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Supreme Court Upholds First Sale Doctrine
langelgjm writes "In a closely-watched case, the U.S. Supreme Court today vindicated the first-sale doctrine, declaring that it "applies to copies of a copyrighted work lawfully made abroad." The case involved a Thai graduate student in the U.S. who sold cheap foreign versions of textbooks on eBay without the publisher's permission. The 6-3 decision has important implications for goods sold online and in discount stores. Justice Stephen Breyer said in his opinion (PDF) that the publisher lost any ability to control what happens to its books after their first sale abroad."
will not stop the publishers from making DMCA requests / filling strikes that can cost you $35 a pop.
Like, seriously? The supreme court saw reason and is judged in favor of the consumer?! Will wonders ever cease!
No better time to start making money.
I wouldn't be surprised to see a bigger push towards e-books. That is a way around the "problem" for the publishers.
GENERATION 27: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
This may be one of the most important decisions this court has gotten right in years. This was absolutely huge because of the implications of what would have happened if it had gone the other way. This is critical in terms of the idea of actually owning what you buy, without this manufactures could simply make things out of country and avoid first sale rights. This could have affected pretty much every aspect of Americans daily life and is a good first step in restoring Intellectual Property sanity.
It's funny how property rights have historically been a right wring agenda item until they are shown to be just as important to the left as well...
If they wrote it....they'll want the latest edition.
--- Mercutio was right.
There will be a huge push now for electronic books under the guise of "convenience" but what it really comes down to is that they will want to "license" the book rather than sell it. At the same time, the electronic versions will simply continue to make the publishers less and less relevant especially for new titles.
6-3? What did the 3 think? This is mind boggling. And kind of frightening.
"Seriously? Reselling a physical product you bought legally needed the highest court in the land to adjudicate?"
Yes, it did. BUT, you're wrong about one thing. It isn't the "physical product" that is at issue here. it's the copyrighted work.
This has BIG implications for copyrighted works. In essence, it upholds the 100-year-old rule that says publishers' "terms" bedamned: if you bought it, it's YOURS. You can sell it, burn it, or whatever you want.
Although lower courts have upheld First Sale Doctrine re: copyrighted software for resale on Ebay and Amazon, it was reaffirmed here by the Supreme Court.
So unless you have an existing contract with the publisher when you buy software, you can pretty much ignore their "license agreement". You bought it, it's yours. Once you have paid for it, you can do whatever you want with it, regardless of any "license agreement" inside the box or in a popup window. But you still can't legally distribute copies without the copyright holder's permission.
you can modify the hardware all you want, you can't play on x-box live with modified hardware. online service is different than hardware you own.
First sale rights are not something that should depend on a statute to begin with. They should be a self-evident aspect of personal property right that are so taken for granted that they aren't explicitly stated anywhere.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Guise of convenience? I'm pretty sure they really are more convenient...
Electronic copies can be more convenient. But currently, they are not. Why are they not more convenient? Well let me see if I can find a source... Oh yes here it is:
I can easily break the DRM on my books so that I have backups...
If you notice, this person here has to run cracking software just to get their files to play nicely and not destroy itself if this person tries to do the basic tasks of backup or use on an 'unauthorized device'.
You see, they can be more convenient, but they are not. The eBook market is a minefield of incompatibility and artificial restriction. It takes away huge capabilities present in real books, and offers it back in a crippled/reduced capacity and calls it a 'bonus feature'.
Want to give your book to a friend? Hand it to them. Done.
Want to give your eBook to a friend? Well, first lets understand what format of eBook you have, which vendor did you purchase it from. Depending on the vendor, and their software, you might be able to lend it, but only once, or not at all. I'm not sure. Oh wait, your friend is using this specific type of software right? Oh he isn't? Well, guess you can't lend it to him. So he wants to use the software, hope he agrees to all the terms and conditions associated with the use of such software.
Am I exaggerating? A little... No wait, I'm not exaggerating at all, it really is a mass of incompatible formats, competing ecosystems, overly-limited 'rights', and flawed laws which make even your simple 'remove the DRM' action illegal (depending on how cranky a prosecutor is on a given day)
eBooks SHOULD be more convenient, but right now they certainly are not.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Guise of convenience? I'm pretty sure they really are more convenient, my room is rather small and I do a lot of traveling, I can easily break the DRM on my books so that I have backups, but with paperbooks, I'd never be able to keep as many of them.
It's easy to say greedy publishers, and to an extent they are, but unless you're in the habit of buying used books or live in a huge house, you're going to have to get rid of them over time anyways, but with ebooks, you won't likely ever hit that point.
With a licensed ebook you don't have the option of reselling it. When you're done with those paper books, you can resell them and recoup some of your cash. If it weren't for getting screwed on your resale rights, I'd be on board. If the ebooks were like 50% cheaper than print it might be worth giving up on the resale rights. Unfortunately the ebooks I've looked at were the same or more expensive than printed books.
Not surprisingly. Don't make the mistake of seeing the conservatives as being against the people, and the liberals being for the people. It's all over the board.
The federal government protects the profits of big pharma by banning the re-importation of medications and medical devices sold in other countries. Hopefully this ruling sets a precedent for a challenge to that ridiculous prohibition. There's no valid reason that a drug should sell for $X in the USA and sell for a tiny fraction of that price just over the border.
Funny how the government is all in favor of "free trade" until it threatens some deep-pocketed special interest group.
It would be nice if an author now and then would actually find an editor before self-publishing.
I've had a less than satisfactory experience when it comes to my purchases of self-published books.
A few things to consider.
1: there is a very large and not particaully rich country called india where english is one of the official languages (the other being hindi but afaict that isn't used much for technical stuff)
2: some countries deliberately establish english speaking universities in the hope of being more attractive to foreign talent.
3: Even in the UK which is english speaking and fairly rich afaict there is far less tolerance and pushing of overpriced textbooks than in the USA.
Put all of these together and at a university level there is going to be a pretty big market for textbooks in english outside the USA and in general those outside america aren't prepared to pay as much as those inside america. The textbook vendors want to split the market so they can choose a different "most profitable price" for the USA and the rest of the world.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Convenience? eBooks may be much, but convenient, they are not. Well, at least the ones that are for sale.
A dead tree edition is convenient. My buddy needs to look something up or wants to read it? Here's the book, return it when you feel like it. The only equipment he needs to read it is a pair of working eyes and the knowledge how to translate the printed symbols into meaningful expressions (aka "reading").
With an eBook, first of all the question arises if we have the same kind of reader. If not, well, there's a pretty good chance that he won't even be able to read it, even if I can give it to him, which is anything but a given either because of omnipresent DRM.
If you were talking about some kind of open document then yes, I could easily agree, they're very convenient. I have the PDF version of quite a few papers that I need on my laptop, and it's heaps easier to take those along when I travel. I can also easily hand over a copy to people who want to read them as well (before anyone asks, yes, I do have the right to do so). I can store thousands of pages that would fill a laptop case by themselves and have still lots of room for more and for other stuff.
That would be very convenient if it applied to other documents as well. But eBooks are usually not really like that. They are locked down by artificial restrictions that strip them of the convenience they COULD have.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There are "open book cases" in my town now, think of it as some publicly accessible bookshelf where you put your old books and take home the ones that are there and are interesting to you. At first I thought they'd be plundered the nanosecond they are put up, but it seems to work out pretty well, and they see quite some use, too. One of those things is near the train station I frequent and no matter when I go there, someone's always standing there perusing the book, and people actually do bring books, too, not only take them out.
I kinda cannot see anything like this with eBooks.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Honestly, DRM is the problem. Let's say that we have no DRM, but we still have different standards. Let's say we're talking about pictures, instead of books. Well, you have PNG, JPG, GIF.... Hrmm it appears it's pretty trivial to have one player that can handle all the formats when you don't have the DRM restrictions. The formats would need to differentiate themselves in functionality, or the best would win. The main differentiation right now is the DRM schemes.
I don't think that it matters much what their motivations are, but rather, the stated rationale they give towards reaching their end goal (that is, shouting "eBooks are convenient!" when in reality they just want to lock that puppy down and circumvent first-sale doctrine entirely).
I'm sure they are convenient for both publisher (drops the cost of ink and paper to practically nada), and for many consumers (store it on a tablet!)
OTOH, while you may find it convenient and such, there are a lot of us old curmudgeons out here who prefer their books on paper.
The old-school books don't require batteries or eyestrain, no DRM, and the format won't ever become obsolete. Sure, they take up space and weigh a lot in quantity. So what? I've had a going personal library for decades now, and it's not a bother to me. I have this habit of upgrading the pile once in awhile. This means I get rid of the obvious crap (and any books I no longer have a credible use for), keep the good stuff (the awesome books I want to read over and over again over the years, old textbooks, etc) and over time my little personal library has gained in quality. As a bonus, no publisher or author can ever take them away from me - and not a few of them are even autographed. By the way, I can read 'em anytime I want, even when the power goes out.
Long story short - you go right ahead and chain yourself to the publisher's profit motives. I prefer mine on paper, and I prefer them to be mine once I buy them.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?