Here’s the situation: Supap Kirtsaeng, a Thai studying at
Cornell University, had friends and relatives buy a bunch of textbooks in
Thailand that he then re-sold in the United States at a profit of about $1.2
million. Nobody stole the books. They were just purchased in another country
and sold here. Wiley, the publisher, got wind of the sale and had a conniption
fit and is suing Kirtsaeng for copyright infringement. Kirtsaeng countered,
saying he had the right to sell the books since they were his – he and his
relatives bought them.
Now the case is heading to the Supreme Court, bringing with
it the spectre of disallowing the sale of stuff we already paid for if the
first sale occurred in another country.
While that doesn’t sound like the end of the world, it is
kind of startling to think that, say, you bought a used book from a guy in
England and then, after reading it, decided you wanted to sell it yourself. If
the SCOTUS agrees with Wiley, such a sale would be banned, or at least you’d
have to give the publisher a cut.
This seems wrong.
I already won’t buy digital copies of books and music and
movies for this reason, since the original sellers have proved to be a bit
grabby and won’t allow me to re-sell what I buy. To think they want to do that
with tangible, real, in-your-hand stuff now? Do not want.
All Kirtsaeng did was bring cheaper textbooks to the United
States – the books were sold in his native Thailand by Wiley far less
expensively than Wiley offered them in the United States. Certainly Wiley was
out money for books that could have been sold by them in the US for the higher
prices, but there’s certainly nothing stopping individual students from
textbook shopping and finding the books for cheap on the open market. But since
an individual made a business of doing so, I guess that’s a no-no? Though I
can’t figure out why. HE BOUGHT THE DARN BOOKS. They’re his to re-sell, and if
Wiley can’t match his price in the United States, well, that’s capitalism,
baby.
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