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Supreme Court To Decide Whether Or Not You Own What You Own
Jafafa Hots writes "The Supreme Court is set to decide, in the case of Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, whether or not First Sale Doctrine applies to products made with parts sourced from outside the United States. If the Supreme Court upholds an appellate ruling, it would mean that the IP holders of anything you own that has been made in China, Japan or Europe, for example, would have to give you permission to sell it. Your old used CDs, cell phone, books, or that Ford truck with foreign parts? It may not be yours to sell unless you get explicit permission and presumably pay royalties. 'It would be absurd to say anything manufactured abroad can't be bought or sold here,' said Marvin Ammori, a First Amendment lawyer and Schwartz Fellow at the New American Foundation who specializes in technology issues."
It will provide a huge boost to US manufacturing jobs!
That would certainly deter me from buying products that were manufactured or contained parts that were manufactured abroad. People would be determined to buy domestic products (assuming they even exist these days). That said, it was clear that I could sell my car without permission when I bought it - changing the terms after the sale seems very wrong. If they implement this rule, they should specify that it applies to sales after a point in time in the future.
Almost any electronic device and all autos made after the 50s or 60s that has an imported part of some sort. Do we take it to the next level with minerals and metals imported too? I think this has about as much chance of standing as a two legged stool.
When something is sold, it is no longer the sellers, it's the buyers.
This rediculous IP notion has gotten out of hand.
It sounds like they are gouging the hell out of their US customers if this guy can buy the same book abroad, pay international shipping on it, probably import duties etc. and still make $1.2 million dollars. Instead we have another case where a "rights holder" is trying to assert insane terms on the rest of country to preserve their business model. Let us hope that the Supreme Court hears this on one of its "non-crazy" days.
It's not just a problem with electronics. I might have Chinese light fixtures, or Mexican light switches, plumbing etc. in my home. Will I have to get permission from 50 different companies before I can sell it?
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
An important part of the question is if the contract between the seller and buyer can be broken by moving the object to another country. Though that issue is not, per se, presented to the court, part of the question is if the (one-sided, shrink-wrapped license agreement) that the buyer agreed to in a different country can be enforced in the U.S.
If I sell you something with the agreement that you will not export it, and then you export it, does that license still hold?
I predict an obvious but subtle castigation of lower courts for it getting there at all.
But when did we lose common sense? Can't a corporation think it's way out of a wet paper sack?
Clearly the solution for them would be to raise prices abroad.
This parallels drug importing I suppose as well. Same solution imho.
Oh wait...nobody abroad would pay that much for a book? Then maybe you're gouging the US market and as a judge I'd say you've made your profit here via gouging and abroad by what you were willing to sell for under no choice but your own and what the market will bear.
Tough Shiite.
So if upheld then Apple (or indeed any American corporation that utilizes offshore manufacture of products of their own design) could forbid resale of their products so that you could only ever buy new from them.
Seems like a win for them.
Here is a website that tracks what products are still made in the US of A
They seem to be pretty good about differentiating between actually made and assembled. Now as far as raw materials are concerned or sub-assemblies, I don't know.
The Fuji vs. Jazz Camera, Lexmark vs. Arizona Cartridge Remanufacturers, and other cases have been rare examples of unanimous rulings by the Supreme Court vs. similar appellate court rulings on patent extension. I work in the re-manufacturing industry and am not too worried about the USA courts (though the Terminator-like persistence of foreign companies bringing the case that resale = patent or trademark infringement is frightening, and the Mickey Mouse rulings on Trademark are depressing). What's more troubling is the direction ownership law goes when the USA Supreme Court and European Courts no longer oversee 80% of all product sales. Chinese consumers purchase more computer products than the USA today, and if they take a Japanese turn in their court rulings, these corporations may become godlike, and the USA may be tempted to try to give our own companies (like Apple) similar power. See links to the cases above at http://retroworks.blogspot.com/2012/03/usas-finest-supreme-court-ruling-for.html
Gently reply
The ruling will be simple.
It will state that the Doctrine of First Sale applies to anything purchased purely for personal, non-commercial use, but not to anything purchased with a profit motive.
This is the only way the SCOTUS will be able to, with a straight face, hand over more rights to copyright holders and IP trolls.
The 99% will not care, because they'll be too busy saying "well it doesn't hurt me directly, and therefore I don't care" to give two shits about what's important.
Before yesterday I would have nominated "PETA Condemns Pokemon For Promoting Animal Abuse" as the batshit crazy story of the year. Now I think it has competition.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Stuff like this is the easy way of becoming the worlds laughingstock.
The case is regarding items manufacturered in foreign countries and intended for sale in those countries. NOT items manufactured in foreign countries intended for sale in the United States. At issue is having someone buy things cheaper overseas and resell them cheaper here in the US than the manufacturers intended US price.
That's still horrible - but not nearly as bad as the article summary would have you believe.
The guy who's being brought to trial seems to have imported enough textbooks to earn $1.2 million. That means this isn't really a case about reselling your car, but about whether private citizens can buy a bunch of stuff abroad and re-sell it here for profit because it's cheaper abroad.
You can track the legislation here:
America is turning in to the USSA very quickly.
America will be the next Rome.
So having read the article, it doesn't say the same thing as the summary. To be fair, I haven't read any of the court paperwork, so the publisher could indeed be claiming that you cannot sell something with foreign parts.
This case, however, stems from a student buying textbooks at lower cost overseas and then selling them in the US on eBay.
I'm not saying it's good, right or proper that the publisher wishes to restrict these sales. I simply want to highlight that it's a very different proposition saying you cannot resell in the US a complete product purchased in a developing market where the manufacturer sells at a lower cost as opposed to being unable to sell anything that contains a foreign part.
I believe the situation the publisher supports is already the case in Europe, where Levi Strauss won a battle against supermarkets who were importing grey market denims and selling them at a lower cost than licensed distributors could buy the jeans in the UK.
Wouldn't this destroy Amazon and Ebay?
they sell an awful lot of second hand kit...
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
From The Deathly Hallows by JKRowling:
"You don't understand, Harry, nobody could understand unless they have lived with the goblins. To a goblin, the rightful and true master of any object is its maker, not the purchaser. All goblin-made objects are, in goblin eyes, rightfully theirs."
"But if it was bought — "
" — then they would consider it rented by one who had paid the money. They have, however, great difficulty with the idea of goblin-made objects passing from wizard to wizard. [snip] I believe he thinks, as do the fiercest of his kind, that it ought to have been returned to the goblins once the original purchaser died. They consider our habit of keeping goblin-made objects, passing them from wizard to wizard without further payment, little more than theft."
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
As the article mentions, upholding the "first sale doctrine doesn't apply to foreign-made goods" decision will simply give domestic businesses in the US even more incentive to outsource all of their manufacturing globally, essentially side-stepping the first sale doctrine completely while further destroying the jobs market. Whatever incentives we offer to keep them domestic probably pale in comparison to the ability to stake a claim on all future sales, even if it would be practically difficult to implement any kind of enforcement and tracking system. Consumers would be driven toward grey market solutions for trading their foreign-made goods, but eBay and Craigslist likely wouldn't last very long under the added weight of infringement claims.
What matters is where the authorized "first sale" occurred, not where it was manufactured.
So if a book publisher has books printed outside the US, then imports them and sells them retail for the first time in the US, you can freely resell it because the first sale occurred within the US.
What is being disputed in this court case is whether you can resell a copyrighted item in the US if the first sale occurred outside the US.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
... might be owned or unowned, but is still owned if meanwhile no appeal is upheld.
This is one reason why this year's U.S. Pesidential election is so important. At least one Supreme Court judge will retire due to advanced age, both Republicans and Democrats are very aware of this
The world couldn't care less for the retarded 'merica legal crap...
This sounds very similar to the Trade Mark laws no in effect in Europe. It basically boils down to, you cannot import for resale anything that is trademarked, as the trademark owner has exclusive import rights.
This was originally because of a French company exporting it's product made in France to outside of the EU. The French companies product was then imported into France, and sold at a discount.
There was a major court case between Tesco and Levis about this, which had the Tesco representitive show tow paisr of Levis, both made in Turkey. One had been imported to the UK by Levis, and the other by Tesco from Turkey. The ones that were imported by Tesco are now illegal to sell in the UK.
It only includes items bough from outside the EU, not between EU countries (so say Germany to UK = fine, USA to UK = Not okay, unless the trademark owner has ok'd it). It's worked in the EU, so I expect this will mean it will work in the US too, as we all generally follow the same IP laws.
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
Copyright law recognises that publishers may well want to publish the same item at a different price in another country. A textbook in the US or Europe can be sold at quite a high price. In poorer countries, there's no way they can sell for these markups, so they're a lot cheaper.
The law allows the copyright holder to licence distribution to another party for distribution in another territory. To prevent a companies own products from competing with their domestic sales, the law makes it an infringement of copyright to sell a copy licensed for sale in another country. Whether you think this is right or not, this is what the law recognises, and what the Supreme court will be basing its decision on.
Of course, the lawmakers don't want to prevent you from taking a book with you when you're travelling, nor do they think that you should buy an entire new library if you move to another country. So you're allowed to bring the foreign copy to your country if you have no intention of selling it.
So what happens if you change your mind? Do you have the right to sell something that you legally brought into the country? Is the "first sale" the first time the item was sold, or is it the first time the item is sold in the US?
The article is highly misleading. This has no effect on something that just happens to have been made in another country, as long as it was originally sold by the copyright holder. Only items where the item has not yet been sold in the US.
The only thing this proves is how ridiculous and out of touch with reality that the law is.
Even if such a law was enforceable, no-one (even the manufacturers) would want to, as the moment they did, no-one would buy their stuff.
All humanity stems from Africa.
All products include some amount of human labor.
Therefore all products include something from Africa and First Sale doctrine no longer applies.
Ofcourse you could apply it to materials only, in which case pretty much every product includes parts made from materials not naturally formed on earth.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
This is messing with the capitalistic economic model people will still want those goods, and people will be willing to sell them, but they will do it over the black market. Because the legit way is too costly.
The black market isn't always for shady product, but products that you cannot obtain legally.
For example in New York the biggest Black Market Activity is in unpasteurized milk. Why because there is a good number of "organic" lovers who would rather have their milk unprocessed and they say it tastes better, and is better for you, and by New York Law milk can only be sold pasteurized. Hence black market activity.
So saying you cannot resell a product and people wants it. It will be done under the table.
Now the problem with black market is the buyer and seller loose legal protection. So the seller can rip you off and you have no legal recourse. Or the buyer can do something else to you and in order to get the guy in trouble you will need to admit to breaking the law. This is a problem with prostitution because it is illegal if the women are mistreated they do not have many options for them.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Wiley's position would allow producers of all sorts of copyright-tainted critical business inputs, such as computerized machines, and all sorts of copyright-tainted items the workers may want to buy, to extract much of the higher productivity generated by a successful business operated in the US.
It would be better to produce movies, widgets, or whatever else abroad, with prices of the copyrighted movie-rendering facilities, production equipment, other inputs (not themselves incorporated in the product and subject to US price inflation) moderated by worldwide market demand. Have workers able to buy the same items, including, relatedly, drugs with less salary. And, on top of this, charge US customers more as others have discussed.
(Better yet to reject copyright-tainted inputs in favor of Free ones and not be held hostage by extortionate "remedies" of arbitrary millions of dollars or injunctions against overall businesses, nor contribute to the copyright industries' endless schemes.)
Even worse, many items are made from petroleum. Just think of plastics and everything made from plastic or incorporating bits of plastic (I see some vinyl in that there car, sonny, and the tires are made of rubber). Now some of the petroleum used in making those plastics and related synthetics might have come from wells in the USA, but some might not and it tends to get blended during or after refining. The provenance of such intermediate materials is not tracked.
So we have another question: how much transformation of a foreign-sourced raw material or intermediate material derived therefrom would be needed to escape the consequences of this putative ruling? Would shaping foreign wood into furniture be sufficient? What about polymerizing a foreign-sourced material (making an intermediate of plastic or ceramic or rubber)? Even supposing a strict boundary could be defined for the amount of processing or transformation required, it would just lead to the creation and feeding of loophole-finding (or making) industries.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Since time before time every merchant has known the following motto: Buy low. Sell high. Now with globalism we can buy labor and materials cheaply from the ends of the world and sell high in our own home market where half the populations lost their jobs to outsourcing. Isn't double dipping a great thing?
Wait, a private citizen like you wants to use the same strategy?! How dare you even think of this unpatriotic act circumventing the core values of capitalism? Preposterous! Only governments and large corporations are allowed to do that. You just take what you are offered at our fair and reasonable prices or we'll see you in court. Now go back to your television and be a model consumer.
Meanwhile in some research lab...
Hey guys, looky here! I have just found a new source of energy! We might be able to power our rockets and indeed our whole civilization with it! I call it hypocrisy and the best part is it seems to be an abundant and renewable resource in our civilization!
But judges bought and sold ?? Hello, ARMAGGEDON !! It is YOUR fault, you stupid-ass voter !!
None of this is off the record. It's all been reported. The news media has a combination of self censorship and ignoring the "boring" stuff. This is why it's never reported, and why this is a big surprise on Slashdot.
Here is what Scalia just said to the American Enterprise Institute on Oct. 5th, just last week. http://www.businessinsider.com/scalia-says-homosexual-sodomy-was-criminal-2012-10 Oct 5, 2012
To quote the friend who sent this to me:
So how do you think Scalia will vote? The accepted current rights of the consumer, or some radical approach that will put more money and power in the hands of corrupt business interests? If you take him at his word, he would be happy to re-instate indentured servitude. What were the state of consumer rights 200 years ago? Still want to make a bet?
He claims to be an "originalist", but in fact his is a extreme radical. He's proud of this position, and makes speeches link this all the time. And it rarely makes the main stream headlines.
I expect that all the righty trolls will be making excuses for Scalia and the American Enterprise Institute. His idea of freedom, and the AEI idea of freedom, is that you STFU and do what your masters tell to to do. How bad does it have to get so that even the Slashdot nerds wake up and realize that the right wing want to turn them into peasants?
Why is Snark Required?
Some student from Thailand imported the EEE books from Thailand, sold them on E-Bay and made 1.2 million dollars. He is claiming immunity under First Sale doctrine. The EEE contract with the Asian publishers prohibit them from selling it to the lucrative western markets. But once the book has been bought in those markets, can they be imported and sold in USA? The appellate court ruled it can't be brought in sold.
I am not a lawyer, but I expect the Supreme Court to rule more narrowly. "When a copyright/intellectual property right originating from USA, is licensed to foreigners under some restrictive license, the foreigners can not use first sale doctrine and third parties/subsidiaries to circumvent the license restrictions". That is the kind of ruling I expect. That is, not all foreign made objects would be exempted from first sale doctrine. Those items made abroad under restrictive licenses from ip-holders in USA alone would be exempted. But I am not sure they will rule this way. I am an engineer most comfortable calculating intersections between triangles and tetrahedrons. I find them very easy compared to US laws.
One interesting tit bit was that, when I came to USA as a student with F-1 Visa, I was scared by the EEE books I was bringing in. I used some 75% of my baggage allowance with books. I knew how serious copyright law was in USA. I knew my books are cheaper in India. I was worried the immigration officer would reject my visa and send me back! Seriously. I was worried about everything from the turmeric powder in my hand baggage to the loose staple on the sealed I-20 form issued by the university attached to my passport! Once inside the USA, I was just relieved. I never even thought for a moment to buy millions dollars worth of EEE books and selling them cheap in the USA. There have been hundreds of thousands of students from Asia who knew the price differentials. None of us thought of exploiting it by arbitrage, because we knew it was "wrong". This creep from Thailand did just that. If the courts do not rule narrowly and uphold first sale doctrine for these EEE books, the publishers will simply stop licensing EEE books under cheap terms. Millions of Asian students will be affected.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Just google for USB HD Scanner. Camera to OCR'ed text very quickly. Some have 2 5MP camera's and logic to digitize books in short order.
One second per page. I can see this is way better than a clapped out photocopier from an auction. In my days the photocopier in the short loan section of the Library took a beating, until someone rented a house opposite with a book photocopier service.
So e-books may be a temporary thing, when camera-scanners become universal.
Now regarding more expensive books/ software. That would give students in China/India an advantage that will grow and grow, and a lower cost base. That sucking noise is jobs and money being hoovered offshore back to China. Are we going to arrest a foreign student clutching a overseas only edition textbook? Even though I can have a whole bible on a USB stick, there is still a good trade in printed bibles.
This is a rearguard action to protect fat profits, which is going to loose to technology. I think the 'Greys Anatomy' book in medical degrees had this problem before. The right action is to grin and bear it.
Oh goody! No more first sale doctrine! No more used games/CDs/cars/android-phones-tablets and on and on and on. You want a new one? Fine. Just don't think you can get away with selling your old one. Garage sales are the new black market.
I think NO OBJECT should be exempt from the first-sale doctrine. It's an object. A thing. The patents associated with the things were exhausted with the first sale. Nothing else was manufactured. I think they're out of their minds. But there would be enough big-money interest in the US wanting to see this happen so they can justify similar protection in the US to "fight back" in the most patriotic way imaginable.
The things I own, I don't own... I hoped I would die before that happened.
No one is going to allow this garbage to happen anyway. We simply say, "I'll have to respectfully disagree, ya fuck" and do what we want anyway.
Fuck them. They can't legislate your freedoms away unless you allow them to. That is why we have the growing police state. The rulers know that they are going to stop over the line and have the 3rd American revolution on their hands.
Maybe that's why they have been promoting the term "home-grown terrorist" lately.
Oh wait. It is a fine.
So, if I import, to the United States, a used BMW that I legally purchased in Germany, it is an infringement of anything?
Better yet to reject copyright-tainted inputs in favor of Free ones
How can one reject all copyright- and patent-tainted inputs without joining the Amish?
In a world where patent trolling is rampant... you'll see it happen, and unfortunately, if the ruling is upheld, you'll very likely if not definitely see the following:
- Pawn shops out of business
- 'legit' used car market evaporates or used car prices skyrocket to nearly the price of new (with all of the extra money going to the IP trolls)
- Trade stores (Gamestop, Trade It, etc) out of business
- Thousands upon thousands of jobs lost
- Billions of dollars in revenues (both tax and trade) disappear
- If they make it retroactive, lawsuits and repossession of property en masse
- If the law is applied evenly, the real estate market gets even more thoroughly screwed up than it already is (you sure that lumber and drywall is US produced? what about the wiring? light switches? ceiling fans? refrigerator? glass? vinyl/aluminum siding sheets? PVC pipe? faucets? the list goes on.....)
THIS COUNTRY IS BASED ON PRIVATE PROPERTY AND ONCE YOU HAVE "SOLD" THE DARN WHATEVER ITS M*I*N*E !!!!
I dont give a damn about a bunch of judges, I HAVE ON THE COSTITUTION that and it also says I have the right to bear arms to defend it PERIOD !
The AC said it would be ruled to only apply to commercial sales. That is why it was proposed that the 99% would not care. I would not be surprised at this either. The motive behind this is to maintain the ability to pricefix products like printer cartridges, and car parts. I doubt they would go after junkyard owners unless they started making enough money that it looked enticing. I still maintain the naive hope that the court will burn this with fire and declare all the judges that let it get this far to be mentally incompetant and commit them.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
The truth is "You didn't build that!"
You need my permission or pay me royalties.
The Supreme Court is inimical to the interests and livelihoods of the vast major of Americans. The more rulings like this we get, the sooner the public is likely to realize that the Supreme Court is nothing but a tool for those who exploit them.
That is the underlying question about business itself, isn't it? How far do we let it take over our lives?
These business practices should be valid for:
a. Individuals
b. Businesses
c. Both
d. Neither
Which would you choose?
My inner libertarian says whatever is good business should stand. But I fear that might make North America into one giant McDonald's.
My inner liberal says that we should take a moral stance first, but this usually results in government legislation that is even more abusive than good business.
If I have an inner conservative, he's suggesting that our society needs a sense of its direction outside of "make profit," and that with that in place, business as usual will be guided to a saner place...
I wonder which is closest to the truth.
You do not seem to understand the significance of what you read. Basically it is this - immigrant student from Thailand goes to buy university text books and thinks "Wow. These prices are a lot more than I would pay back home for the same books. Maybe there is a business opportunity here." Then he recruits relatives to buy the books in Thailand at Thai prices and ship them to the USA, where he sells them on Ebay for over a million dollars in profit. John Wiley & Sons sues. Thai student invokes "first sale" as a legal defense, so it broadens the scope to include basically every manufactured good.sold in the USA. It is his invoking of "first sale" that has made this potentially into a gigantic nightmare.
This. I live in the USA and regularly purchase blurays (region-free) from the UK Amazon because it is typically much cheaper, even including shipping and VAT.
I even get the side benefit of having a selection of ~15 languages to choose from if I get bored.
ONLY corporations have PROPERTY RIGHT.
Signed, United States, Inc.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I refuse to recognize anything that the Supreme Clown Court says. They stopped following the Constitution a long time ago and only rule based on their own political interests.
I will resell what I want to resell. Any attempt to commit a violent act against me for doing such will result in me defending myself with a proportional amount of force.
For the first-sale doctrine, it does not matter whether the product was made abroad or made from parts made abroad. What may matter (depending on the Supreme Court's decision) is only whether there has been a first sale in the US. There's a reason it's called first-sale doctrine and not manufacture doctrine, you know.
In the case now before the Supreme Court, the books were first bought in Thailand and then re-sold in the US.
I don't ever know what to say about this, how can they say that you don't own what you buy. I wold be shocked and amazed if this got passed.
Since the Globalist New World Order is trying to get everything under a one world government, which seems to be under the United Nations, and since most of the Supreme Court Justices are part of the New World Order, I am predicting, they will rule that it falls under International Law. and would trump the law of the United States, even though they are obligated to support and defend the constitution of the United States.
Wait and see.
Don't be ridiculous. Almost every "American" knows that all humanity started with Adam, created by God, in the garden of eden, which, according to a lot of people now, was in the USA. None of this other country bullcrap, God picked America as the chosen land -- I mean, that's why he gave all the oil to Muslims... errr. wait a minute...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The linked Marketwatch article is complete BS. Clearly the author had no idea what they were talking about, and just took one sentence and expanded it into massive hyperbole. Here are some choice examples from the article:
Put simply, though Apple Inc. AAPL -0.15% has the copyright on the iPhone
I don't think so. They have patents, not copyrights.
It could be your personal electronic devices or the family jewels that have been passed down from your great-grandparents who immigrated from Spain.
No, those things also cannot be copyrighted.
It could also become a weighty issue for auto trade-ins and resales, considering about 40% of most U.S.-made cars carry technology and parts that were made overseas.
Also nothing to do with copyright.
He himself once bought an antique desk from a Supreme Court justice.
Yet another example.
It sounds like the author just made stuff up as they went along. Here are some better articles:
SCOTUS! eBay! Cert and Other Sundries
Summary of Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. at the Supreme Court's own blog
I did read the article, but it doesn't give me a real feel for the issue from a legal perspective. In any case, this is like a lame plot detail from a bad dystopian si-fi story; it’s absurd.
Good luck enforcing this broadly. The logistics, should it become law, would be daunting. This isn't to say there might not be some enforcement for bigger ticket items or ramifications like ebay and craigslist, but I find it hard to believe there would be wide spread enforcement of this law for small scale deals, even things like car sales. Then again, if there is profit to be made if the law is enforced, I could be wrong.
And people talk to no end about how government is the enemy; corporations, at least what they are becoming, are the enemy...seriously.
Otherwise, you would not be able to afford that "all American made" vehicle.
There is no such animal. Some vehicles are majority sourced in the US but no vehicle is sourced exclusively from one country.
That's right. The simple fact is that it costs more to build a car in the U.S. than it does to build, and deliver, a car made in Japan or Korea.
That is not true at all. A lot of cars are made in the US precisely because it is too expensive to build them overseas. Cost of labor is not much cheaper in Japan than it is in the US. Korea isn't especially cheap when it comes to labor either. Much auto assembly can be automated with sufficient volume so the labor differential is further reduced. You also have to account for where the parts for the vehicle are made - the number of auto parts made in the US is huge and shipping them elsewhere would be expensive. Furthermore you have to account for exchange rates. The Yen is quite strong at the moment which makes exporting from Japan expensive. Honda and Toyota build a LOT of cars in the US precisely because it is cheaper to build them in the US.
the court will have proven itself so divorced from reality that it no longer serves any useful purpose and should be dissolved. Believe me, I was thinking that after that little "money is speech" nonsense.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
...enforcing that.
I'm davidwr but I don't want to undo my moderation of the parent post. It was "-1 - troll" when I saw it, +1 insightful'd it, and by that time it was "2 - funny."
If the Supremes rule broadly that the First Sale doctrine doesn't apply to items which contain foreign parts, you'll see a disruption in the marketplace, but it won't be pretty.
SOME customers, notably some business customers who depend on the ability to re-sell, some governments looking for any excuse to "buy American," and a small percentage of individuals will insist on buying American when possible. SOME retailers will specialize in selling only products that their customers are "free to resell" but it won't become widespread, general practice.
Here's why:
Most large companies that control "IP" - studios, large software houses, etc., will make sure that their mainline products qualify as "made in part overseas." Yes, they may sell a "made in the USA" or "free to resell" version that has minor differences and huge up-front increased price so they can qualify to sell to governments and companies that insist on the "right to resell" but their retail products will prohibit reselling. Because they are willing to turn down business from SOME customers to protect their future sales from the resale market, they will essentially "force" most of America to either concede to the reality that they can't re-sell their CDs, or simply do without.
My hope is that the Court will do the opposite and make it clear that people have the right to re-sell what they've already paid for.
Same damn thing as in the books. You only rent something, never "own" it. Kelo vs New Haven showed who owns your home. The county or city, not you. You only get to buy and sell the leases fairly freely, but you don't own your house. That's why you have to get permission from the actual owner to alter it. In most places in the U.S., you can't even replace your kitchen faucet without permission from the real owner. Nearly everyone in an urban area walking out of a Home Depot is, or soon will be, in violation of local laws and often don't even realize it.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
As I recall, we no longer make transistors in the U.S. So don't just think of used foreign merchandise. Think of EVERY product that uses an Asian made transister or microchip.
- No used cars
- No used computers
- No used cell phones
- No used electronics
- Very few used toys
Yes, there are few decisions that would cause a revolution and the mass murder of politicians. But if the Supreme Court decided in favor of the apellate court's decision. I'd wager the result of enforcing such a decision would be the end of the American political system.
I am pretty sure that the Supreme Court will give this an easy slap down.
Oh, that's right. It wouldn't deter me in the slightest.
All it would do is make me ignore the ruling and sell whatever the hell I wanted on Craigslist anyway, and wait the two weeks it would take Congress to create new law that gets around this stupidity. Let those corporations try and sue everybody. Local LEOs and prosecutors are not going to waste their limited budgets on this shit.
Unenforceable. One of the keys to knowing a law or ruling is bad is when it is unenforceable and criminalizes everyday behavior. War on drugs, prohibition, gun laws etc....all more or less unenforceable laws that create a criminal class out of common citizens who are otherwise law abiding. Bah.
There have been hundreds of thousands of students from Asia who knew the price differentials. None of us thought of exploiting it by arbitrage, because we knew it was "wrong". This creep from Thailand did just that.
Actually, engaging in this sort of arbitrage is virtually an American tradition. The only reason there's a lawsuit here is because there's intellectual property involved. If someone discovered that they could purchase Widget X in Country B at a lower price than in Country A, then bought a lot of Widget X and imported to Country A to resell at a higher price, we'd typically call them smart or at least entrepreneurial. Not to mention that consumers in Country A benefit from lower prices.
But since this involves copyright, normal logic goes out the window, and we're told that a book, lawfully purchased in Thailand, cannot be lawfully sold by its purchaser in the United States... because OMG WE NEED DIFFERENTIAL PRICING. You know what? Not my problem. Don't use copyright law to outlaw arbitrage. You want to make your differential pricing more effective? You could translate it into the local language, that'd be a huge barrier to reimportation and reselling.
BTW, this is the exact issue brought up in the Omega v. Costco case - except there it was even more ridiculous, since the copyright was on a design that happened to be stamped on the watch. Currently Costco is apparently winning the issue, since they're arguing that Omega is engaging in copyright misuse in order to control distribution of a normally uncopyrighted object (a watch).
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
SCOTUS filed a brief on the matter that explicitly indicates that the scope is only Title 17, Copyright law, not patent law and not the uniform commercial code. The petitioners argument is based on a misunderstanding of Section 109(a) which deals with Limitations on transfer rights. The case has to do with the inapplicability of transfer rights under section 109 in foreign countries where Title 17 does not apply. There's a very good reason for that inapplicability if you think about why other countries protections or prohibitions don't apply to actions or works created in the United States. So SCOTUS did its job in rejecting the petition.
The case will not apply to all goods sold. It will only apply to works not protected by Title 17 because those works were created in foreign countries not party to Berne Convention rules. And that makes sense. If I'm from some country that didn't sign off on the Berne Convention, and has totally different laws concerning creative works, then why would America's laws apply? That would be like expecting Saudi Arabia's Sharia law to be applicable to the actions of U.S. Citizens in the United States.
From TFA:
I see. So when jobs get shipped overseas because labor is cheaper, and companies can make a higher profit, I'm told I have to accept lower wages and compete in a global marketplace. When a consumer notices that prices are cheaper abroad and buys books there to increase his profit here, the courts change one of the fundamental concepts of Capitalism (that you can resell what you purchase) to stop him.
Can there be any doubt we live in a Corporatocracy? Can I get a fucking witness?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Businesses want free world trade and to take advantage of different labor and cost of living in different areas to make as much profit as possible but....
They don't want "consumers" or non businesses to have the same advantages of that same free market and free trade.
IP holders want to sell books to people in rural Somalia for $1 and the same book to people in London for $50. They don't want the person in Somalia to sell a book they got for $2 to someone in London for $20.
Why do businesses and IP holders get more rights? They want free trade to ONLY apply to them. DVD region coding was an example of trying to do this through technology. OMG, ban the imports!! Well, except for the ones the IP holders are importing.
As usual, about 90% of the posters, including, impossibly, the OP, never read TFA. This isn't about your iPod or old book or 40% of your car. It's about some asshole buying books over seas and importing them to the US and selling them for millions in a huge operation.
No, you don't, in fact, get to do that. Copyright is about creating a de jure monopoly on intellectual property so you can charge what the market will bear.
If you have qualms about the indefinite re-extensions Congress keeps issuing, that's one thing. Otherwise, the law is working as intended.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The fact this is even being discussed at the FEDERAL level shows just how far off base our society has come. Selling stuff we purchased has to be a fundamental right in a free society. Otherwise, what was bought exactly? What's the point in owning anything? It seems like these days, the empowerment that comes with the choices we're still allowed to make is being stripped away, leaving only the liabilities. Why should we bother getting up in the morning? Between insurance companies, patent whores, employers, and the state, it seems like we're not allowed to do much at all with our lives or the things we supposedly own. Sure, there are still choices, but an increasing number of the ones left are false, as the 'wrong' one comes with a pile of artificial consequences enforced by these entities while they high five each other over the lines that are supposed to separate them.
To me it's obvious that the right to own is being picked apart because it's a source of empowerment for the individual. Am I really that far off base?
These idiots are overstepping their bounds.
They are appointed, not elected, and I owe them NO allegiance
whatsoever.
you have to pay royalties to give the money to someone else, and only then you can transfer money from your bank account to someone else bank account!
we know it will get there, it is just a matter of time till the banking business realize they could charge us for any transaction of our holding, and hold from fraction of the world wealth each time, to major parts of the world money, i mean, they could, but not sure if the public will agree to this.
will it?
i won't, i work with cash only.
Two months is a long time.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Well now, lets spark that debate. Patriotism or Seclusion-ist. If I had to get permission to sell what I purchased but have no use for, my actions would resort to buying FULLY Made in the USA only. Of course, I would put restrictions on any product I sold via ebay/craigslist to ensure that I didn't give permission for a resale after purchase with permission. Reposting my Facebook materials would have new meaning, and restrictions as those thoughts are mine. This could go bad quick!
captcha: outwits
I don't buy anything American, so you are free not to buy anything outside america, who cares move on.
Seems fairly simple, really.
Not that I advocate what they are doing here... but prohibiting unauthorized resale of it when they don't even *TRY* to stop unauthorized imports seems to me a whole lot like closing the barn door *after* the animals have left.
Of course I realize that there'd still be ways around the law in that case, but at least that would make the law a whole lot more consistent.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
When my body is through processing the Mexican vegetables, and Argentinian beef, I will package it up in equal parts and send it back to the makers.
I can imagine them planning on adding a DRM/TCPA chip into every device and brain on the planet. But until then, how are they gonna enforce their criminal money-making schemes? Because without such chips, it is literally physically to enforce.
Even a single non-controlled information-processing device on the planet would leave everyone with the ability, to use it as a copying hub.
Like prohibition, everybody will continue, and nobody will give a single fuck about those greedy motherfuckers.
We made a turn down the wrong path.
This whole--"you don't own what you buy" fear is overblown regardless of the outcome of this case...don't get me wrong, I'm pretty l'aissez faire on government rules, but if one reads the real argument at stake, it is one of channel distribution, not ownership.
This is not the case of a person simply buying something built overseas and being told he can't sell it. this is about copyrighted material that, right or wrong, is manufactured for legal sale specific to geographies. In many cases, the law as it exists says you can't legally sell books, DVD's, etc from one sales region into another, as the copyright holder has only licensed its sale embodied in that object within a certain region.
This does not apply to other stuff automatically, though I don't doubt some corporations would love to creep the ruling up to embrace better distribution control for resale of their physical goods.
Only up to the point where people want to trade up to the newest iGadget and realize they won't be able to sell their old one to do so.
Yes, the iHoard has shiny gadgetitis when it comes to iProducts, but even they tend to sell/trade their old stuff when purchasing a new one, which means restrictions on used sales would probably impact new sales quite heavily.
The conservative side produced citizen united which basically lets corporation give unlimited money to political speech.
No, it lets ANYONE spend ANY amount of money on political speech. That's because we have this little thing called "freedom of speech" which allows you to, well SPEAK. WIthout limits.
I don't see a problem with it since it applies to all sides of politics, and votes cannot be bought with pure money dumps. Do you know how much money is spent on fliers and phone calls and the like that go to millions? And yet such efforts can have a tiny to no impact at all on voters, because they tune it out and can easily find information they want to on candidates now. There is no problem with letting a politician spend himself silly because media is just not limited to a few channels the way it once was.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I fail to see how Chinese laws apply to the USA. Once on our soil, they can kiss my a$$.
This case has nothing to do with where something was made,, it is over where it was originally bought, and hinges more on import of copyright goods than on first sale doctrine. It's a much more complicated case than the hysterical morons in the secondary press (like whoeve wrote the summary here) make it out to be, and isn't likely to be a precedent for anything at all.
I can't decide if you're naive, not paying any attention at all, or just plain stupid.
....such as in ever taking the time to look at the WTO's Financial Services Agreement, which that faux crat and fraudster, Bill Clinton was so hepped to sign into law. Evidently I may be the ONLY American who recalls that back around 1996, Clinton tried to get the House to create legislation removing the right of the individual citizen to own a patent, and only allow for corporations to own patents, moving it in line with the WTO charter. Fortunately, let us hope this pathetic crap doesn't pass just as Billygoat Clinton failed back with at least one thing in the 1990s. (And I state unequivocally I am an authentic democrat/progressive, not a phony Clintoncrat or Obamacrat.
...the WTO's Financial Services Agreement.
"...would incentivize companies..." that's the most stupid drivel --- America reached critical mass for jobs offshoring back in 1999, when America became a net importer of tech services. Evidently, all concepts are beyond your grasp --- no wonder you're anonymous....
Would not anything made where parts are bought then be held at issue. If you knit a sweater, the manufacturer of that thread has the right to tell you not to resell that sweater, but break it back down to the owner of the Cotton farm can tell that thread manufacturer, I want a licensing fee for each object made with my cotton. The company who makes the dyes for the thread can say, we don't approve you selling that sweater because it uses Red Dye #5 and we have a patent on that. Next the chemical companies who provide the dye factory the chemicals to make the dye to have a say too.
You make a product, you sell it, you don't own it any more if you are a retailer.
This puts a whole new spin on both "buyer beware" and "possession is 9/10th of the law".
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
...usuallylost, let us hope, but you may have noticed that decision back around 2005, where SCOTUS privatized eminent domain???
Such that a private corporate concern can pressure the government, at all levels, to seize private property for their profitable use (involved a property firm, on behalf of Pfizer, seizing and destroying a neighborhood in Connecticut --- after the SCOTUS decision went in the property firm's favor, they abandoned the project after razing that neighborhood!); such a decision allow for foreign corporations to also exert eminent domain through local government, etc. (Pay close attention to what's transpiring with TransCanada and their pipeline and eminent domain in America, please.) It's all about that WTO Financial Services Agreement and their charter.
I predict an obvious but subtle castigation of lower courts for it getting there at all.
In case you haven't noticed -- which you obviously haven't -- pretty much all the cases now going to SCOTUS have been in that whackadoodle category: Citizens United would never have reached them forty or fifty years ago.
Of course, fifty years ago, when a governor was punked and fully exposed the way that the Wisconsin Governor Wanker (Walker?) was, the public outrage would have been deafening, and he likely would have resigned --- not been reelected in a recall election, where the same frigging percentage of "union" households voted for that wanker a second time (unions = business associations today, except for National Nurses United and the Longshoremen, etc.)!
Ameritards are brain dead today --- MK ULTRA has been a roaring success among the forever ignorant masses.
I wouldn't expect it to be legal to resell illegal drugs, even if they were purchased in a country were they were legal.
Likewise, if you buy a book in Australia where it's out of copyright, and try and sell it in the U.S. you're going to get into trouble.
Exactly. He's merely waiting to vote whichever way Scalia tells him to. Whenever those two go out to lunch, as the waiter approaches the first time, Thomas shouts out "I'll have what he's having!"
Scalia's favorite song: Me and My Shadow
The court case even explicitly references the fact that the product is *acquired* oversees. In other words, the first sale that occurs on US soil counts for first sale doctrine regardless of country of manufacture. That holds true no matter how this court case comes out. This will not fundamentally change anything about how business is done and affects a small minority of day to day life.
Of course, I think this court case is still crap. The reseller being sued for copyright infringement when no actual unauthorized copying was done. Rationally, I would assume the only potential for legitimate legal action would be in the nation of acquisition around some sort of licensing violation. Practically speaking, I bet there was no such licensing agreement and the reseller simply should get off.
The key words 'and legally acquired abroad' are critical here. Hell, they could have (and probably should) leave off the whole 'made' as the critical issue is where the product is purchased, not where it is made. That chinese shirt at wal-mart doesn't apply because you are doing the sale domestically.
John Wiley & Sons are cunts. Anyone who buys their books is a cunt. Don't be a cunt.
If you have any of their books that you want to resell, maybe you should give them a call. Ask them if they will send their cunt lawyers after you when you put the books on eBay.
10475 Crosspoint Blvd.
Indianapolis, IN 46256
Phone: (877) 762-2974
Fax: (800) 597-3299
Web: http://support.wiley.com/
if they find a day-one bug in existing legislation?
the proper answer is to fix the law, not attack the court
- 'legit' used car market evaporates or used car prices skyrocket to nearly the price of new (with all of the extra money going to the IP trolls)
Well you can count on the entire auto market collapsing, because not many people can afford to buy a brand-new car and then throw it away when it's having trouble. New cars can only cost as much as they do because people are able to recover part of the price by reselling the car after 3-10 years when they get tired of it or it starts having mechanical problems. People would only be able to buy a car and never resell it, meaning they'd have to keep it as long as possible; new car sales will absolutely plummet.
If Kirtsaeng wins, then companies like John Wiley & Sons will raise its prices abroad or close their overseas subsidiaries altogether. This means the only access that people in poorer countries will have to American books, drugs, movies will be cheaper counterfeits. I don't really have a problem with that.
Isn't this just the Costco vs Omega ruling being applied to the general case?
Well you can count on the entire auto market collapsing
What it comes down to, (I could have probably said it better, but didn't particularly want to say this and more than likely get flamed into oblivion) is that if this is upheld, you're looking at a radical change in the consumer/producer relationship, and potentially the near total (if not completely total) collapse of the US economy assuming it is strictly enforced, or enforced at all. Given the precedents set by the RIAA/MPAA and Apple Computer, I do not think that the lower court's ruling can be struck down without also striking down the aforementioned rulings, but I'm also not a lawyer so I may be missing something there.
I agree entirely.
Interestingly, however, some other posters have pointed out that this doesn't apply to just anything, it only applies to things purchased overseas and imported without permission. Of course, with that, I really wonder: how do you tell if something is imported with permission or not?
This absolute draconian 1984 x10 to the infinite bullshit needs to stop. Are you SERIOUS? I underatand what Mandak is saying and the simple fact is that the majority of society is not going to try to turn a profit through dishonestly re-selling their foreign acquisitions to get a larger margin, just like mandak never thought of it. Real legitimate human beings do not do that and, even though it seems like 99% of us are garbage, they really aren't. Laws and court rulings that punish the majority because of the shittiness of the minority need to stop right now. This affects everyone - reselling games to a GameStop or a Spin-it-Again or a whateverthehellotherof90000differenstores is one huge issue in the entertainment industry right now, for example. By this ruling it would be illegal for many legitimate businesses who purchase products from Japan and South Korea and Taiwan to resell them, such as PVC figure kits from e-bay sellers or import toys/figures/dvds/blurays/videogames/food/candy/comics/manga/shirts/shit at anime or horror or scifi or even porn conventions, or gun shows, or many other things. This hypothetically would put an end to all third-party vending, and not to be the conspiracy guy here - including the fact that this is a huge attempted strike at the sale of firearms in America, just to name one of many things.
I started to say they can't make it retroactive, because of the No Ex Post Facto part of the Constitution, and then I remembered that we threw that document away a few years ago.....
No, the appellate opinion in the case being heard said that what mattered was the place of manufacture, regardless of whether it was imported with or without the authorization of the US rightsholder.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
What this smells like to me is a re-trying of Omega S.A. v. Costco Wholesale Corp., probably where justice Kagan will not recuse herself.
At issue in the earlier case was whether or not Costco had the right to IMPORT the watches, NOT whether or not he had the right to sell them. If a similar decision occurs here, the lack of first sale doctrine would prevent Kirtsaeng from importing the items in the first place, not so much from reselling them. It most certainly would NOT prevent FIRST SALE from applying to items that you purchased in the US, even if made elsewhere, as those items would presumably have been imported legally.
My guess is that if Kagan is the deciding vote on this one, it will go better for consumers, but only time will tell.
If I buy a DVD, I dont buy it from sony, I buy it from walmart.
Walmart bought it from a distributor
and if life was only THAT simple the distributor bought it from another distributor, who bought it from the factory!
so go fuck yourself
The question at issue (to me) seems to be this:
If you purchase an item in a foreign country and import it into the United States without permission from the rights holder, does the initial purchase in the foreign country count as the "First Sale" for the purposes of the "First Sale" doctrine in US law.
If you buy a textbook printed overseas from a US bookstore, that would count as the "First Sale" and since it was presumably imported with the permission of the rights holder, there is no issue.
The case has to do with items purchased overseas then imported into this country. If you didn't purchase your item overseas, it doesn't apply to you.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
'nogh
It would fling our economic system so far in the direction of socialism that we'd go past communism and loop back around to feudalism, only this time based on Imaginary Property instead of real estate.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
is this how the united states solves its economical problems ?! so much for bullshit talk of freedom and democracy.
I work my ass to own a Galaxy S III and then someone comes and tell me, you don't own that !! I mean WTF !! do I get to tell that SoB CEO how to spend the money I give him/her when I pay for a Galaxy S III !?
What about that case of the clap I bought from the hooker in Tijuana? Do I have to pay her licensing fees if I spread it to my wife back home, or do I own it outright?
so.... they want the same law to apply everywhere when they like it. (US Copyright law).
And, they want different law to apply when it suits them (ownership law).
I mean, can't they see how their logic is toddler like?
It should be obvious, even to the people it benefits, that "I like it so that's the way it should be!!" is not in any way a fair way to decide things.
What a load of crap. This is how they are taking over.
We don't have those restrictions put on them! And by the way, we make it as easy as possible to do business with China..
THAT IS WHY OUR JOBS ARE OVERSEAS!
This move would be one more step into the whoring away of of country by congress.
This corporate-allied Supreme Court is certain to allow what amounts to economic double jeopardy: allowing rights holders and manufacturers to profit not just once from production of an item but every single time it changes hands. Doesn't that sound vaguely familiar? It should: it's almost like a subscription.
My hope is that the Court will do the opposite and make it clear that people have the right to re-sell what they've already paid for.
As an exercise of free speech, I am going to say that right already exists. In fact, it's one of the most fundamental rights that can exist in any free country: the Right To Transfer items that one buys is certainly a form of reasonable conduct (provided the item is transferred in full), and the Right to Reasonable Conduct is indisputably a fundamental human right, arguably THE single most important fundamental right.
As these particular rights are not explicitly stated in the Bill of Rights, they necessarily arise under US law as rights "retained by the people" under the 9th Amendment and "reserved to the people" under the 10th Amendment. James Madison deliberately made the Bill of Rights an open-ended document because he anticipated these kinds of situations would eventually occur.
In other words, businesses do not have a legal right to artificially segment markets. There is no such thing as an "Asian Edition" of a book, in the sense of an edition that can only be sold in Asia. There is no such thing as a "region code", in these sense of a mark on an item that indicates it can only be sold in certain parts of the world.
All legal professionals in the USA are required to swear oaths to uphold the law. The Bill of Rights is the highest law in the land and supersedes all laws below the level of the Bill of Rights. If these oaths of office have any meaning at all, then by bringing this case, the legal professionals representing the publisher violated these oaths. In ruling as they did, the lower courts and the appeals courts violated these oaths. If the Supreme Court justices were to uphold this illegal ruling, then the Supreme Court justices would be in violation of THEIR oaths.
We can assert the equivalent of the Nuremberg precedent in this case, as another right arising under the 9th Amendment. Just as military officers are expected to refuse to obey illegal orders, civil officials and legal professionals are expected to refuse to enforce OR MAKE USE OF illegal laws or precedents, and any law or precedent that infringes fundamental rights is by definition illegal.
Legal professionals, as a class in society, are in a position of ethical conflict of interest with respect to the nature, scope, and form of the legal system. A legal system that is, or even merely seems to be, complex, confusing, or contradictory, or one that makes people afraid of engaging in reasonable conduct, necessarily creates a long term demand for the services of legal professionals, leading to massively increased job security and income (if the complexity increase fast enough, the supply will never keep up, especially when the legal professionals can artificially limit the supply). As such, the behavior of legal professionals who make the legal system have these attributes does not merely involve a minor, technical, or accidental violation of their oaths, but rather involves EXTREMELY serious unethical conduct. I emphasize EXTREME because this kind of behavior affects everyone else in society.
Such a violation can only carry one penalty: the persons involved are immediately and permanently disqualified from holding any position of public trust or responsibility, or engaging in the practice of law, or receiving any form of pension or other benefit from the United States government. Any member of government who permits an oath-breaker to stay in office becomes an accessory to the original violation.
This penalty for violating fundamental rights also means that legal professionals in the highest office are also in positions of conflict of interest with respect to their oaths. After all, these people have typically made many decisions during their careers before reaching the highest office, and if these earlier decisions were later found to involve violations of an oath to uphold the Bill of Rights, these people would necessarily l
Sorry, but since when have people starting thinking that Eden was in present-day America? BTW, the Israelites were God's chosen people, now there is no "chosen" people since Jesus came...Just accepting His gift. I'm sure God doesn't care about who has the oil, either. Oh one more thing-we have plenty of oil in America, just politicians keep us from digging it.
No, what would happen is that when you get tired of your car for whatever reason, you take it back to the dealer where you purchased it from where they would be happy to waive the reselling fee if you trade it in on a new car of the same brand. So there would still be a used market of some sort, but under complete control of the manufacturers.
QED.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Tell people they can't do something and they multiply their efforts by ten fold to do said something.
I needn't say more.
Slashdot story: "All forms of bar code have been numerically exhausted; IPv4 addresses still available."
Just as raising prices on cigarettes would do nothing more than make them get them underground and despise the government, this will just turn the profits underground and under the table as well. They not going to police every garage sale , and certainly internet websites would pop up overnight allowing anonymous contacting of said products. Its really an issue of corporate greed vs blue collar empathy, they work hard for their money and have to be told now they can't sell their own posessions, I don't think so.
Once again. It can only happen in the USA