arstechnica.com — The Electronic Frontier Foundation has agreed to take the case of a California man who is locked in a legal battle with Universal music over the sale of "promo CDs" on eBay. The case will test the limits of the First Sale Doctrine and could have implications for the legal status of "shrinkwrap" licenses in the software industry.
Aug 15, 2007 View in Crawl 4
egroeggnikAug 16, 2007
I"m siding with the guy on this one.If my neighbor runs out of cigarettes, and comes to me for a pack, am I not allowed to sell him the one unopened one that I have, simply because it says 'not for individual sale' on it?
qubesquareAug 16, 2007
I just made another donation to the EFF. The more articles I read about the EFF getting involved the more I donate.
Closed AccountAug 16, 2007
I see what you did there.
gymbrallAug 16, 2007
If this guy ever played one of these CD's over the air, something he couldn't do without the copyright holder's permission, then there was some sort of agreement in place. Now maybe they just wrote, "you can play this CD on the air, signed UMG", but more likely is that this was standard practice and everybody knew what was going on. UMG sent out the CD's hoping the radio would play them, the radio hoped the DJ would pick songs that would make their station popular.
locojonesAug 16, 2007
Except your statement is too much of a generalization. Ownership of the cds in this case was not transferred, rather they were loaned or leased with the express condition that they would never be sold. If you'd actually go to lawschool before speaking, I know this is a hard concept to understand, then you'd understand what it means to own a piece of property. One of the bundle of rights of ownership is the ability to freely dispose of the property. Here, because the ability to sell the item in question was expressly restricted as a condition of possession, the full bundle of rights did not transfer with the cd, therefore it was not owned by the station or the guy purporting to sell it.
locojonesAug 16, 2007
Transferring possession and transferring ownership are two different concepts. If you actually went to law school, instead of playing a lawyer on digg, you'd know the difference.