How an eBay Bookseller Defeated a Publishing Giant at the Supreme Court
This is a good long read that covers the monumental battle against your right to resell goods you’ve purchased from publishers. In the final moments you see Ted Olson battling for the common man and our rights to own the property we’ve purchased, whether the item was purchased abroad or domestically, First Purchase is the doctrine that holds sway. The very next step is YODA - below is an outline, and in future posts I will explain why you should support it.
Andrew Shore from Owner’s Rights Initiative thinks that the ruling is safe. “Kirtsaeng was the right decision and I don’t think Congress will tamper with it,” he posits. “The issue now is digital content.”
With embedded software now found in countless products ranging from cars to clocks, the question becomes whether rights in these products will be controlled by the owners or by copyright holders. Cisco’s “Internet of Everything” initiative makes the point that the physical world is increasingly blending into the digital world, but Shore sees peril in this trend. “We have to ask ourselves: do we want to be an ownership society or a licensing society?”
On September 18, 2014, Congressman Blake Farenthold (R-TX) introduced the “You Own Devices Act” (YODA), which would expand ownership rights in technology products by allowing users to transfer the rights to software inside the devices. “This straightforward and tightly focused bill reinforces our First Sale rights and preserves our ability to truly own the products that we buy,” said Farenthold in a statement.
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