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So let's see. A company wants to sell its goods to people in the US at a higher price than elsewhere. So they want the people in the US to interpret a law in a

• kszx 12y ago
  Under certain conditions, price discrimination that results in a higher price for US consumers can increase their net utility. Example: HIV medication is sold at much lower prices in Africa. If prices in Africa were increased to the levels currently seen in the US, revenues on the African market would be reduced to approx. zero. If prices in the US were decreased to the levels currently seen in Africa, most R&D efforts would have to be stopped. (This is just a response to the comment. It does not necessarily relate to the article.)
  • visarga 12y ago
    > most R&D efforts would have to be stopped. Most R&D efforts sponsored by private companies. Don't write the whole world off. There are plenty of funds and scientists that don't work for the private sector. Sometimes greed promotes progress, other times it hinders it.
• awjr 12y ago
  It was even more fundamental than that. A foreign manufactured product could have the 'right to re-sale' by the owner effectively revoked. If the ruling had gone the other way, a lot of manufacturing would have moved out of the USA as the manufacturers would have had a lot more control over resale. In summary, as long as it was manufactured legally anywhere in the world then you can damn well do with it what you like after you have bought it :) What is more interesting is his comment on the “You Own Devices Act” (YODA). In the Internet of Things age, you may own the physical device but the licence to the software running on the device could be argued, is not transferrable. YODA enforces first sale rights to such devices making the software 'licence' transferable as part of the sale.
  • throwawaykf05 12y ago
    > If the ruling had gone the other way, a lot of manufacturing would have moved out of the USA as the manufacturers would have had a lot more control over resale. This is a gross overstatement. Most manufacturing does not involve copyright and so this ruling would have no bearing on that at all. The simplest way I can put this from my non-lawyer understanding is, "copyright law does not trump first sale doctrine".
    • LordKano 12y ago
      I'm sorry but this ruling is one of the things that establishes that. Had this ruling gone the other way, copyright would trump first sale doctrine.
      • throwawaykf05 12y ago
        Yes, I meant to say "The simplest way I can put this ruling from my non-lawyer understanding is..."
    • michaelt 12y ago
      Most manufacturing does not involve copyright Microchip layouts and printed circuit board designs are usually copyrighted. And you could easily mould some copyrightable text onto a pair of headphones or a sandwich box if you wanted to.
  • GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
    There's not really a whole lot of manufacturing left in this country to move out.
• woof 12y ago
  Capitalism favours companies, socialism favours the state -both at the cost of the people.
  • bkmartin 12y ago
    Is there a system that favors the people?
    • rthomas6 12y ago
      I would argue various forms of anarchism favor the people at the cost of the state, which is also bad for different reasons. So real life needs some kind of messy, complex balance between extremes.
      • dragonwriter 12y ago
        > I would argue various forms of anarchism favor the people at the cost of the state I would argue that the forms of anarchism usually argued to have this feature in fact favor the holders of wealth/capital over other people in the same way that capitalism does (and, in fact, are often forms of capitalism.) OTOH, I'd also argue that any argument that views the state as a thing that can bear costs independent from the people is fundamentally misguided.
    • Shivetya 12y ago
      young democracies or republics. Once they start aging they simply become too bureaucratic to worry about the public anymore. so a revolution every hundred or so years might not be bad.
  • dragonwriter 12y ago
    To the extent this addresses anything real, it would be more accurate to say "Capitalism favors capitalists (who, in any capitalist system, also have disproportionate power over the state), socialism favors people to the extent that they have power over the state, both at the cost of people outside the favored class." Neither "companies" or "the state" exist as things that can be favored, they are (at most) vehicles through which some subset of "the people" exercise power.
• throwawaykf05 12y ago
  http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination It's not really a disadvantage, it's more about economic parity. As a simple example, I pay more than 2.50 dollars for a loaf of bread in the US, but no way would anyone pay 80 baht for the same loaf in Bangkok.
  • kszx 12y ago
    The problem with this example is the difference between traded and non-traded goods. Loafs of bread are rarely traded across borders.
    • gambiting 12y ago
      No, but in EU people very frequently cross borders to buy fuel, or cigarettes. For example - people living in Germany close to the Polish border will frequently cross to Poland to buy cheaper petrol, alcohol or cigarettes. Those things are much cheaper in Poland, because the avarage wages are many times lower than the German ones, so everything has to be cheaper to be affordable. And then I know many places close to the Polish-Slovakian border which have shops that accept Euros, purely because they got so many shoppers from Slovakia coming in to buy everything(including bread) cheaper then in their own country. With the Schoengen zone eliminating lengthy passport controls, driving to a different country that's 10 minutes away or a supermarket that's also 10 minutes away is exactly the same.