

Second Circuit negates first sale right for foreign-made works of authorship - grellas
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110817/18162715566/legally-bought-some-books-abroad-sell-them-us-you-could-owe-150k-per-book-infringement.shtml

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anigbrowl
I thought _Omega v. Costco_ was correctly decided and that Mike Masnick is
full of it, but I got into a week-long argument with someone in the wake of
that case and don't want to repeat the experience. I think it's telling that
Masnick left out the data point that the defendant had earned somewhere
between $900,000 and $1.2 million from his book import & resale business, but
that's not germane to the decision.

Murtha's dissent is error, in that first sale only applies where the United
States is the country of first publication, notwithstanding that the foreign
publisher may be a subsidiary of a US entity which is the ultimate
rightsholder.

The argument that this will hurt libraries is completely bogus. 17 U.S.C. §
602(a)(3)(C) specifically authorizes libraries to import copies of foreign
copyrighted works for both archival and lending purposes, thus providing them
with a statutory 'safe haven'.

