The Digital Death of Copyright’s First Sale Doctrine

The Digital Death of Copyright’s First Sale Doctrine
As the transition from physical to streaming or cloud-based digital distribution continues, further divorcing copyrighted works from their traditional tangible embodiments, it will increasingly be the case that consumers do not own the information goods they buy (or, rather, think they’ve bought). Under the court’s decision in Vernor, all a copyright owner has to do to effectively repeal the statutory first sale doctrine is draft a EULA that (1) specifies that the user is granted a license; (2) significantly restricts the user’s ability to transfer the software; and (3) imposes notable use restrictions. Sad to say, it’s about as easy as falling off a log.

October 25, 2011 by Uncategorized 0

You may also like...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

LISNews Archives