On the EFF’s Deep Links blog, Parker Higgins presents the stakes in today’s Supreme Court hearing for Kirtsaeng v. Wiley, which concerns the right of a student, Supap Kirtsaeng, to import textbooks from overseas and sell them in the USA. Wiley, a textbook publisher, argues that even though the books Kirtsaeng is selling are his property, that they have the right to dictate how and whether he may pass it on. Normally, copyright is limited by “first sale” — once a copyrighted work has been sold once, it is the new owner’s property. But Wiley argues that works that are manufactured offshore (that is to say, nearly everything!) are not subject to first sale. That means that everything from lending library books to selling used CDs to selling, giving away or lending practically every kind of electronics (all of which have copyrighted software that comes from offshore) will only persist with the permission of rightsholders, who can withhold it, or charge arbitrary sums for it.
via Boing Boing
October 29, 2012
