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How would this affect your right to give stuff away? For example, say I bought a car with copyrighted software or logos or whatever in it. Due to this court r
by csense 14y ago
How would this affect your right to give stuff away?
For example, say I bought a car with copyrighted software or logos or whatever in it. Due to this court ruling on the first sale doctrine, and EULA saying my license was nontransferable, I wouldn't be able to sell or give it to anyone else without the copyright holder's permission.
Say I couldn't obtain that permission -- I didn't have enough money, or they went out of business and nobody was sure who owned the copyright, or it was simply too complicated for an ordinary person to figure out who owns all the copyrights to the firmware in all the different microcontrollers -- radio, engine, steering, antilock brakes, etc. EDIT: Or maybe the copyright holder simply refused, saying "the rights are not for sale at any price" or saying "one TRILLION dollars."
Does that then mean that I can't sell the car or give it away either? That I have to leave it rusting in my yard forever when it stops working, I can't even give it to a wrecker?
EDIT: Also, any local or state laws against leaving cars to rust in your yard are now null and void, since getting rid of such cars would require people to violate federal copyright law. (When there's a conflict like this, I'm pretty sure the Constitution says federal law wins.)
- danielweber 14y agoThis doesn't affect any normal person's right to resell their car, unless they personally arranged for the import of the car against the wishes of the IP owner of the car.
- CamperBob2 14y agoWhich has been done frequently in the past with gray-market auto imports.
- Zak 14y agoI suspect in most of those cases, the car manufacturer chooses not to import the car because of regulatory issues or because it doesn't think there's a large enough market for that type of car in a given country. Car manufacturers generally don't care about such sales. The grey market sales various businesses do object to usually have to do with geographic price segmentation. It doesn't seem ethical to me for governments to help companies protect that business model.