Hollywood Reporter: The case, Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., involves an immigrant from Thailand who was ordered to pay $600,000 for willfully infringing a textbook publisher's copyrights when he sold books first purchased overseas in the U.S. through eBay.
Some are lining up behind the appellant, Supap Kirtsaeng, and arguing that limiting the first-sale doctrine would cause manufacturing to fly overseas and imperil the reselling of many goods including films and music. Others, including the Hollywood studios, are supporting John Wiley on grounds that a reversal of a lower court's opinion could give rise to parallel imports and undermine territorial licensing agreements around the world.
3 comments:
I'm a little confused on this, and maybe I'm just not quite understanding what the actual problem is. People sell things on ebay and craigslist and so on ALL the time. I'm not clear on why this guy is getting in so much trouble for doing the exact same thing. If this guy bought this book in Thailand, isn't it the Thai copyright law that would have an issue with him reselling it, not the U.S.? It seems to me that unless it was something like a knock-off of a U.S. publication, that was bought in Thailand and then brought back over here to resell, it doesn't even involve U.S. copyright. And if that is the case, shouldn't they be going after the knock-off manufacturer, not the guy that just happened to buy it?
It seems this article just doesn't articulate the issue very well, because, like Tiffany, I just don't get what the problem is. People sell used goods online all the time, or in book and movie stores, and no one has a problem with it. These items are definitely not all domestically made; in all likelihood, over half of it was made in China along with all the other goods United States consumers buy. So why the Supreme Court case? Why is it suddenly such a huge deal that people are selling used goods that originated outside the U.S.? Or does it have more to do with who is doing the selling and if they themselves come from the U.S. rather than the origins of the goods?
The issue is that copyright belongs to whomever owns it to do as they please with it. The issue with going international with things is that often times this is a violation of copyright. If a firm owns copyright to a movie, they own the movie to distribute at will. This often means different distribution dates in different countries. As an example, if I buy Perks of Being a Wallflower on DVD when it comes out here and sell it for four times as much to someone in Germany who has a later release date, that is copyright infringement. I do not own the rights of this item and, given such, cannot sell it as I please. Basically, the owner of the copyright has the option to release the item for sale when they choose (that is the "first-sale" to which they refer). Once the item is for sale, that exact item can be resold in those jurisdictions. I own Mean Girls in Hungarian, which I cannot resell here. I also own the Mean Girls edition released in the US. That I can resell. Also you get into import and export law, et cetera when you bring goods between countries, which this man has avoided in this case.
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