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posted by martyb on Thursday November 27 2014, @02:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the beware-pending-treaties dept.

Ars Technica features a story of how one grad student defeated the vested interests of the big content to control the sales of legally imported copyrighted works:

Sometimes all it takes to alter the course of history is one pissed-off person. Supap Kirtsaeng wasn’t a crusader or lone nut; he was just an eBay trader who got backed into a legal corner and refused to give up.

To help pay for grad school at USC, he sold textbooks online—legitimate copies that he’d purchased overseas. But academic publishing behemoth John Wiley & Sons sued Supap, claiming that his trade in Wiley’s foreign-market textbooks constituted copyright infringement.

The implications were enormous. If publishers had the right to control resale of books that they printed and sold overseas, then it stood to reason that manufacturers could restrain trade in countless products—especially tech goods, most of which are made in Asia and contain copyright-able elements such as embedded software.

The story covers events from 2006 to the present, and laws dating to the 1700s, but does so in a fast-paced and eminently readable story; more like a historical thriller than a condensed history. Even with the spoiler right there in the title, the article holds your attention to the end, and is well worth the 4-clicks it takes to read it.

It quickly covers the big content efforts to defend market segmentation, (allowing cheap prices overseas for the same books and movies while gouging US customers) and the rallying of big media and the US government to preserve what was clearly an unworkable system of copyright that would have end-run the First Sale Doctrine.

As a bonus it hints to the future, such as the pending YODA: You Own Devices Act pending in Congress, which would assure your rights to software embedded in purchased devices like cell phones and computers.

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by sigma on Thursday November 27 2014, @02:29AM

    by sigma (1225) on Thursday November 27 2014, @02:29AM (#120482)

    The content vendors who won most of the western governments in the world are aware of this loophole and are working hard to close it. The Trans-Pacific Partnership FTA will give them the power to restrict government action to block their gouging.

  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 27 2014, @02:41AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 27 2014, @02:41AM (#120486)

    test

    n/t

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by aristarchus on Thursday November 27 2014, @04:26AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday November 27 2014, @04:26AM (#120494) Journal

    Not a loophole, and this person is a modern day hero. The doctrine of first sale pre-dates copyright itself. If they keep pushing this, there will be no copyright at all, since no one but the owning corporations will have any interest in observing it. Already there is a movement for open course materials because the evil incarnate (Wiley and his evil sons are *not* the worst of them) textbook publishers are charging about six times the going rate for a trade book, with no reason other than a captive audience. Many academics I know will no longer assign textbooks, but instead use public domain e-texts. Publishing companies need to start taking professors on Caribbean cruises, the way that Big Pharma seduces the alleged medical professionals.

    • (Score: 2) by Geezer on Thursday November 27 2014, @04:22PM

      by Geezer (511) on Thursday November 27 2014, @04:22PM (#120631)

      Good point about professors not assigning over-priced textbooks, and it can apply to more than just college coursework. When I'm mentoring/training, I make a point of not using ridiculously-priced texts, both out of consideration for the students' budgets (my company is notoriously parsimonious) and to give the old middle finger to the greedy publishers.