> Third, Wiley and the dissent claim that a nongeographical interpretation will make it difficult, perhaps impossible, for publishers (and other copyright holders) to divide foreign and domestic markets. We concede that is so. A publisher may find it more difficult to charge different prices for the same book in different geographic markets. But we do not see how these facts help Wiley, for we can find no basic principle of copyright law that suggests that publishers are especially entitled to such rights.
FINALLY! Someone's finally seen what Robert Heinlein wrote in Life-Line and essentially just paraphrased it:
> There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
The publishers will just make sure to produce a different textbook between different regions now. Just re-order the chapters a little and re-order some questions/assignments. So even if someone ships in the foreign book it will be as useless as a previous edition.
In general the whole textbook industry makes me sick. But fact is that lecturers are entirely responsible for it. The publishers can only do what the lecturers let them do, and either through apathy or greed the lecturers have shirked their responsibility to their students.
The worst offenders are the professors who write their own textbooks (even though there are dozens of better ones already available) and then use them in their courses, making money off each student. Maybe there should be conflict of interest rules in universities.
The heroes in this game are the instructors who are creating open-source textbooks.
>either through apathy or greed the lecturers have shirked their responsibility to their students.
This "greed" idea is just not a thing. It's a meme that's repeated in places like HN, but not something that really exists out there in the real world. There'll be isolated cases, but it's not even a little bit relevant to a discussion of why textbook industry is able to extort students.
In so far as profs. are responsible for "collaborating" with the industry, it's because of inertia, and a poor understanding of the alternatives. And probably also laziness. :)
Don't even bother reordering the chapters.. just change a few of the homework/exercises listed in the book. A cursory check will confirm to people that they have the same version and then it bites them later on.
At my undergrad, there were some profs concerned about files of old tests.. the obvious solution is to vary the test. The more subtle solution is to use the same test but switch which numbers are where. It still trips people's "I've seen this before!" feeling but if they try to memorize it, they're sunk.
That's already what a lot of "new versions" of textbooks are. When I was in college studying Computer Science, students would often resell their textbooks to students from the incoming class, and whenever the department officially switched to the new version of the text, the teachers would quickly find the very small differences (slightly different page breaks, reordered problem sets, etc.) and include both versions in their assignments.
> The publishers will just make sure to produce a different textbook between different regions now. Just re-order the chapters a little and re-order some questions/assignments. So even if someone ships in the foreign book it will be as useless as a previous edition.
That's fine if they do that. That's what they should have be doing all along instead of trying to destroy the first sale doctrine using foreign distribution.
Include a useless, but harmless, insecticide in the paper of international editions to "fight bookworms". Then lobby to get insecticide books banned domestically due to "potential health risks".
The case involves textbooks, but it's not really about textbooks. Instead it's about what "made lawfully under this title" means in the context of first-sale of physical items.
Under one interpretation, if you buy a book outside the US, your ability to resell it in the US without permission depends on whether or not the book was made in the United States.
Under the other interpretation, "lawfully made under this title" means more that the making of the item itself was within the legal construct of copyright. That is, not pirated or counterfeit.
This second interpretation is what the majority opinion espouses, and the dissenting opinion aligns with the first.
This may be unsatisfactory for people concerned with software or e-book licenses, but Omega v. Costco might have come out differently if this had been decided beforehand. In that case, Omega sued Costco for reselling watches because they registered a copyright* for a logo on the back of the watch. Omega claimed that Costco had no first-sale protection from copyright since the watches were not made in the US. The 9th circuit agreed, SCOTUS split 4-4 (Kagan self-recused) and the 9th circuit stood.
The majority opinion implies that it's perfectly fine to fly to a foreign country, purchase legitimately sold watches, toasters, electric kettles, and books and bring them home for sale. (Subject to applicable duties, etc.)
Yes, manufacturers will probably not just throw their hands up and give up on price discrimination. I have no idea what they will do. But the profits from Country X still might trump any loss of profit/image due to importation and resale in the US.
Scrambling chapters in textbooks might work, but then they lose some efficiency and flexibility, for example: the option of liquidating inventory to a low-margin market when a new edition comes out in the US at a higher profit margin.
* Generally brand logos are trademarked, but they can sometimes also be copyrighted. It's a little muddy, and arguments exist whether or not, say, Mickey Mouse could become/remain a trademark after the copyright protection expires.
EDIT: To clarify what I meant by "I have no idea what they will do": I am not entirely without ideas of approaches companies could take; the suggestions in other reply threads here are definitely candidates. I just don't think I can predict the specific action[s]. Maybe 'all of the above' for some, maybe the status quo for others.
The older case Costco v. Omega was decided in an unsigned, unexplained per curiam decision. No one outside the court knows which four were on each side.
Breyer won six votes for his strong pro-competition, pro-market, IP moderate position.
Remember that in Eldred v. Ashcroft (q.v.) Breyer wrote one of two vigorous dissents against the essentially permanent copyright terms now in force. Former justice Stevens was the other.
Stevens was also joined by Breyer in the split decision in Bilsky where they won four votes (with Ginsburg and Sotomayor) for serious restrictions on patents for software and business methods and possibly total exclusion from patentability for those arts.
In short, Stevens was a great loss and Breyer is still a national treasure. Let's hope we get more like them and fewer like Kennedy, who always seems to be on the wrong side of IP cases. (Alito, Roberts, and Scalia are very bad, too, but haven't been as consistent trying to destroy our industry as Kennedy.)
Honestly I don't know how i feel about this. As a recent grad i know full well how high prices are for text books, i would do everything possible to prevent having to buy them.
I personally thing the requirement to always have a new textbook(that years version) is more ridiculous then the prices they charge. I don't know where that requirement stems from, but in my opinion it is the real problem.
But with that said I don't see this ruling lowering prices, if anything it will increase the prices in the other regions where the prices were previously lower.
There is no kind of magic bullet with these kinds of things, companies are not going to just lower profit margins, they will always try to make it up somewhere.
The ruling is important because it's about "first sale" rights. It's about whether I can tell you what to do with my product, after it's left my hands and entered yours. Economic effects and hypotheticals aside.
Publishers are merely exploiting the highly school-like nature of university education in the US. When I was in university, over in Europe, a long time ago, on the first day of lectures the professors would wheel in a cart of textbooks, saying these are suitable texts, go and pick the one that suits you best.
But in the US, students demand that their education is like high school, with a set text and all, and if the exercises in "Physics for Biologists", 9th edition are on a different page from "Physics for Biologists", 8th edition they complain. This is the root cause of the continuous revisions to undergraduate texts.
The new text book thing isn't a requirement — but (a) professors get copies of the new books for free and (b) the publishers make just enough changes between editions to make it hard to use old versions (different question, vocab words, etc.), so that teachers prefer all students to have the same version ... and this is only an option for the new books.
Text books are somewhat irrelevant however — the Court upholding the first sale doctrine is fantastic, and hopefully will open the doors for lots more exporting / importing.
Publishers are required to provide [to the professor or other book chooser]...
>A description of the substantial content revisions made between the current edition of the college textbook or supplemental material and the previous edition, if any.
I'd like to see this information made public in a reliable manner. It's well and good that the professors should be enlightened about the relevant content changes, but the spirit of the HOEA is to make textbooks more affordable and purchasing more transparent. If that's really the end-goal, then forcing publishers to make that information public and consumer-facing should be the true requirement.
Until students have that, they're beholden to the professors (who may have ulterior motives) when making the purchasing decision.
Or, publishers will take pains to make the Thai version incompatible with the American one (a much better implementation of region-coding).
If this case went the other way, it would have had all sorts of negative impacts to used item markets. I'm relieved the business-friendly supremes didn't cough up another loss for the consumer.
The supreme court does not "side with" any particular party (ideally); they "side with" a specific interpretation of the law.
If you read both the court's opinion and the dissenting opinion, you'll see that the dissenting opinion is strictly based on interpretation. The supreme court not only attempts to interpret how to apply the law, but determine what congress' intent was when enacting the law.
> Had it gone the other way it would have been an utter disaster and contrary to every common sense.
There is no "the other way", because they had more than just two options. For instance, they could have said that (1) when a copyright owner sells a copy in the US, first sale applies to that copy regardless of where that copy was manufactured, and (2) unauthorized import of a copyrighted work is a violation of the distribution right.
This would have had essentially no effect on first sale 99.9% of the time, without for all practical purposes eliminating 17 USC 602 (one can make a decent case that 17 USC 602 should be eliminated--but that is something for Congress to do, not the Court).
Honest question: What if the good was only sold to you with a particular assumption? For example, if a phone company sells me a smartphone with the agreement that I do not unlock the phone, should I still be able to do whatever I want with the phone (unlock it) after it is in my possession?
It is great that students will be able to get cheap text books. But, are we not concerned that the court seems to be throwing out a law passed by Congress in an area where the Constitution grants them explicit power to act merely because they think the law is a bad idea?
Title 17 of the U. S. Code Section 602(a)(1)
“Importation into the United States, without the
authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of
copies or phonorecords of a work that have been
acquired outside the United States is an infringe-
ment of the exclusive right to distribute copies or
phonorecords under section 106, actionable under sec
tion 501.”
Having briefly skimmed the Opinion[1] (IANYAL), the heart of it was an exercise of close statutory interpretation to try and figure out exactly how s. 602 interacts with s. 109, with the majority concluding that as s. 602 refers explicitly to the s. 106 exclusive distribution right, it's subject to the same limitations as s. 106 is, including s. 109's First Sale limitation. (So s. 602 then just has the effect that the act importing an unauthorised copy into the US is an infringement of copyright). [Edit: My mistake - that finding was actually unanimous. The 3 dissents were only dissenting on the interpretation of "lawfully made under this title" in s. 109]
That's clearly not the only possible reading - 3 of the justices came to a different conclusion. But the idea that a court giving giving a reasonable interpretation of a mildly ambiguous statute is "throwing out a law... merely because they think the law is a bad idea", just because another interpretation is possible, is nonsense.
That's the whole point of the Supreme Court and of the balance of powers. Congress is free to pass whatever law they want, it's up to the Court to decide if the law is valid or Constitutional. If the Court thinks the law is a bad idea, they're free by all means to throw it out, that's the reason they exist.
They are 'throwing out' the law because it violates the first-sale doctrine, which has substantial legal force. The court simply has differently (and explicitly so) interpreted "under this title." Pay attention to the reference to 106 in particular.
It's interesting that the Omega watch case had a 4-4 tie in the SC while this decision was 6-3. Does this mean that Costco can start importing cheap watches again?
Costco won in district court on remand. The theory was that even if it was infringing copyright, using copyright to block physical goods was an abuse of copyright.
Am I the only one that disagrees with the decision? Correct me if I'm wrong:
So imagine you're a publisher and you sell a math book in the USA for $60 and in a 3rd world country for $20 so that more people can afford it and you can establish a presence there.
Is it fair for people from that 3rd world country to sell the book back to the USA and for you to miss out on your profit?
I know most of us here love having the freedom to do whatever we want but we need to look at the RESULT of the decision, not the EMOTIONAL return of the decision. Sure it makes us feel good to know we can sell what we want to where-ever and whom-ever we want. But what if the result of that action is a bad thing?
I think it's quick sales like this that will push more publishers to:
1) Move towards digital only distribution with heavy DRM.
2) Increase prices in the USA to make up for the loss in profit.
3) Increase prices in other countries to discourage the overseas exporting.
4) Retract themselves entirely from smaller markets.
Am I missing something, or not seeing the benefit? Seriously critique my thoughts, I want to see both sides to this.
"Am I the only one that disagrees with the decision? ... we need to look at the RESULT of the decision"
That is not the job of the Supreme Court. They are supposed to decide based on what the law says, regardless of the result. If you disagree with the law, then write to Congress.
But it's fair to ask whether this will produce better or worse results. It's a good observation that this will cause publishers to shift out of poorer markets and increase the use of DRM[1].
The previous situation was not perfect though, either. To interpret that statute geographically would be a major restriction on trade; and if not, would create a lot of ambiguity. Nobody wants to purchase something from another country if they are worried that the manufacturer will come in later and take it away because it had some copyrighted design (which could be anything) on it somewhere.
I believe the results will be better overall (by a lot) under the new interpretation of the law. Clarity and simplicity about where you stand as the owner of property is incredibly important.
One way to think about it is that nothing has changed. The publisher can still create a contract with the buyer that says they won't resell it in another region. It's just that the "default" purchase contract does not give the publisher that right. And we should make defaults match expectations as closely as possible, otherwise people are entering into contracts they don't understand. The notion of purchasing a product has many expectations that go with it that have been developed over millennia. To allow the publishers to inject extra terms that contradict those expectations just to fit their particular business model is ridiculous.
[1] Though DRM wouldn't be nearly as bad if there were no DMCA and if the sellers were forced to call it "licensing" rather than "buying". Again, the default purchasing contract should match the expectations of both parties.
> Is it fair for people from that 3rd world country to sell the book back to the USA and for you to miss out on your profit?
Yes, and no better reasoning is required other than "It's my book now and I'll do whatever the fuck I want with it."
If you restrict what people can do with their own stuff just because of the indirect effect on a current business model then you'll simply snuff out other (better) business models.
Free and open-source software may have never become popular if MS had been able to complain that it was eating into their business model and affecting their ability to "give away" software to universities and schools, and that's just one example.
As a student, I feel text books are priced way too high. If the international version is just a few dollars less that the one sold in the US, no one is going to go searching the web for a cheaper book. The problem is that the price variance is too much and these are required text books. I sometimes spend hours to look for a used text book that is cheap. If I sold my used text book, I will get a max of 5 $ from a text book vendor but to buy it back is around 50 $. It is always the student who seems to be at the losing end.
"A geographical interpretation would prevent the resale of, say, a car, without the permission of the holder of each copyright on each piece of copyrighted automobile software. Yet there is no reason to believe that foreign auto manufacturers regularly obtain this kind of permis sion from their software component suppliers, and Wiley did not indicate to the contrary when asked. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 29–30. Without that permission a foreign car owner could not sell his or her used car."
I'm not a huge international policy wonk, but I don't get how these suits (this one and Omega vs. Costco) reconcile with the rules of the WTO (of which the US and Thailand are charter members).
Doesn't the National Treatment Policy state that imported goods shouldn't be treated differently than locally-produced ones? And doesn't restricting the first-sale doctrine on imported good break that very rule?
I'd love for someone to explain how this relates to international law that we're supposed to be following. I'm always curious abou this stuff, and I can't find anything good in my Google searches.
(I realize that the WTO is rather toothless, but still.)
This is good news. Publishers charge US students much more than students in other (even high-income) countries. At least they shouldn't be able to legally prevent people from buying international edition books. The publishers often change the questions in those books, but there are ways to deal with this.
The old-textbook publishing market will probably decline in the near future as people move to digital and interactive options. This will be a big improvement, but the publishers will once again have control. There will be many free options available though.
Why can't they apply similar interpretation to legalize re-importation of drugs? The arguments there are similar ( "drugs are expensive in US to subsidize foreign markets").
This is also another blow to the academic publishing racket. In response, they might stop publishing cheap international editions. I hope the availability of high quality open source textbooks and material from MOOCs will cause the developing world to adopt them instead. However, there is a chance that pirated copies - either digital or facsimile copies of US editions - will flood the asian markets. This already happens today but at a small scale.
This is fantastic news. Had the court ruled differently, the first sale doctrine would have been in doubt, which could have destroyed ebay, craigslist, garage sales and nearly anything that involves reselling a good.
But not necessarily for the students in those countries. Presumably low-cost and market-recognized quality are factors that have kept American textbooks in distribution in foreign markets (and domestic producers out of those markets). In their absence, one might think that prices will rise, quality will fall, or both; at least in the short run.
If these countries are relatively free of government collusion with established (or establishing) producers, then ultimately competitive pressures could rectify that as market demand gets satisfied; but in the short run prices up, quality down.
Roberts and Sotomayor on one side, Scalia and Ginsburg on the other. Not really a right/left split.
If you had to draw some line, you might notice that the dissenters, Ginsburg (80), Scalia (77), and Kennedy (76), are the oldest on the bench.
I wouldn't read too much into that, just thought it was interesting. We probably already make too much of the "right/left" line in the court, since cases like this--where people don't cleanly line up according to political ideology--are fairly common.
I feel glad and sad in the same time. Glad because first sale doctrine survived, and sad because it could very well not. The whole matter that first sale doctrine disappears as soon as you cross borders sounds ridiculous - the practice of manufacturing goods cheaply at one place and sell them in another is an extremely common practice, and there's absolutely zero reason for books to be except from it.
[+] [-] shrikant|13 years ago|reply
> Third, Wiley and the dissent claim that a nongeographical interpretation will make it difficult, perhaps impossible, for publishers (and other copyright holders) to divide foreign and domestic markets. We concede that is so. A publisher may find it more difficult to charge different prices for the same book in different geographic markets. But we do not see how these facts help Wiley, for we can find no basic principle of copyright law that suggests that publishers are especially entitled to such rights.
FINALLY! Someone's finally seen what Robert Heinlein wrote in Life-Line and essentially just paraphrased it:
> There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
[+] [-] UnoriginalGuy|13 years ago|reply
In general the whole textbook industry makes me sick. But fact is that lecturers are entirely responsible for it. The publishers can only do what the lecturers let them do, and either through apathy or greed the lecturers have shirked their responsibility to their students.
[+] [-] impendia|13 years ago|reply
Would you please recommend what I might do, subject to severe limitations of (1) time and (2) political clout within my department?
[+] [-] greenyoda|13 years ago|reply
The heroes in this game are the instructors who are creating open-source textbooks.
[+] [-] shardling|13 years ago|reply
This "greed" idea is just not a thing. It's a meme that's repeated in places like HN, but not something that really exists out there in the real world. There'll be isolated cases, but it's not even a little bit relevant to a discussion of why textbook industry is able to extort students.
In so far as profs. are responsible for "collaborating" with the industry, it's because of inertia, and a poor understanding of the alternatives. And probably also laziness. :)
[+] [-] caseysoftware|13 years ago|reply
At my undergrad, there were some profs concerned about files of old tests.. the obvious solution is to vary the test. The more subtle solution is to use the same test but switch which numbers are where. It still trips people's "I've seen this before!" feeling but if they try to memorize it, they're sunk.
[+] [-] baddox|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darkarmani|13 years ago|reply
That's fine if they do that. That's what they should have be doing all along instead of trying to destroy the first sale doctrine using foreign distribution.
[+] [-] wmil|13 years ago|reply
Include a useless, but harmless, insecticide in the paper of international editions to "fight bookworms". Then lobby to get insecticide books banned domestically due to "potential health risks".
[+] [-] antiterra|13 years ago|reply
Under one interpretation, if you buy a book outside the US, your ability to resell it in the US without permission depends on whether or not the book was made in the United States.
Under the other interpretation, "lawfully made under this title" means more that the making of the item itself was within the legal construct of copyright. That is, not pirated or counterfeit.
This second interpretation is what the majority opinion espouses, and the dissenting opinion aligns with the first.
This may be unsatisfactory for people concerned with software or e-book licenses, but Omega v. Costco might have come out differently if this had been decided beforehand. In that case, Omega sued Costco for reselling watches because they registered a copyright* for a logo on the back of the watch. Omega claimed that Costco had no first-sale protection from copyright since the watches were not made in the US. The 9th circuit agreed, SCOTUS split 4-4 (Kagan self-recused) and the 9th circuit stood.
The majority opinion implies that it's perfectly fine to fly to a foreign country, purchase legitimately sold watches, toasters, electric kettles, and books and bring them home for sale. (Subject to applicable duties, etc.)
Yes, manufacturers will probably not just throw their hands up and give up on price discrimination. I have no idea what they will do. But the profits from Country X still might trump any loss of profit/image due to importation and resale in the US.
Scrambling chapters in textbooks might work, but then they lose some efficiency and flexibility, for example: the option of liquidating inventory to a low-margin market when a new edition comes out in the US at a higher profit margin.
* Generally brand logos are trademarked, but they can sometimes also be copyrighted. It's a little muddy, and arguments exist whether or not, say, Mickey Mouse could become/remain a trademark after the copyright protection expires.
EDIT: To clarify what I meant by "I have no idea what they will do": I am not entirely without ideas of approaches companies could take; the suggestions in other reply threads here are definitely candidates. I just don't think I can predict the specific action[s]. Maybe 'all of the above' for some, maybe the status quo for others.
[+] [-] andrewpi|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ISL|13 years ago|reply
The opinion itself: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-697_d1o2.pdf
The dissent is perhaps most interesting.
[+] [-] WildUtah|13 years ago|reply
Breyer won six votes for his strong pro-competition, pro-market, IP moderate position.
Remember that in Eldred v. Ashcroft (q.v.) Breyer wrote one of two vigorous dissents against the essentially permanent copyright terms now in force. Former justice Stevens was the other.
Stevens was also joined by Breyer in the split decision in Bilsky where they won four votes (with Ginsburg and Sotomayor) for serious restrictions on patents for software and business methods and possibly total exclusion from patentability for those arts.
In short, Stevens was a great loss and Breyer is still a national treasure. Let's hope we get more like them and fewer like Kennedy, who always seems to be on the wrong side of IP cases. (Alito, Roberts, and Scalia are very bad, too, but haven't been as consistent trying to destroy our industry as Kennedy.)
[+] [-] jug6ernaut|13 years ago|reply
I personally thing the requirement to always have a new textbook(that years version) is more ridiculous then the prices they charge. I don't know where that requirement stems from, but in my opinion it is the real problem.
But with that said I don't see this ruling lowering prices, if anything it will increase the prices in the other regions where the prices were previously lower.
There is no kind of magic bullet with these kinds of things, companies are not going to just lower profit margins, they will always try to make it up somewhere.
[+] [-] readme|13 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
[+] [-] HarryHirsch|13 years ago|reply
But in the US, students demand that their education is like high school, with a set text and all, and if the exercises in "Physics for Biologists", 9th edition are on a different page from "Physics for Biologists", 8th edition they complain. This is the root cause of the continuous revisions to undergraduate texts.
[+] [-] milesskorpen|13 years ago|reply
Text books are somewhat irrelevant however — the Court upholding the first sale doctrine is fantastic, and hopefully will open the doors for lots more exporting / importing.
[+] [-] pkfrank|13 years ago|reply
http://content.efollett.com/HEOA/library/HEOATextbookProvisi... Provision C.1.c:
Publishers are required to provide [to the professor or other book chooser]...
>A description of the substantial content revisions made between the current edition of the college textbook or supplemental material and the previous edition, if any.
I'd like to see this information made public in a reliable manner. It's well and good that the professors should be enlightened about the relevant content changes, but the spirit of the HOEA is to make textbooks more affordable and purchasing more transparent. If that's really the end-goal, then forcing publishers to make that information public and consumer-facing should be the true requirement.
Until students have that, they're beholden to the professors (who may have ulterior motives) when making the purchasing decision.
[+] [-] r00fus|13 years ago|reply
If this case went the other way, it would have had all sorts of negative impacts to used item markets. I'm relieved the business-friendly supremes didn't cough up another loss for the consumer.
[+] [-] kbutler|13 years ago|reply
While I applaud digital distribution, the lack of consumer rights comparable to the first sale and fair use doctrines is a large and growing problem.
[+] [-] jared314|13 years ago|reply
Oral Argument recordings:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio_de...
Opinions:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-697_d1o2.pdf
[+] [-] DoubleMalt|13 years ago|reply
Had it gone the other way it would have been an utter disaster and contrary to every common sense
Still it concerns me that 3 judges sided with the publisher. In such a landmark decision even 6 to 3 seems to close a margin for comfort.
[+] [-] binarycrusader|13 years ago|reply
If you read both the court's opinion and the dissenting opinion, you'll see that the dissenting opinion is strictly based on interpretation. The supreme court not only attempts to interpret how to apply the law, but determine what congress' intent was when enacting the law.
[+] [-] tzs|13 years ago|reply
There is no "the other way", because they had more than just two options. For instance, they could have said that (1) when a copyright owner sells a copy in the US, first sale applies to that copy regardless of where that copy was manufactured, and (2) unauthorized import of a copyrighted work is a violation of the distribution right.
This would have had essentially no effect on first sale 99.9% of the time, without for all practical purposes eliminating 17 USC 602 (one can make a decent case that 17 USC 602 should be eliminated--but that is something for Congress to do, not the Court).
[+] [-] pc86|13 years ago|reply
But it just makes me sad this had to get to the Supreme Court.
[+] [-] jrajav|13 years ago|reply
Not being a lawyer, isn't this the best result possible for consumers in terms of establishing precedent?
[+] [-] gameshot911|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shivetya|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chaddeshon|13 years ago|reply
Title 17 of the U. S. Code Section 602(a)(1) “Importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringe- ment of the exclusive right to distribute copies or phonorecords under section 106, actionable under sec tion 501.”
[+] [-] SEMW|13 years ago|reply
That's clearly not the only possible reading - 3 of the justices came to a different conclusion. But the idea that a court giving giving a reasonable interpretation of a mildly ambiguous statute is "throwing out a law... merely because they think the law is a bad idea", just because another interpretation is possible, is nonsense.
[1] http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-697_d1o2.pdf
[+] [-] freehunter|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yew|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nitrogen|13 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_S.A._v._Costco_Wholesale...
[+] [-] WildUtah|13 years ago|reply
So Costco still won in the end.
Omega was appealing the decision last I heard.
Cr_ppy Omega watches are overpriced anyway.
[+] [-] ChrisNorstrom|13 years ago|reply
So imagine you're a publisher and you sell a math book in the USA for $60 and in a 3rd world country for $20 so that more people can afford it and you can establish a presence there.
Is it fair for people from that 3rd world country to sell the book back to the USA and for you to miss out on your profit?
I know most of us here love having the freedom to do whatever we want but we need to look at the RESULT of the decision, not the EMOTIONAL return of the decision. Sure it makes us feel good to know we can sell what we want to where-ever and whom-ever we want. But what if the result of that action is a bad thing?
I think it's quick sales like this that will push more publishers to:
1) Move towards digital only distribution with heavy DRM.
2) Increase prices in the USA to make up for the loss in profit.
3) Increase prices in other countries to discourage the overseas exporting.
4) Retract themselves entirely from smaller markets.
Am I missing something, or not seeing the benefit? Seriously critique my thoughts, I want to see both sides to this.
[+] [-] jeffdavis|13 years ago|reply
That is not the job of the Supreme Court. They are supposed to decide based on what the law says, regardless of the result. If you disagree with the law, then write to Congress.
But it's fair to ask whether this will produce better or worse results. It's a good observation that this will cause publishers to shift out of poorer markets and increase the use of DRM[1].
The previous situation was not perfect though, either. To interpret that statute geographically would be a major restriction on trade; and if not, would create a lot of ambiguity. Nobody wants to purchase something from another country if they are worried that the manufacturer will come in later and take it away because it had some copyrighted design (which could be anything) on it somewhere.
I believe the results will be better overall (by a lot) under the new interpretation of the law. Clarity and simplicity about where you stand as the owner of property is incredibly important.
One way to think about it is that nothing has changed. The publisher can still create a contract with the buyer that says they won't resell it in another region. It's just that the "default" purchase contract does not give the publisher that right. And we should make defaults match expectations as closely as possible, otherwise people are entering into contracts they don't understand. The notion of purchasing a product has many expectations that go with it that have been developed over millennia. To allow the publishers to inject extra terms that contradict those expectations just to fit their particular business model is ridiculous.
[1] Though DRM wouldn't be nearly as bad if there were no DMCA and if the sellers were forced to call it "licensing" rather than "buying". Again, the default purchasing contract should match the expectations of both parties.
[+] [-] cbs|13 years ago|reply
The law should only be concerned with fairness insomuch as it informs "right vs wrong". Nobody is entitled to a business model.
[+] [-] mpyne|13 years ago|reply
Yes, and no better reasoning is required other than "It's my book now and I'll do whatever the fuck I want with it."
If you restrict what people can do with their own stuff just because of the indirect effect on a current business model then you'll simply snuff out other (better) business models.
Free and open-source software may have never become popular if MS had been able to complain that it was eating into their business model and affecting their ability to "give away" software to universities and schools, and that's just one example.
[+] [-] sonabinu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] protomyth|13 years ago|reply
"A geographical interpretation would prevent the resale of, say, a car, without the permission of the holder of each copyright on each piece of copyrighted automobile software. Yet there is no reason to believe that foreign auto manufacturers regularly obtain this kind of permis sion from their software component suppliers, and Wiley did not indicate to the contrary when asked. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 29–30. Without that permission a foreign car owner could not sell his or her used car."
[+] [-] pflats|13 years ago|reply
Doesn't the National Treatment Policy state that imported goods shouldn't be treated differently than locally-produced ones? And doesn't restricting the first-sale doctrine on imported good break that very rule?
I'd love for someone to explain how this relates to international law that we're supposed to be following. I'm always curious abou this stuff, and I can't find anything good in my Google searches.
(I realize that the WTO is rather toothless, but still.)
[+] [-] arikrak|13 years ago|reply
The old-textbook publishing market will probably decline in the near future as people move to digital and interactive options. This will be a big improvement, but the publishers will once again have control. There will be many free options available though.
[+] [-] isb|13 years ago|reply
This is also another blow to the academic publishing racket. In response, they might stop publishing cheap international editions. I hope the availability of high quality open source textbooks and material from MOOCs will cause the developing world to adopt them instead. However, there is a chance that pirated copies - either digital or facsimile copies of US editions - will flood the asian markets. This already happens today but at a small scale.
[+] [-] socalnate1|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jivatmanx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sageikosa|13 years ago|reply
If these countries are relatively free of government collusion with established (or establishing) producers, then ultimately competitive pressures could rectify that as market demand gets satisfied; but in the short run prices up, quality down.
[+] [-] brownbat|13 years ago|reply
If you had to draw some line, you might notice that the dissenters, Ginsburg (80), Scalia (77), and Kennedy (76), are the oldest on the bench.
I wouldn't read too much into that, just thought it was interesting. We probably already make too much of the "right/left" line in the court, since cases like this--where people don't cleanly line up according to political ideology--are fairly common.
[+] [-] smsm42|13 years ago|reply