11–20 of 47 posts
If it becomes illegal, I doubt the US government will have the money to enforce it, and neither will copyright holders. So don't worry.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If at some point Ford decided it was in their interest to restrict sales of used Fords then yes they could. Although it's likely that high end makers would do so first - a supercar maker might be more interested in protecting it's brand image by keeping broken down versions of it's car off the street. Ford is more likely to suffer from the anger of departing new buyers than gain from there not being 40year old Ford p…
How is this possible? From my reading of the article, the suspension of first-sale only applies to goods manufactured abroad. Wouldn't MS software be manufactured in Washington state?
The physical good that software is distributed on is covered by the first-sale doctrine and you can resell that, but it won't do much good because you can't reassign your license to it. If I have a license for Windows but lose the physical disc, I can buy your disc. However, without owning a license, I wouldn't have the right to use the software.
If the SCOTUS upholds the circuit court's decision, I wouldn't be able to buy your Windows disc anymore (assuming it's pressed outside of the US).
> Almost every product made now has a copyright logo on it. That logo, alone, empowers manufacturers to sue people for copyright infringement for unlawful sales. Logos are not copyrightable (well, you could copyright an image of one...) but fall under trademark law. I have a hard time trusting an article about this stuff that confuses copyright and trademark law; they're two completely unrelated, different beasts.
I believe the author is referring to the copyright symbol (the c with a circle around it). This article could have used more thorough proofreading and editing.
> The notice was once required in order to receive copyright protection in the United States, but in countries respecting the Berne convention this is no longer the case. The United States joined the Berne Convention in 1989
If it becomes illegal, I doubt the US government will have the money to enforce it, and neither will copyright holders. So don't worry.
It's probably unenforceable for individuals but, what about the guy who starts a business buying broken iPods, fixing them, and reselling them? He would definitely be a target.
That said, I don't think any tech company would be stupid enough to start enforcing this right. Tons of new purchases are subsidized by the sale of the previous version of that product. Game companies, on the other hand, would probably love this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's probably unenforceable for individuals but, what about the guy who starts a business buying broken iPods, fixing them, and reselling them? He would definitely be a target.
It would be relatively easy for companies to force Amazon Marketplace, eBay and Craig's List to take down unauthorized sales. That said, I don't think any tech company would be stupid enough to start enforcing this right. Tons of new purchases are subsidized by the sale of the previous version of that product. Game companies, on the other hand, would probably love this.
Try reselling your weight watchers program materials on eBay and you will learn about the program very quickly.
> Almost every product made now has a copyright logo on it. That logo, alone, empowers manufacturers to sue people for copyright infringement for unlawful sales. Logos are not copyrightable (well, you could copyright an image of one...) but fall under trademark law. I have a hard time trusting an article about this stuff that confuses copyright and trademark law; they're two completely unrelated, different beasts.
I have a hard time trusting a commenter who confuses copyright and trademark law. They are two related legal concepts that provide different types of protection for intellectual property.
So first of all, let me recommend SCOTUSBlog and the actual court decision rather than the Atlantic:
http://www.scotusblog.com/?p=143279 http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/kirtsaeng-v-john-...
Now what's going on here: Congress said (1) you have a right to resell copies of copyrighted work "lawfully made under this Title", but (2) you can't import copyrighted work from other countries without the copyright holder's permission. This is intended to make it possible to sell things at different prices in Mexico City and LA, which in turn makes it more viable to sell things in Mexico City at all. You may not love it, but it's at least a rational system.
The Ninth Circuit has interpreted this, using common sense, to mean that if a publisher voluntarily imports stuff and sells it in LA, and then you buy it and resell it, the doctrine of first sale applies. What happened in this case is someone was straight up running a business importing and reselling stuff that wasn't intended for the United States. But instead of focusing on that, the Second Circuit took a closer look and said, waitaminute, these books aren't "lawfully made under this Title" in the first place, because they were made under someone else's statutes instead of ours. So whether or not you had the right to import them, you don't have the right to resell them.
Now, as the defendant and the dissent and the Ninth Circuit have all pointed out, that's nuts. It destroys the doctrine of first sale for everything manufactured outside the United States, which makes no damn sense in anyone's world and isn't even necessary to stop what Congress actually wanted to stop. Maybe this is optimistic, but I really don't think there's going to be anyone who manages to get behind that as a Good Thing. So I'm not planning to panic until (1) the Supreme Court fails to salvage this one, and (2) Congress fails to immediately patch up whatever mistake they built into the statute.
Side note: the Atlantic tries to make this a little more dramatic with "Almost every product made now has a copyright logo on it. That logo, alone, empowers manufacturers to sue people for copyright infringement for unlawful sales." There's some truth hidden in there, but it's a really weird way to put it. It is indeed possible to get copyrights on design elements of products, but only if the design elements are totally separable from the actual purpose of the product -- basically if the stuff you claim copyright on could be fully removed from the product and it would still work exactly as well.[1] So can you really copyright an iPad? I'm skeptical -- what's the element of the design that isn't functional? If they're saying that the Apple logo itself is the copyrightable design element, I have trouble buying that -- an iPad isn't the same as, say, a watch with an Apple logo for a face. I think this aspect of their concern is dramatically overstated. (Trade dress, the basis of the Apple v. Samsung cage match, is a different issue, but not one that's relevant to resale.)
TL;DR: WTF with a side of Don't Panic.
[1] Random explanation of design copyrights: http://www.jdsupra.com/post/documentViewer.aspx?fid=d1f71ed3...
This is not a good explanation. Does anyone know why exactly first-sale does not apply to products manufactured abroad?