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."

Comments

Private property rights

[roman_mir]

Many here do not understand event the definition of capitalism:
private ownership and operation of property
that's all it is.

Denying people's right to private ownership and operation of property is denying capitalism. It's a good thing that this judge went in the right direction, but what is troubling is that this was ever even a question: can people own property?

Can people own and operate private property? Can you sell your own stuff that you made or bought? Isn't that a strange thing to ask in a society that is supposedly capitalist? But of-course it is not a strange thing to ask, because the society is no longer capitalist. Capitalism really exists as a concept in a free market economy, because capitalism in fact requires individual freedom. Denying freedom to the individuals will automatically deny capitalism and what do you have when you do not have capitalism because you do not have freedom?

Well, you may still end up with some people owning and operating private property but not all people being able to do it, because the governing principles changed to deny all people equal protection against government intervention by law.

It is when you do not have equal treatment of people in the context of their relationship with their government by law when you really no longer have free market but you also lose the principles of capitalism for most people.

Again: capitalism is ownership and operation of private property. This is a basic fundamental right, all other rights are only an extension of this one right. If you have no right to own and operate private property, you will not be able to have resources, you will not even be allowed to own and operate your own body. And that's true even today, look at this lack of capitalism, lack of free market and thus lack of freedom even to do what you want with your own body. All these government officials telling you what you must or are not allowed to do, eat, smoke, drink, ingest, who you can and cannot have sex with, etc.

Unfortunately it is now news when a judge actually protects individual freedoms in a rare case of outbreak of common sense or decency or something like that, it's no longer the rule, it's the exception.

Re:Your Textbooks: Now Printed in China

[anagama]

It's funny -- there are all kinds of incentives for big business to move jobs offshore, or import cheap labor, but when the general public makes use of the same process, they complain. And they got 3 judges on their side, including a "liberal" judge (Ginsburg) and a lieralish judge (Kenedy) and of course Scalia. Expect a legislative solution to be purchased soon so that this "egregious" decision can be fixed and we can go back to falling wages and increasing corporate profits.