Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling just about anything

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 65 posts

Re: How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling just about anything

#11

Post by belorn »

Is it just me, or is it a bit odd that copyright is used for market control in regards to importation and exportation? I thought most countries used tariffs to produce this effect.

If you want to stop people from buying TV's cheap from somewhere, the state add a tax to encourage local production. Is this somehow not enough to stop people from buying books cheap and sell them expensively in the US? Isn't the solution then to just increase the tax? Are there a reason why copyright can do a better job at this, and are there a substantial difference between copyright regulation and tariffs?

Re: How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling just about anything

#12

Post by camus »

Arent Big Corporations importing cheap goods and reselling them in USA for a huge profit ? so why an individual could not be able to do the same, even if that good has been produced in US at first place ? why should i pay 150$ for a book produced here while people on the other side of the world get the same book for 40$ ? Because it is not like i can choose the book i need for my studies.

Re: How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling just about anything

#13

Post by Jd »

tl;dr:

Student resells textbooks produced in Thailand making $1.2 million. Publishers sue him. They win first two rounds because "first sale" law does not apply overseas. Ebay and a hodgepodge of other groups support student. Case about to start in Supreme Court.

Re: How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling just about anything

#14

Post by cardine »

camus wrote: post #12

Arent Big Corporations importing cheap goods and reselling them in USA for a huge profit ? so why an individual could not be able to do the same, even if that good has been produced in US at first place ? why should i pay 150$ for a book produced here while people on the other side of the world get the same book for 40$ ? Because it is not like i can choose the book i need for my studies.

Because big corporations generally follow copyright laws.

Re: How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling just about anything

#15

Post by DanBC »

camus wrote: post #12

Arent Big Corporations importing cheap goods and reselling them in USA for a huge profit ? so why an individual could not be able to do the same, even if that good has been produced in US at first place ? why should i pay 150$ for a book produced here while people on the other side of the world get the same book for 40$ ? Because it is not like i can choose the book i need for my studies.

Levis has jeans made abroad. They send these jeans to various regions for sale through a distribution network. Levis claims to be able to control where shops can wholesale buy jeans from.

There's a UK case about Tesco and Levi jeans.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_market)

> Manufacturers or their licensees often seek to enforce trademark or other intellectual-property rights against the grey market. Such rights may be exercised against the import, sale and/or advertisement of grey imports. In 2002, Levi Strauss, after a 4-year legal fight, prevented UK supermarket Tesco from selling grey market jeans. However, such rights can be limited. Examples of such limitations include the first-sale doctrine in the United States [...]

That's sort of what's happening here - a publisher is using some form of rights protection law to prevent someone importing many copies of a product from one region and selling them in another region.

That feels to me anti-competitive, but it's pretty well established that region-locking is acceptable.

In the UK you'd be able to buy a textbook from overseas for your own personal use. The problem is that it's hard for someone else to set up a business to do the importing.

Re: How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling just about anything

#16

Post by cardine »

belorn wrote: post #11

Is it just me, or is it a bit odd that copyright is used for market control in regards to importation and exportation? I thought most countries used tariffs to produce this effect. If you want to stop people from buying TV's cheap from somewhere, the state add a tax to encourage local production. Is this somehow not enough to stop people from buying books cheap and sell them expensively in the US? Isn't the solution…

The US government doesn't want textbooks to be more expensive in the US so a tariff makes no sense. This is corporations wanting their goods to be more expensive where people have more money, which they can legally do. Tariffs are unrelated.

Re: How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling just about anything

#17

Post by automaton »

I am not sure if Wiley and Co have a case here.

While the books clearly spelled out where they could be sold, if the guy paid duty (https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/124/kw/duty/rel...) and other taxes in USA (https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/810/~/other-tax...) on the value of the books being imported, then legally he has paid his dues and is free to profit from the import. I am not a lawyer.

Even if the ruling goes against the guy who imported the books, I doubt if any end users will be affected.

Re: How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling just about anything

#18

Post by mseebach »

olefoo wrote: post #8
mseebach wrote: post #4

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a " ... purchased outside the US" missing from the title of the piece? The article says: "... seeking to knock out the "first sale" doctrine on goods made abroad" (emphasis mine) - surely a product made abroad, but sold in the US by an authorized importer/reseller will still be subject to first sale? And it would still be legal for students to buy books for themselves abroad?…

If the ruling is narrow enough to allow the resale of goods purchased from the US that were imported under license, and forbid the resale of unlicensed imports; that would be one thing. But... It won't necessarily be that narrow, and it is but one battle in a long war over who gets to control a good once it has been sold. It certainly would be possible for the Supreme Court to produce a ruling in this case that would…

> If the ruling is narrow enough to allow the resale of goods purchased from the US that were imported under license, and forbid the resale of unlicensed imports; that would be one thing.

If the sale happened in the US, it doesn't matter where the product was produced, first sale applies. Apple can't in any form claim that an iPhone purchased in an Apple store in the US was, in fact, an unlicensed import.

Again, correct me if I'm wrong: But "first sale" is a long-lived and fairly unambiguous law. Unless it's found to be unconstitutional (which is not being questioned), the courts can't just change it.

The question before the court is what happens when the sale happened abroad, because US copyright law doesn't trivially apply abroad.

What gets murky, as far as I can tell, if first sale doesn't apply abroad are online merchants that can trivially fulfill your order from abroad, thus making you the importer - just like the Amazon UK case. Then you'd be forbidden from reselling that product in the US without the copyright holders permission.

Re: How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling just about anything

#19

Post by Zak »

slapshot wrote: post #3

Good discussion of the same case here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4706572 There's a lot of FUD ("they might" "a ruling could") in this article. The short version is that this case deals with the fact that the Copyright Act prohibits unlicensed copying _and_ importing of copyrighted goods.[1] It comes up because (just like in the textbook case), it behooves a lot of manufacturers to charge a high price in the…

The only question raised by this case is if you wanted to fly to Manila, buy 1,000 textbooks at the Philippines price and then sell them in the US at the US price, could the textbook manufacturer claim that you imported unlicensed goods into the US?

Regardless of the consequences, it's surprising to me that anybody who doesn't earn money through regional copyright-based price discrimination thinks that it's proper for the government to put the force of law behind such a business model. If the original sale was licensed, what right does the copyright holder have to restrict further transfers of the original copyrighted good, including transfer to another country? I submit that common sense says none.

Re: How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling just about anything

#20

Post by belorn »

cardine wrote: post #16
belorn wrote: post #11

Is it just me, or is it a bit odd that copyright is used for market control in regards to importation and exportation? I thought most countries used tariffs to produce this effect. If you want to stop people from buying TV's cheap from somewhere, the state add a tax to encourage local production. Is this somehow not enough to stop people from buying books cheap and sell them expensively in the US? Isn't the solution…

The US government doesn't want textbooks to be more expensive in the US so a tariff makes no sense. This is corporations wanting their goods to be more expensive where people have more money, which they can legally do. Tariffs are unrelated.

Tariffs purpose is to allow corporations to have higher prices locally. Both tariffs and copyright regulations are laws created by the government, and both increase how expensive a item is in the country. How are they unrelated?
Post reply on HN