Digital changed the situation, for the worse. In digital there is no first-sale rights, because bits cannot be sold, only licensed. This was decided a decade ag

Digital changed the situation, for the worse. In digital there is no first-sale rights, because bits cannot be sold, only licensed. This was decided a decade ago in exactly the same court the IA is being sued in[0]. The only way they could decide in favor of IA would be to make a very narrow ruling (e.g. 'libraries are special' or 'the DRM makes it OK') or go full judicial activist in ways our extremely conservative SCOTUS would not tolerate. The reason why libraries are even allowed to exist in the first place is because physicality allows you to do things with books that are not "copying" them. Everything you do to a digital file is covered by copyright. When you "move" a file from one computer to another, you actually copy and delete it. When you "read" a file, you copy it from one storage medium to another[1]. If we want digital first sale then we have to fatally wound the existing copyright system. I would absolutely love for the IA to be able to roll back this madness even a little, of course. I don't see that happening. They will put up a good fight, and the judge will roadkill them for the trouble. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_LLC_v._ReDigi_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_LLC_v._ReDigi.... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAI_Systems_Corp._v._Peak_Computer,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAI_Systems_Corp._v._Peak_Comp.... Yes, this is that court case. The one that says "RAM is storage and loading programs into it is infringement".