This blog entry is to make up for the recitation I missed on September 26th, so I'm going to talk about a recent Supreme Court case I find interesting.
There's one case this year that hasn't gotten much attention when compared to many other Supreme Court cases, about how to treat used goods. There was an appellate court ruling that the Supreme Court may uphold, and if they do, it might become illegal to sell something that was manufactured overseas. The ruling would make it mandatory to get permission from the copyright holder of the goods you wanted to sell in order to be able to sell them. If you own a Mazda and want to sell it to your nephew when he graduates college so you can make a down payment on a new car for yourself, you'd need permission from Mazda to do so. You may even be required to pay a cut of the sale back to Mazda in royalties, even though you paid royalties the first time you bought the car. I don't like the idea that selling something you own is copyright infringement.
Upholding the appellate court ruling and passing legislation to make permission mandatory to sell a used item would completely destroy the used goods market. Websites like Craig's List and Ebay would die out. Every thrift store across the country would shut down and close. People wouldn't be able to hold neighborhood yard sales or flea markets. It would be virtually impossible to find anything vintage without paying through the nose and antique dealers would probably riot in the streets. Not that rioting across the nation's antique-dealing community is the biggest concern I have with this topic, but I agree with them that it's fundamentally wrong. I don't want to be forced to buy something new every time I want to make a purchase. If someone wants to part with something they no longer need, and I'm in the market for whatever that thing may be, whether it's a second-hand couch for my college apartment, or a tv series on DVD that they don't actually manufacture anymore, I want to be able to buy it from them as much as they want to be able to sell it to me. It's killing two birds with one stone. But I'm sure the manufacturers of the chair would much rather me find it far too inconvenient to buy one used and go directly to them to buy a new one. I live in a country with a "free market," right? I should be able to sell something I directly own and have paid for the first time around to anyone I want to at whatever price we've agreed upon.
I also don't think the copyright holders should have the right to make money on a single product more than once. You shouldn't have to pay a cut of the second-hand sale back to the company that made the item if you've already paid it to them once. You bought the item, now it's yours, you can do what you want with it. The company you bought it from owns the rights to the concept behind the item, but they don't still own the item itself. If that were the case, then you paid full price for a cellphone or a book just to rent it. As far as I know, that's not what a purchase is. If you bought a DVD and started making copies to sell to people, that's a different matter. Then the rights owners would be totally within their rights to demand a cut of those sales (or throw you in prison) because you're making new iterations of the product they copyrighted. But I don't think they should have a right to a portion of the sale you make when selling that first copy of the DVD.
This whole concept also feels kind of backwards when you consider the way the entertainment industry has been going. If you buy a DVD, often times it comes with a BluRay copy, too. And a digital copy that you can use on your computer and upload to your tablet and phone. The fact that you own a copy can be noted in an online account, and you can log into XBox Live and watch your movie through your gaming console. Once you buy a copy of the movie, it's yours to watch, in any way you want, on basically any digital device you own. If you buy a subscription to Netflix or Hulu, you can log into your account on your laptop and watch movies and shows. You can also log in on your tablet, phone, gaming console, and, again, any internet-capable device you have. It's the same way when you buy digital copies of books or music. Once you own it, it belongs to you in quite a few different ways. Not only would it be extremely difficult to monitor the selling of pre-owned goods like these, the digital kind that prove virtually impossible to track, but even making the attempt goes completely against the ideal behind this sort of progression. If you buy something and can then access it from anything else you also already own, then it belongs to you pretty completely. Why should you be required to check in with anyone, or pay them a direct cut, if you want to sell it to someone else? I don't think you should.
There have been internet rumors that President Obama has declared himself in favor of the Supreme Court upholding the appellate ruling that would make all our upstanding antique dealers riot in the streets, but I haven't been able to find any articles about that, unfortunately. It could just be a rumor.
This is the best article I've found on the actual court case, though: http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-10-04/finance/34240922_1_copyright-iphone-john-wiley-sons/2
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