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Supreme Court To Hear First Sale Doctrine Case
Registered Coward v2 writes "The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear a case to determine how copyright law and the doctrine of first sale applies to copyrighted works bought overseas, then imported to the U.S. and then re-sold. The case involves a foreign student who imported textbooks from Asia and the resold them in the U.S. to help fund his education. He was sued by the publisher, lost, and was ordered to pay $600,000 in damages. Now SCOTUS gets to weigh in on the issue. 'The idea -- upheld by the Supreme Court since 1908 -- is that once a copyright holder legally sells a product initially, the ownership claim is then exhausted, giving the buyer the power to resell, destroy, donate, whatever. It's a limited idea -- involving only a buyer's distribution right, not the power to reproduce that DVD or designer dress for sale. ... The tricky part is whether that first-sale doctrine applies to material both manufactured and first purchased outside the United States. Federal law gives that authority to a purchaser's work "lawfully made under this title." Does "this title" apply to any copyrighted work — whether manufactured all or in part in the United States and around the world?"
"Great cases like hard cases make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their importance... but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
If first sale is held not to apply to goods manufactured outside the United States, every product we buy will be accompanied by a non transferable shrink wrap license,
All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.
The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.
Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.
Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?
But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.
To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.
Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.
When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character.
Let us now take wage-labour.
The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer. What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.
In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.
In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.
And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.
By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.
But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also
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Yes, first sale doctrine applies in this case. It's a no-brainer. Nobody here or in the court will be thinking about whether or not the foreign student stole the textbooks - because he did not. Nobody is accusing him of copying. Nobody is saying the items are counterfeit. The whole point of this case will be to try to figure out a tricky legal way to accuse the student of stealing. That is the only reason for debate. The 'under this title' part of the reasoning for debate is moot anyway since the law is meant to be applied equally - and equal application would mean 'lawfully made under this title' when the law agrees in both governing states (which is not even being argued.)
The doctrine of first sale is a simple idea and concept - one that can apply easily in courts around the country and the world. The biggest problem we are all worried about is if our corrupt Surpreme Court will once again come up with complicated 'reasoning' to decide yet another case where the big corporation beats the young entrepreneur. If I want to copyright my apples and sell them for 1 penny in China and $3000 in Canada, why should I have any further control over the people in China realizing my ridiculous pricing? Free market capitalism and globalism needs to go both ways. If a corporation is free to charge different prices, the consumers or middle men should be free to resell them - until the price points meet market demands.
What the Supreme Court should do is morally, lawfully, and reasonably easy to decide. What they will do is a big fucking can of worms because of the current move toward corporatism.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
No, I think it would rather lead to an increase of products 'made anywhere' but 'sold in the USA' by a company the copyright holder approves of, thereby leading to neither lower prices nor better availability.
I firmly believe that the founding fathers intended for the constitution to be "as is". Black and White. It means what it says and trying to conjure up a ruling because times change a little bit doesn't give any court the right or power to use a personal interpretation to make a ruling. Why do I believe this? Well they also gave the power to add, remove, amend the constitution through a very lengthy process. This tells me that changing the constitution in any way was very important and it was not meant to be arbitrarily changed at a whim or misinterpreted by someones prejudice. Think about it - technically any judge on any court can say , "well i interpret this to mean that so I am ruling X". That gives too much power to judges and I think most of us here understand that the founders didn't want this..
"why should ... a thousand miles away." The framers DID account for that, by making a FEDERAL government, not a national one. The people a thousand miles away have only the enumerated powers, with all other powers reserved to the states and the people.
That's how the Constitution avoids having people a thousand miles away make your decisions for you, NOT by having judges make up the law as they go along.
Slashdot is upvoting the Communist Manifesto? That's unexpected.
(funnily enough, the marxists.org page, which hosts the Manifesto, claims copyright over the document! It's probably over the translation, but still hilariously hypocrite)
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