Will SCOTUS Make It Illegal to Resell Your Stuff?

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/320-80/14172-will-scotus-make-it-illegal-to-resell-your-stuff

you buy an iPod or a phone, a book or a DVD, it's currently legal to resell it, as thousands of eBay and Craigslist posts attest.

However, as Jennifer Waters at MarketWatch reports, a little-known case "tucked into the U.S. Supreme Court's agenda this fall could upend your ability to resell everything from your grandmother's antique furniture to your iPhone 4."

Under current law - on the books since 1908 - copyright holders only have control over the first sale, so while I cannot take iPhones straight off the factory line and sell them, I am able to sell a device that I first bought from a retailer.

This, Waters reports, is being challenged:

[aquart]

1. Not if eBay knows how to set up secret accounts in the Channel Islands.

Switzerland just doesn't feel secure anymore.

And I expect Seal Team Six to take over the Caymans any day.

[BadgerKid]

2. It seems today's "innovation" is

market expansion into rentables and consumables -- reduce everything into a monthly payment or buy-and-throw-away.

[htuttle]

3. This would be completely unworkable

Other than creating the largest black market in history overnight, it would screw more corporations than it would help. The normal channels of retail distribution involve resale from the factory to a distributor to a retail store.

While the scenario described would be an extreme application of this ruling, I've seen the courts act so stupidly in my lifetime that I can't rule it out.

[avebury]

4. K&R nt

[HiPointDem]

5. so that ordinary people never really 'own' anything. violation of private property. private

property is something only the state, large corporations or the very wealthy 'own'.

ironic.

i agree with the commenter:

'There it is, proof positive that the Right Wing agenda destroys all the freedoms and rights that they claim they defend.'

[RevStPatrick]

6. Aw sheesh, not this shit again!

This case has nothing to do with reselling your frikkin' iPod.
It has to do with a guy who was buying large amounts of textbooks real cheap overseas and selling them at a large markup here in the US.

The Supreme Court is not going to make it illegal to resell your iPod!
It is, however, illegal to import stuff illegally.
That's the point of this...

[HopeHoops]

7. It's looking that way. There's almost NOTHING you can buy that doesn't include foreign parts.

It basically means you cant re-sell a car. You can't resell anything made from pine harvested in Canada. Hell, it would put $tarbuck$ and Hershey out of business - we don't grow coffee or cocoa here.

It's all up to this Robert's/Scalia court and I don't trust them as far as I could throw them (which isn't very far). I don't think very many people understand how draconian this is. The "buy it and you're stuck with it" concept is just a recipe for accumulating more trash in our already overwhelmed landfills and incinerators.

[dawg]

8. If you make it so that I can never truly *own* something ...

then the concept of "stealing" no longer has any meaning to me.