades ago when the absurd concept of a software "license" was allowed to be legally binding.
Send your timepieces into Cash4Watch dot com! We'll send you a prepaid envelope, carefully not able to disguise what valuables are inside. Then, once we receive your items (if we even decide to say we received them), we'll likely send you about 10 percent of the market value 6 to 8 weeks later! Try it now! Our business relies on first-time, once-only customers!
I don't know, some people just don't seem to 'get it' until enough people have been dicks to them.
If "it" here means 'syphilis', you might be onto something.
( ducks )
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
The synopsis draws an incorrect conclusion - the actual rule is that the first sale doctrine does not apply to goods first SOLD outside of the US, not manufactured. The Berne Convention, implemented through TRIPS, allows countries to choose how they want to apply exhaustion of rights (first sale), and the Supreme Court first suggested in dicta in the 1998 case Quality King v Lanza, 523 U.S. 135, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_King_v._L%27anza, that this is the rule the US would apply.
This is such a non-story it is ridiculous. Not only did the ruling not create precedent, but it directly follows what the Supreme Court suggested the law should be 12 years ago.
harm their trade in used goods?
You're showing your ignorance. First, the watches are not "used" Neither Costco nor the business Costco bought them from never even opened the packing. And two, no sells mean no money coming in. People shop at Costco, and Sam's Club, because of the cheaper prices they offer. I know, I used to shop at Costco and still shop at Sam's. I was just at Sam's yesterday shopping, and the only reason I shop there is because of the lower prices there. Hell, the fact is is I am on disability and get food stamps so I have to watch my spending, and I'm glad Sam's accepts the food stamps.
Another thing you've overlooked, or are ignoring, is that it was Costco that was sued not someone else. Of course all that matters to such people is large megacorporations and their political lackeys. If a business is one it is evil.
What this would really harm is eBay/craigslist/etc. aka the markets for used goods.
Now you're contradicting yourself. You say Costco is selling used goods but that this will not harm Costco.
Perhaps you didn't think it through, that you replied on impulse, and if so I hope you actually think it through first next tyme.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
At the time it was written, blacks were not considered part of "We the People".
They were wrong. That doesn’t mean the Constitution was wrong or needed to be changed, only that their interpretation of it was wrong and needed to be changed.
Some of the Founding Fathers were wrong, though not all, and the Constitution was written the way it was because they wanted it that way. Thomas Jefferson wrote the "Declaration of Independence" and in early drafts he wrote how everybody enjoyed the same rights, including Blacks and women. However some of those who signed the declaration said that they had to be removed otherwise they would not sign it. But as his estate Monticello says:
"Thomas Jefferson was a consistent opponent of slavery throughout his life.[1] He considered it contrary to the laws of nature that decreed that everyone had a right to personal liberty. He called the institution an 'abominable crime,' 'a moral depravity,' a 'hideous blot,' and a 'fatal stain' that deformed 'what nature had bestowed on us of her fairest gifts.'"
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Assuming that Kagan, as would seem to me to be appropriate, recuses herself from every case in which she, as Solicitor-General, argued or filed a brief on behalf of the U.S. either as a party or as an amicus, that will only affect cases that were already before the Supreme Court at the time she was Solicitor-General.
The Solicitor-General only represents the U.S. in the Supreme Court.
The Solicitor-General's office also approves decisions to appeal on behalf of the U.S. from trial court decisions, but doesn't have responsibility for appellate cases at the lower level the way they do for cases before the Supreme Court. Kagan might feel the need to recuse herself from cases that were decided against the U.S. at trial court and for which her office had approved the appeal to the Circuit Court, but wouldn't, as I understand it, have had any direct involvement in cases to which the U.S. was a party or amicus at the appellate level but where the U.S. wasn't the party appealing the trial court decision.
So there were lots of recusals this term where the cases currently before the Court were ones in which, as S-G, she had argued or filed briefs, and there might be some smaller number in the next few terms for cases where her office had some involvement in approving appeals by the U.S. from trial court decisions. But it is not at all the case that Kagan "won't be able to serve for years".
What article and section permitted slavery? No matter how many tymes I read and search it I do not find a single reference to "slave" in it. The only way people can get away with saying the constitution permitted it is equating blacks with property. However some Founding Fathers did no such thing.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Even using a liberal interpretation of the Commerce Clause, most federal laws in place today are probably not Constitutionally sound without the Filburn decision.
Using a liberal interpretation of the Constitution most of what the government does would be unconstitutional. As Thomas Jefferson said "To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Polygamy has never been legal in any state that I know of. What you are thinking of is not polygamy it is polygyny. In polygamy both males and females can have more than one spouse, what Mormons used to practice, some of it's off-shoots still do, and Muslims practice is polygyny, a man can have more than one wife but a female can only have one husband. And the reverse of that, where women can have more than one spouse is polyandry.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Oh wait, don't even need an analogy. Hope you're not buying foreign-made cars, cause once you're done with it... you certainly can't pass it along to your children/family/whatever.
If the so-called "editors" can't even begin to get the bare facts straight, it simply takes too freakin' much work to find out what the story actually is. I don't mind stupid people misinterpreting the facts, but I do mind a quasi-reputable site blatantly misrepresenting the facts and confusing the average reader.
This is a particularly bad example. First of all, the headline implies that this affects overseas, when, in fact, a US Supreme Court decision, pretty much by definition, has no legal impact outside the US. But if that weren't bad enough, it turns out that First Sale is, in fact, tangential (at best) to this issue, and it has absolutely nothing to do with where a good was produced! So what did slashdot get right? Well, the summary suggests that this involved a Supreme Court decision, and that, at least, turns out to be correct. Pretty much everything else was either misleading or flat-out wrong. The Supreme Court failed to overturn a ruling that a purchase is governed by the law of the country where the purchase was made. That's all that happened. Hardly earth-shattering. The First Sale doctrine still applies to all goods legitimately purchased in the US, regardless of their country of origin.
Slashdot has enough interesting links that I keep coming back, and I don't even bother to block their ads, but as long as the quality of the "editing" remains this low, there is absolutely nothing that will persuade me to buy a membership. What, you want me to reward incompetence? Dream on!
the death of the author at most.
The Omega logo is over 2500 years old.
There is always the fair use doctrine. Perhaps the Costco lawyers forgot about that one. The fair use doctrine allows the owner certain uses of the copyrighted product. It seems to me that a sale of a product where the only copyrights are in an applied logo is a fair use.
All we need to do is refuse to buy any products from any entity that uses this decision to effect us in any way. Pass it on to any and all who will listen. Eventually The company will realize the fault of their decision when they stop seeing any profits from the U.S. and realize that their outdated views on ownership are flawed. However, i think it needs to be said that this is the basically the same decision currently being enforced by the DMCA, as we are prohibited from "using" anything protected under the DMCA for anything other than what the owner states we can use it for. It also applies to software now, if you look at Windows license (for current versions), the wording has been changed so that we are no longer buying the software, instead we are now leasing the software, this amounts to about the same thing. My personal option is that you should be entitled to compensation only once for something made only once. EG, you make only one copy you should be entitled to payment only once for that copy. I personally find the who idea of patents to be stupid as well, where you get paid continually for just coming up with an idea, you don't even need to get it working you just need to write it up and patent it. It feels as though the system is protecting the rich more and more, and those who are not rich just have to live underfoot of the rich. It's when we the people as a whole decide to make a major impact that this flawed system, based on rules that benefit the rich only will change.
Omega will give permission for all of those sales up to the point where the watch is bought at retail. After that, no more selling it. Anyone else who wants one has to buy from a seller Omega approves (i.e. not the consumer who wants to offload his watch). They won't stop the wholesaler/retailer since they know they rely on them to make money off of their watches.
No, that's useful, limited, tangible, inhabitable property.
Don't compare it to intellectual "property." You're doing us all a disservice by doing so.
Not to mention the idea of adding some kind of federal IP/copyright tax. And you thought the IRS was a big mess?
Please don't ever run for office. :/
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
The judiciary is supposed to judge cases, plane and simple. There is nothing in article 3 that says they have to rule with the law, there is also nothing giving them the power to rule anything unconstitutional. The idea that we as citizens should let a judge sit that rules contrary to the law is as insane as the idea that we allow a president to sit that violates the judiciaries interpretation of the constitution. If the law says something clearly, and they ignore it, we should press our elected legislators to remove them by the methods set aside for that purpose in the same article. Where the law is less clear, or clear, but a significant portion of the population *choose* to misinterpret it, there is a bit of a problem. Deciding who and what qualify as "people" is a great example. Slaves and fetuses have both fallen into that category, hopefully someday we will have to answer the same question about AI. As a developer when there is an unclear requirement, I don't just interpret it how I want, I get the writer to clarify it. It seems that would be a better way to solve such problems. The judiciary can force an emergency session of the legislature until the law is suitably unambiguous (how that is judged is a whole separate can of worms).
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Duh!
> That is the most absurd and arbitrary distinction I've ever heard.
You haven't read a lot of court cases, have you? :)
Interestingly, patent law also has a first sale doctrine that applies to patented articles first sold in the United States.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
> Dred Scott may have been an immoral ruling, but it was also legally correct. Under the Union Constitution, each member state had freedom to decide if blacks were Citizens or Property. The justices did what they were supposed to do: Enforce the law as written. It was upto the Congress/States to change the law (via amendment) not the courts.
That's a very tenuous claim. Dred Scott decided that blacks, even if they were citizens of a state, could never be citizens of the United States.
The Constitution certainly didn't say that, so it was decidedly *not* the law as written. At best, it was an original understanding of the law, but even that is questionable. Keep in mind that when the Constitution was drafted, there was not an agreement on slavery. Everyone was worried about it, nobody agreed on what to do with it, and basically all they did was agreed to disagree for a few decades. That left a lot of ambiguity in the document.
But once SCOTUS decided Dred Scott was the law anyway, it took the civil war and the post-reconstruction amendments to overturn it.
Wickard's foundation was, while not remotely tenable under an "as written standard," one of those things that happens when you let nine justices with liberal arts degrees rationalize something with logic: a person's growth of food, even if it never enters commerce, impacts commerce because he's no longer buying someone else's food. That is theoretically possible, but it was nevertheless an insane decision.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
begins another migration
It means that they sell stuff cheap around the world but really enjoy overcharging americans for it. And they don't want someone to buy them from them cheap in another region and bring them to the USA to sell cheap. Then they would not be able to rip off americans. So the court has decided that they have every right to rip off americans.
If this is accurate, it means eBay is going to get sued by every company that wants to make a quick buck. They'll be toast quicker than a p2p music sharer. In fact, this means all auctions will be selling a lot of property illegally, and will be shut down or go out of business. If I want to sell something that I bought which someone else made, does this mean I have to get written permission first and supply it to the auctioneer or pawnshop, etc? This sounds pretty bad for the economy when I think about it...
What's even worse is the tortuous logic that led to this ruling. The ruling says that the phrase lawfully made under this title actually means lawfully made in the United States. They are saying the US Congress intended the first sale doctrine to only apply to goods manufactured in the US. The obvious intent of the phrase lawfully made under this title was to exclude pirated and bootlegged copies from the protection of the first sale doctrine. It is mind boggling that the US Government would try to twist words around like this in order to so blatantly favor multinational corporations at the expense of US citizens and publishers.
As long as they don't manufacturer copyrighted goods in the US then corporations are allowed to set one price for the US and different prices for the rest of the world. On the other hand, if they do manufacture their goods in the US then the first sale doctrine applies and other people can legally import the cheaper copies of the same goods to the US, thus leveling the prices. This is an overwhelming incentive for all companies to move all their manufacturing of copyrighted goods out of the US ASAP. It's ridiculous to even imagine that this was the intent of Congress when they wrote the law in question. IMO this ruling borders on being treasonous.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
I find it telling that unless the issue presented before Slashdot is purely technical in nature, it is basically a given that the comments will be knee-jerk populist and entirely misinformed.
Convince Congress or 2/3 of the States to change the laws, or live with it. In this case you may be able to bring another, similar case to get a definitive ruling since the court was split 4-4. Changing anything is a long shot if you don't have a lot of money to spend on the issue.
+1 Clear and correct summary of the ruling with a useful illustration of what the ruling prevents Costco or anyone from doing whenever a manufacturer asserts their legal copyright in the US.
Bottom line: copyright law is a larger dead weight net loss to society than it was before today.
Contractually speaking they do not buy the item. They hold it in stock so somebody else can actually buy it.
... do the judges of the Supreme Court have a problem with?
So there's no law against murder, because it actually is possible to murder people?
Nobody claimed they did. As you're clearly not a native speaker, let me point out that in English words can have different meanings - and different shades of meaning - depending on the context.
I think you'll find that the laws of the type "thou shalt not ... or else" were around long before the type you're talking about were formulated.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The importation is not illegal in this case. It was sold to the customer, the customer came in to the US and this is legal.
Just like it's legal to offshore call centre jobs or manufacturing (which would, if your assertion about illegal importing were right, would be illegal importing of jobs to another country).
...[T]hey don't like it when items get moved between markets.
This is very true. It begs the question though as to whether its in the best interest of the citizens of the United States for our country to allow the preference of a foreign corporation to make lots of money to become binding law that affects the residents of this country?
Heck, I don't like it when people get better deals than I want them to do when I sell stuff on Craigslist. That doesn't mean that the US should enforce my pricing scheme.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
And just how the fuck do they expect to enforce this?
Maybe we will get to that point, but before so suddenly escalating the situation line that, how about we first voice our disapproval? And I mean voice it in a way other than flaming on Slashdot, like, oh say, voting against it. In USA, the pro-DMCA parties got 100% of the vote in the last election. Were the people to gradually start to show disapproval of DMCA, by say, only voting for its supporters 90% of the time, then 80%, etc there would be no reason to kill anyone.
I think it's actually pretty slimy for you to suggest they be killed, when the last thing they heard from us, was that we overwhelmingly approve of what they're doing. There's just something .. I dunno .. dishonorable about that. If at least you had complained to them first, then you could say they ignored your warnings and deserve to reap the consequences. But if you tell them that you strongly disagree with the idea that "my shit is my shit" and then less than one election cycle later you're saying "my shit is my shit" and waving a gun around, I think that makes you the bad guy.
Or to put it another way, we're at the soapbox stage, trying to get to the ballot box stage. You're reaching for the ammo box without ever using the ballot box. That's not a responsible way to act.
This is similar to the Levi versus Tesco case in Europe.
http://www.lawdit.co.uk/reading_room/room/view_article.asp?name=../articles/Levis+vs+Tesco.htm
http://www.out-law.com/page-2814
I used it. Also, nationalism is for tools. Citizenship is a business relationship.
Blar.
So...I was born in this society, born a citizen who has fewer rights than other citizens. I'm supposed to just accept it, try to change the system using means acceptable by the society (!), or leave?
Ha! The people who have the upper hand in a society always try pulling that one over on you.
Blar.
Another arbitrary tool used by a majority to define what the majority likes as good. It's useful for getting suckers to die for the government, however.
Blar.
Remember that other nations do NOT have the same laws as the US. They have the right to make their own rules. Something that is 100% legal in the US can get you in trouble in another country.
True, but this this has little bearing to getting in trouble in other countries, it's whether you're violating US law when you resell inside the United States.
... I will personally hunt them down and beat them to death with a Classics textbook. :-)
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
...You find yourself Chief Justice of the Dred Scott Court. Go ahead. Make that call. Enforce a law you know to be morally repugnant. Put that man back in chains, shred that family, damn an entire ethnic group to torture, rape and slavery for as long as you can foresee.
Are you seriously telling me you can sleep at night telling yourself, "I didn't write the law, I just enforced it as written?"
If you can, are you by any chance posting from Argentina?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
A possible response: "Because work that I did two decades ago is still valued and in demand, while nobody cares what you did yesterday."
Many people care if they can get to the websites they want. Yesterday I fixed a problem that if left unchecked, today would be preventing people from getting the data that they "demand".
Perhaps my employer owes me royalties for each 'user' of the newly installed hardware.
Since you are a person who chooses to describe what they do as "fighting fires" then I am fairly confident that there are probably long stretches of time, perhaps full days, in which you sit around and do nothing, but spend the entire day on slashdot. You can do this because things are working well where you are... perhaps even through some fault of your own. Maybe you just shouldn't get paid for that easy time. You really aren't producting anything of value today. The fact that you don't get canned everytime there is nothing to do should clue you in to the fact that your royalties are built in to your salary / wage. The author gets paid only if they produce something of value and only for however long it maintains value... and only during the time period it is viewed as valuable. You, on the other hand, get paid only as long as you continue to convince your employer that you bring something of value (or will do so in a short enough time in the future for them to pay you during the "downtime"). Again, your royalties are built into your wage.
My present is the activity I am currently engaged in with the purpose of turning the future into a better past.
I was one of those discarded body parts. I got laid off after a merger. It made me so mad that I went postal. Now I deliver mail to my own house.
While I don't like it, US law says that importation constitutes distribution, which is an exclusive right of the copyright holder which can only be exercised with their permission.
First sale doctrine says that the copyright holder gives up their distribution rights to a particular copy when they "lawfully make" or sell that copy.
What the Ninth circuit decided was that the importation restriction would be meaningless if the first sale doctrine trumps the importation restriction when the sale occurred in a foreign country, and the good was also manufactured in a foreign country. They actually relied almost completely on existing Ninth circuit precedent to make this determination.
Swiss law can't control importation into the US, only exportation from Switzerland, so it would have to be US law being violated here.
This is the biggest problem with this definitely unclear area of the law.
There's no difference under the law between a large reseller buying in a foreign country and importing into the US, and a private citizen doing the same thing.
The problem is, for a large reseller this decision is at least somewhat reasonable. For a private citizen, this is ridiculous. It requires a private citizen to receive permission FROM THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER to import any item subject to copyright into the US. Thus, this effectively makes it illegal for a private citizen to import anything manufactured and purchased in a foreign country into the US, which I don't believe was the intention. This is even true if the foreign country has a first sale doctrine similar to that of the US.
Unfortunately, there isn't an obvious legal alternative, which is the really scary part. Who determines "Lawful copy?" Does a US court have to interpret the laws of a foreign country to determine if the copy was made lawfully there? Alternatively, does the court have to apply US law to copies made in a foreign country? What if the copy was lawfully made in the foreign country, but the copy would not have been legal in the US? What if it would have been legal in the US but was illegal in the foreign country?
One possible way to handle this is through a series of treaties and implementing laws that would effectively cause first sale in a foreign country to create a "first sale" in the US, with some reasonable way of ensuring that the proper courts determine legality of manufacture. However, I wouldn't want the same people writing ACTA to be writing that treaty.
Another possible solution would be to restrict first sale of foreign goods to only apply to copes sold by the copyright holder or made with the copyright holder's permission and sold. This would specifically exclude "lawfully made" copies that were made without the copyright holder's permission, but would cover most of the cases that we're really worried about here. Also, I think the excluded copies are what congress was really trying to restrict when they created the import restriction anyway.
In marbury vs madison the supreme court ruled that the supreme court had the power of judicial review and could rule a law unconstitutional. That is kind of odd that they would grant themselves power like that, but it had been discussed at the time the constitution was written, with both proponents and detractors. As written however the constitution left both judicial review and the extent to which judges were constrained by the law vague. However, if the supreme court decides a law is unconstitutional, they probably won't find you guilty of violating it whether or not the legislators agree to strike it from the body of law. They did provide a way for congress to depose a judge that was perceived to be overstepping their bounds though, so it could have gone the other way with legislators angry that their law had been struck down, removing all the offending justices. Perhaps what kept them from doing so is their constituency.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Excellent research. Unfortunately, the suppposedly conservativer Rehnquist court, and the "conservtive" Justices thereupon, reaffirmed Wickard v. Filburn in the Raich case dealing wiht California marijuana laws, after two cases where they said the federal Congress had overstepped its bounds. Even Bork has written that there probably is nothing the Court will not allow the federal govenrment to do now. They cqan use the so-called "butterfly effect" theory, too, to reach anything, and the liberal five recently cited their own subjective personal feelings as the ultimate source of Constitutional law, overriding text, original intent, or any other principled theory. It would take a new set of Constitutional amendments to get back toward, not to, anything like the original intent accepted across the board until the infamouis "switch in time that saved nine" in 197 thaqt relied solely upon one brief passage by Hamilton out of context and not one prior opinion of the Court which, in order to uphold Social Security, etc., converted us from a federal government of defined and limited functions and powers to one of virtually unlimited and undefined powers, ie. a dictatorship. At the samde time, a recent U. S. Court of Appeals case has struck down Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as unconstitutional because some big campaign contributors don't like it and not all the infinite variety of unfair discrimination by states under it were described and documented within the text of the law, always an impossible process. So a small family farm can be regimented but not a big company or arm of government. Go figure.
An oath sworn to a dishonest man or organization can often be discarded. Manning got in, saw that things in the military weren't as they were described when he signed the contract...
Blar.