Re: International E-book Sales Restrictions Explained

On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 9:35 AM, joseph harris <[email protected]>wrote:


> Copying without permission is a breach of copyright law; creating a
> different format is a breach of copyright law. The latter is probably
> more serious than the former, and the former is already fundamental to
> copyright itself.
>

Yes, but I fail to see how that comes into this. We're talking about a
store buying a physical copy of a book, then selling it to someone outside
of the country. There's no copying involved there, with permission or
without.


> Your further point above shows the confusion which I talked of in my
> earlier post. First doctrine, which is specifically American law and
> interpretation,


Which fits, since we're talking about *American* stores selling paper books
to overseas


> does not permit a person to do absolutely anything with
> the goods, but it does give the right to sell as second hand a physical
> item, and that freedom pertains in almost every other country according
> to the variations in their own laws. There is, however, no logical
> parallel between a second hand physical book and a new-format digital
> file, or a print from a file in a specific digital format into a print
> book, or into a pictorial physical object.
>

Are we arguing at cross purposes here? You seem to be arguing with a point
I didn't make.

When I speak of first sale, I'm talking about the way stores can
resell *physical
books* overseas: Amazon buys the physical book from its distributor, then
can turn around and sell it to someone overseas. They can do that because
of first sale: once they buy the copy from the distributor, it's theirs.
They can keep it in their warehouse, sell it to someone in America, sell it
to someone overseas, bury it in a time capsule for a hundred years, light
it on fire and dance around it naked, whatever they want to with it. 17 USC
§ 109 <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/109>, emphasis mine:
"Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106 (3), the owner of a
particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any
person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the
copyright owner, *to sell or otherwise dispose of* the possession of that
copy or phonorecord."

When they sell e-books, they can't do that because they are not buying and
reselling a copy of something, they are acting as the publisher's agent in
providing a storefront to sell it. They *are* a party to the original
agreement between author and publisher, so they can't sell outside of those
agreements, and first sale doesn't apply.

Which is what pnh said, and I agreed with.

-- 
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