Today I have for you a story from the USA which is funny but also dangerous because it could apply to the whole world, if it is recognized and strongly promoted overseas. It has in the foreground the principle of the first sale according to which the holder of the copyright rights on a product can only control the first sale of that product, the successive sales made by customers no longer being under their control. Based on this principle, the user can sell the products to anyone, if he does not modify them and does not promote them as belonging to the company.
The Supreme Court case concerns something called the "first-sale doctrine" in copyright law. Simply put, the doctrine means that you can buy and sell the stuff you buy. Even if someone has copyright over some piece of your stuff, you can sell it without permission from the copyright holder because the copyright holder can only control the "first-sale." The Supreme Court has recognized this doctrine since 1908.
A more than a century old principle, recognized by courts around the world, could be changed in the US, where a publishing house wants to sue a student who tries to sell books bought outside the US. Although the American courts have decided that anyone can sell without problems the products bought from anywhere else, is the publishing house trying to prove the opposite? Why is the publishing house struggling so much? Well, because those books are more expensive in the USA than outside the country, they were bought for the student by relatives from another country, they were sent to him in the USA, and he is trying to sell them there. This sale would affect the publisher's revenues, because many people would take this approach by buying the products from outside the US at a lower price.
Now a supreme court in the USA has this case before it and can decide that the principle of the first sale will continue to exist in the form in which everyone knows it, or it will be fundamentally changed. If it will be changed, then the Americans will have to ask for permission to sell any iDevice considering that they are all manufactured in China or Brazil, so none in the USA and none would be protected by the principle of first sale. If the Americans want to absurdly change this principle, then there is a good chance that other countries will do the same, at which point things will get unnecessarily complicated.
