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Student Charged For Re-selling Textbooks
AstroPhilosopher writes "The U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal from a Thai student who was fined $600,000 for re-selling textbooks. Trying to make ends meet, the student had family members in Thailand mail him textbooks that were made and purchased abroad, which he then resold in the U.S. It's a method many retailers practice every day. 'Discount sellers like Costco and Target and Internet giants eBay and Amazon help form an estimated $63 billion annual market for goods that are purchased abroad, then imported and resold without the permission of the manufacturer. The U.S.-based sellers, and consumers, benefit from the common practice of manufacturers to price items more cheaply abroad than in the United States. This phenomenon is sometimes called a parallel market or grey market.'"
Discount sellers like Costco and Target and Internet giants eBay and Amazon help form an estimated $63 billion annual market for goods that are purchased abroad, then imported and resold without the permission of the manufacturer.
As someone who once foolishly bought a robotics book used on Amazon ($8) that was supposed to be the real thing ($80) and instead received an Indian release version, I must say that I do not see the parallels here. First off, the Costco case applied to goods made inside the US -- not goods made outside the US like this case. These are two mutually exclusive sets of products so it's quite different in that the big retailers re-import goods made here. I find this to be a painfully important discrepancy since, especially in this case, books and other copyrighted material have very strict distribution channels. I'm not saying its right. I'm not saying it's how things should be. I'm just telling you it's how they are. And these publishers enter contracts with affiliates in other nations. A book's value is mostly determined by its content and when you're marking that down in a foreign country through a foreign distributor, it's massively different than marking down a BMW in Mexico or a wristwatch in Switzerland. The watch and car are tangible goods that may have some intrinsic value and copyright but more importantly provide a functionality. This is not the case with the textbook. I would guess in the case of college textbooks, this guy was breaking many more laws than in the case of the watch -- especially given the United States' ridiculous laws governing copyright. In the case of my purchased textbooks, the quality of the book was horrid. A paperback binding that fell apart almost instantly and seemed to be held together with potato paste with graphs I could not read since the ink was so shoddy compared to glossy thick hardcover American release. Still, the words were the same words ... and I passed the course.
My work here is dung.
..in which you decide how much the product costs not based on how much the product costs to make, but on how much money the potential buyer has. parallel or gray market is just a term the content holders would like to use, since it doesn't make them look like asshats. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
it's bullshit, of course. too bad for the publishers that books don't come with drm chips.
(I'm assuming that in this case the books were original - as in printed with copyright holders permission).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
That is why text book get updated so much also some professors get a cut of the book costs for the books they author so some of them rip out pages to force students to buy a new book for the class.
Also other ways to make profit is the filler and high number of gen eds that at some College push out what used to be 4 years to 5 years.
High cost dorm room that cost more then renting on your own to live a with a room mate and have shared bathroom with a full floor also have to go off campus during brakes.
High cost meal plans that have hidden fees and other stuff that can force people to buy $100's in caddy as the funds are on use it or lose it cash cards that time out.
As long as custom is paid, then it should be FULLY legal. After all if firm/MPAA/whatnot can have region code, and import cheap from China, or even outsource jobs, then everybody should be allowed to do it. Globalisation and import/export as logn as custom are paid, should be fully legal. And if they (publisher) lose money on that, bad luck.
I fail to understand how the first-sale doctrine does not apply just because the first sale was outside the US. I would understand completely if ICE was coming after him for not paying duties or tariffs, but what does copyright have to do with anything here? He didn't make copies. He simply resold books the publisher was already paid for.
If you want to turn the screws on the publishers and say international trade laws are all bullshit and the books worth what it's worth and you're only paying $9 for the Indian version, I assure you they'll just sell it at $90 everywhere in the world and try to deal with the bootlegging in a much less understanding way than they are right now.
I see you replied to my post in another question about why the end consumer shouldn't be able to resell to another country. In cases of one or two books, I don't think anybody really gives a damn, it's when you're putting yourself through college on a publishers dime that they start to get upset and bring up international trade laws against you. I'm pretty sure with how copyright law works in the states and even abroad by distribution channels that this kid is going to be screwed pretty hard.
it's bullshit, of course. too bad for the publishers that books don't come with drm chips.
No, it's too bad for the publishers that they are trying to sell books cheaper inside poorer countries.
My work here is dung.
When we pool our money together to buy politicians
Hence deregulation to transfer the savings of the American people away from them, inequitable free trade to eliminate jobs and suppress wages, and the levying of private taxes by Big Carbon and "high finance"/"the speculators" in order to ensure that the many have ever less money to pool together.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Every level of the textbook business is about manipulation, lies, and control, from the publisher to the campus bookstore.
I researched the actual cost of textbooks once, and found industry websites with cost breakdowns which swore, up and down, that the profit margin on textbooks was 1%. I shit you not. You buy the 13th edition of your text for a retail price of $298, a book that's been out for 15 years and hundreds of printings, and they expect you to believe that even *now*, on the 13th edition, the publisher made well under $3 per copy.
On the retail side, I worked for a campus bookstore and my wife was their night manager. After they let me off for total lack of available work, I decided to just sell them books I found on ebay and bought from other students. After I sold them several dozen they fired my wife and banned me from the store based on their unwritten and inconsistently enforced policy that a student can sell only one copy of a particular title to them. Why do they care? I have no idea. The only time I sold them books was the two week period after spring semester buyback but before summer classes; I gave them more copies of these books, at prices and quantities they set, during a period when their used stock was already at it's yearly maximum but still not high enough for their liking. There were no other copies for them to acquire from students, and awful NC state laws forbid them from acquiring more used copies on Amazon, eBay, etc. For this they treated me like a criminal, fired my wife, and even made allusions to whether we'd stolen the books despite the fact that there are cameras, audits, and never less than 3 people at the registers.
It was all about control; what I did was good for their business, and they didn't give a shit. I was making money in a place they thought only they were allowed to make money. Even though it made them even more money than it made me, they hated me for it and considered it abusive.
Control, control, control.
Often times the differences between versions is that the questions at the end of the chapter will just be reordered and maybe a couple of minor tweaks here and there in the text. The versioning is really just a racket to try to shut down the used book market. I've had teachers that support multiple versions of a book by simply handing out problems like so:
Questions 2, 5, 8, 11, and 19 for version 5 owners, 5, 8, 9, 13, and 14 for version 6 owners. Since the rest of the content was the same this was basically no extra work on their part, since they had to go through and pick the new questions when the new version came out anyway, so they just picked the same ones as the previous year's. The textbook industry is such a racket.
I read the internet for the articles.
Why would this be relevant to anyone who isn't party to those contracts? The first reseller in New Dehli would be bound by that contract, but why their customer or that person's American customer?
Is this going to turn into another Blizzard EULA situation where they argue ownership of a book doesn't change hands when someone buys^H^H^H^H enters into a reading agreement?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
... two very important facts: 1.) There is a club and 2.) He's not in it.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Silly man, he did not understand that globalisation is for corporates to exploit, it is not for individuals to benefit from.
Companies do this all the time: buy goods or get them made where ever in the world it is cheapest for them to do so. They then sell them at different prices in different countries: price it too high in India and you don't get sales, price it too low in Europe and you loose potential profit.
They can't possibly have customers doing the same thing - it would damage their profits and the CEO's bonus would have to be cut. So they adopt all manner of tactics to stop us from benefiting from globalisation in the way that they do: * region coding on DVDs, * refusal to service equipment if imported (even if identical ones are sold in the country), sue non approved importers, ... All designed to distort the free market
I would mind paying more for something that I buy in England if it were made with English labour paid English wages. What I object to is them paying third world people slave rates and charging me top dollar - I don't like the hypocrisy of it all.
there are distribution channels and contracts that prevent someone in
This isn't a contractual issue. This is a copyright issue. No one is claiming breach of contract. Furthermore, the defendant in this case never entered into any sort of contract with the publisher. He purchased books on the open market and resold them on the open market. The plaintiffs are claiming copyright infringement. This should be a clear cut example of the first sale doctrine, and should have never gotten beyond a district court.
If privacy had a tombstone it would read "We did it for your own good" . -- John Twelve Hawks
Or you could, you know, work to attain a political system where money is less of a requirement for electability. There are many ways to make significant inroads. Banning political television advertisement would be one such thing.
toresbe
These are copies of a book *LEGALLY* published and sold by the Asian subsidiaries of US publishing houses. How the f*ck are they illegal? The question is whether or not copyright law can restrict if they can be imported and resold.
Oops, sorry. I fed the troll, didn't I?
I like how mod my comments are modded as Troll when I'm trying to explain why the situation is what it is
AND took pains to point out you weren't endorsing the status quo. Aside from putting "I'm not saying its right. I'm not saying it's how things should be. I'm just telling you it's how they are" in bold, it would have been hard to make your point any more clear.
Forget reading the article, these days we don't even bother reading the post we're responding to.
Good luck upsetting the publishing business with your brilliant views! Burst forth, you need only say these words and hundreds of years of international copyright law will crumble!
One can only hope. The books are the same, we know we're paying over, way and above what the textbooks can be covered for. We end up having to pay for 'minor' revisions to keep concurrent or fail classes. When I was working my way through my law classes a few years ago, the textbooks alone set me back nearly $4000. Though I could buy them out of country, with the same content for $250.
People understand very well how the world works. What you fail to understand is that people are tired of DRM, region locking, overpriced for the same material you can get elsewhere especially in a global economy where you can order something from across the ocean and pay 7/8th's less on the price. So when people want something, they find someplace cheaper to buy it.
Hey are you gonna blast canadians next for buying american products cheaper across the border too? With regards to just about everything? I mean a gallon of milk and butter are in the $4-6 range, sure would be nice to have it like the US where it costs $1.99 or less, flat of eggs only $5 or $1.50 in the US. Or americans buying canadian drugs at a cheaper price when they know that they only have to travel a few hours to get there?
Om, nomnomnom...
I get what you're saying about the legalities, but this really isn't a copyright issue, is it? This kid isn't attempting to publish the books or claim authorship, he's reselling. If he worked at Goldman Sachs and were buying pork bellies or oil in one market and reselling in another, that would be called "arbitrage". Of course, Goldman Sachs is wealthy enough to afford lawyers to tell others to f*ck off, or pay for favorable legal rulings (or laws themselves, or even politicians).
Sorry, but fundamentally Megacorp(s) don't get to have all the advantages and benefits of free trade (outsourcing production to where their costs are low), and none of the disadvantages and drawbacks. At least, not in a fair world and not in a "free market". I remember a "free market" existing when producers and consumers get choices, not when the producer gets the government to clamp down on imports so the local market is captive, all the while outsourcing production and booking profits through offshore shell corporations.
The contracts apply to the seller in New Delhi. They do NOT apply to a 3rd party that buys from them and then re-imports to the U.S.
As for the rest, if the corporations have the right to take advantage of economy mis-matches to funnel U.S. jobs to cheap overseas labor, then surely the People in the U.S. have just as much right to take advantages of economy mis-matches to funnel sales to cheap overseas sellers. Or are they expected to somehow keep paying 1st world prices when their wages are becoming more 3rd world like by the day?
You do understand that there are distribution channels and contracts that prevent someone in, say New Delhi, from noticing that their Addison Wesley book on Modern Evolution sells exceptionally well in the states so they are just going to set up an online store, right?
So what? These contracts are not binding on third parties. Under long-established law (the doctrine of first sale) if you buy a book, you are free to sell or lend it to whoever you want. Copyright law prevents the creation of unauthorized copies; it isn't intended to enforce a publisher's specific international business model.
To me, this is just as bad an idea as region coding on DVD's or disallowing Americans from purchasing pharmaceuticals abroad.
It's worse really. In the case of DVDs it's a technical hurdle not a legal one. If you buy a region free DVD player or import one no one says you can't use the DVD just because you're in the wrong region. You just have to go through the trouble of getting a technical solution to a technical problem. Granted some of those solutions are themselves illegal (cracking the encryption to make a "software" region free DVD player), but to my knowledge there's nothing illegal about buying a DVD player in Japan, bringing it here and playing Japanese region DVDs on it. The case of pharmaceuticals has at least a valid safety argument. It's pretty clear that safety is not the only, or even the primary, reason for the rules; but at least there's at least something to the argument.
Here it's just, "you can't do that because you're costing a company some money they might make".
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Other forms of slavery were toppled by people comming to their senses. The fall of intellectual property will be the same.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
It's getting to the point that you can never be sure whether a copy is legal or not. If you haven't read the original contract between the author and the publisher and the distributor you cannot be sure if you are acquiring a legal copy. Reading the copyright page in a book does not always state whether it is legal to distribute in such and such a country.
Now if he had pirated the book, since he was a student of few means, he would not be in this situation where he would have the need to sell the book.
If you cannot resell a legally purchased copy then it's best you pirate and be done with it. I don't subscribe to the idea that there is a grey market.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Good points.
Its funny how U.S. companies can ship jobs overseas to purchase the cheapest workers, but the American worker has a hard time doing the same for products.
I still don't understand how we put up with it.
Why not? Isn't that what's happened with manufacturing? If you can't compete with cheap foreign labor, you're toast.
That knife cuts both ways. I hope the judge throws out the case.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Yes, this is a copyright issue. And there is a law which expressedly makes illegal what the guy was doing. It's a very bad law, if you ask my opinion, but it's on the books, so there's no way the court could have ruled other than how it did.
No, it's a copyright issue. The content industries (and the appeals court) take the position that while copyright protection applies across the entire Berne convention, that copyright exhaustion -- the idea that by selling a particular copy, the copyright holder no longer can control distribution of that particular copy -- applies on a country by country basis. And that therefore importing a copy of a copyrighted item without the permission of the copyright holder, even when that item was lawfully sold in the country of origin in the first place, is illegal.
It's absolutely unjust and ridiculous (just like much of copyright law) -- which means the Supreme Court will probably support it.
It's only a circle-jerk because we're probably right. The blinders are off though. We see how the system ought to be, and can explain why. When others explain why it should be differently, they're usually screwing someone over.
I really don't see your point with the "very strict distribution channels". That's lovely for them, but why do I give a shit? I can buy one for X, own it, walk over here, and someone wants it for X+Y.
"mutually exclusive sets of products" my ass.
A book's value is mostly determined by its content and when you're marking that down in a foreign country through a foreign distributor, it's massively different than marking down a BMW in Mexico or a wristwatch in Switzerland.
I disagree. If he was scanning in and redistributing that content, sure, totally different. Yay cheap and trivial digital distribution. But he isn't. The book is a tangible good. With utility. You passed your class, didn't you? Not that much different from a BMW or a watch.
Now, in terms of quality, truth in advertising, and scamming in general, sure, this guy could very well deserve to be fined. But not for any of the reasons you stated. While you're normally a pretty insightful fellow, you failed to contribute anything meaningful to this conversation. You may say "I'm not saying it's right", but then you provide (bad) justifications for why it's right... Talking out both sides of your face is disingenuous, at best.
I still don't understand how we put up with it.
Because you have to. Because you can't afford your own lobbyist.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
If you want American milk, go get it from the US. There are a lot of really good reasons why Canada has a dairy quota and why we don't import American milk. I'll give you one: rBGH. That's "genetically engineered bovine growth hormone". Yum. You can keep your cheap American milk.
www.clarke.ca
But how many of the professors are viciously examining text versions and reworking their classes to only use the new pages?
I had a fun variant of this one time when I got hold of a free copy of an older version of a text book (like V2 vs V4) and it was BETTER than the current version! I am a Preface & Introduction junkie, so I compared. The 2nd Ed that I acquired was all "Thanks for da luv in the first edition, here's the second, off you go". The 4th ed went "We have trimmed and tightened the material for maximum educational impact by reducing the extraneous material that might distract from the topic at hand. Then we added more big pictures and huge 3 inch margins on the page."
I used the older copy, kept the new one only to watch for sneak shots, and an hour extra per week I had better context than anyone else in the class because my copy was 5 pages longer per chapter.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The milk I buy in the supermarket in the US is also rbgh-free. It's required to come with a legal blurb saying that the FDA has not approved any benefit to hormone-free milk. Despite this, it's been years since I've seen a container of milk that doesn't claim to be free of synthetic hormones. (I live in the northeastern US)