4 ms·
HPB buys books from the first-sellers, so someone pays the appropriate price on the books. HPB doesn't care who. They key distinction is that their business i
by rprasad 14y ago
HPB buys books from the first-sellers, so someone pays the appropriate price on the books. HPB doesn't care who. They key distinction is that their business isn't structured around circumventing treaty-supported geography-based pricing on physical products.
- _delirium 14y agoSome of their inventory might not have had anyone paying the appropriate price, though. If I buy a book in France (or the Philippines), and resell it to a Half-Priced Books in Texas, under the theory in these suits (as I read it) HPB would be violating the copyright-holder's rights if they resold it, because that book never had a proper first sale in the US, and was not imported with authorization of the publisher.
- res0nat0r 14y agoSingle unit sales are not at issue here, it is bulk importation that is directly aimed at circumventing pricing that is.
- guard-of-terra 14y agoDo we have guarantees that single unit sales will not become an issue? Because laws can be passed without acknowledging this and then we are screwed.
- _delirium 14y agoMy point is that their legal arguments in this case aren't limited to bulk importation, but are arguing that there exists no first-sale right at all for books that didn't undergo that initial authorized domestic "first sale", regardless of why, e.g. whether it was one book imported by a tourist who bought it in France. If their arguments applied solely to bulk parallel importation, that would be another matter. That's the "narrower" legislative fix that I proposed above: to ban the act of bulk commercial importation itself, rather than doing it in a roundabout way via resale restrictions.