Supreme Court to rule on making selling of foreign-made goods illegal.

Fangtaku
Joined
Jul 23, 2012
Messages
925
Here's where my roommate found the article, the original source is linked at the bottom: ONTD-Political

Basically, copyright holders have "right of first sale" on goods they produce. That means they can authorize who can and can't sell it. After it's bought, then you own it, and can do whatever you want with it. Like sell it to someone else.

What this case involves, is that some college guy in the US (originally from Thailand) realized that his textbooks were cheaper in Thailand than in the US. So he had his family buy what had to have been tons of books, send them to him in the US, and he turned around and sold them for a profit.

So what they want to do, is basically make it so that instead of just "first sale", you would have to get the copyright holder's permission to resell their products, IF it's made outside the US. And this includes BOTH imports and US products made overseas. Which means that all of our Japanese-made toys would be illegal to sell, unless we got permission. And it's even convoluted enough that you'd have to get permission for individual components. Which makes it more ridiculous.


There's a lot of large companies going against this, so I don't know what we can do other than get the word out, and raise our voices so that people hear that there's people against this, but I personally think we should do what we can to keep this stupid thing from passing into law.
 
No Fear, No Pain.
Joined
Dec 22, 2010
Messages
2,440
It'll never pass. They tried something like this in Japan a few years back that made video game resells illegal. It didn't last...it just didn't. Here in the U.S. we have a free economy, so a bill like this severly effects that by making the buying and reselling of foreign products even more difficult. Our economy is still recovering and needs every little bit of help it can get, so I seriously doubt they would limit anything right now anymore then they have to.

Besides a law like this might provoke other nations to pass similar laws of their own that would effect our economy even more...we don't need that now.
 
Back in Black
Joined
Jun 27, 2012
Messages
1,366
How would it be enforced? These requests for permission to resell items will gather too fast for individual companies and the companies would then also would allocate sources to this which would not be profitable to them.

They also want to pass it for components...

Do these people know that almost nothing is entirely made here?
 
Fangtaku
Joined
Jul 23, 2012
Messages
925
Actually, ZZ, it's gone up before. One of the Justices was involved in the case, so had to recuse herself. The result was tied 4-4.

And, unless it's a larger scale, it probably wouldn't be enforced. But if you get caught for something else, they'll add it on.

I'm afraid of what this would do. The video game industry wants to shut down the second-hand market, and there's rumors that they're working on systems that read a code on the game, and if that code's already been used, you can't use it in another system. And there are other industries who don't like the second-hand market, either. If this passes for foreign-made goods, how long until something similar is passed for US-made goods?
 
No Fear, No Pain.
Joined
Dec 22, 2010
Messages
2,440
Like I said, we are a free economy. As long as items were not illegally obtained the buying and reselling of merchandise will never go away. That doesn't mean the video game industry won't try there new one game per console system, but it would put several buisnesses who rely on resells at risk. Such a move would be dangerous for buisness and I doubt the game companies would make that move with the current market. It would just effect there sells too much, especially if a competetor doesn't use such technology which frees up their games to be resold. It then basically becomes a big game of chicken...
 
All Decade's Fault
Joined
May 10, 2009
Messages
1,450
This is largely unenforceable.

- Only because nobody has yet bothered (or had the cash to chase every individual with lawsuits). The worry isn't the law itself, I would think--but more on the copyright holders and where they are. If someone has a copyright for a product and decides to make more profit by shoving a lawsuit down your throat than actually doing something with the copyright, then you'd be in trouble.
 
Back in Black
Joined
Jun 27, 2012
Messages
1,366
That's not it. The law is not in place. No one can sue someone for selling his own property. This actually assumes the standardization of copyright law within every country that sells something to the United States. It is the responsibility of the countries to allow permission. This means that the burden of creating a sector within a company that does this is all on the company. Individual companies would spend more money to pass or deny these claims, which would put it at all or nothing. They either all pass, which makes the law useless, or they don't pass, and everyone is stuck with stuff that he doesn't want or need anymore. I assume that most would indeed pass because it would be more cost effective to allow all claims and to not create some committee to judge them.
 
Member
Joined
Mar 22, 2011
Messages
462
I swear, it feels like the US supreme court is out of touch with the very people it's supposed to represent! Where is petition I can sign against this?
 
Top