2 ms·
Second Circuit negates first sale right for foreign-made works of authorship
- anigbrowl 15y agoI thought Omega v. Costco was correctly decided and that Mike Masnick is full of it, but I got into a week-long argument with someone in the wake of that case and don't want to repeat the experience. I think it's telling that Masnick left out the data point that the defendant had earned somewhere between $900,000 and $1.2 million from his book import & resale business, but that's not germane to the decision. Murtha's dissent is error, in that first sale only applies where the United States is the country of first publication, notwithstanding that the foreign publisher may be a subsidiary of a US entity which is the ultimate rightsholder. The argument that this will hurt libraries is completely bogus. 17 U.S.C. § 602(a)(3)(C) specifically authorizes libraries to import copies of foreign copyrighted works for both archival and lending purposes, thus providing them with a statutory 'safe haven'.