This is so very complicated.
Under the "first sale doctrine" (which is derived from the Copyright code):
the owner of a particular copy
lawfully made within the meaning of the Copyright Act is not subject to Section 106(3), so that once a copyright owner consents to the sale of its work, it loses its distribution right with respect to those copies, and the purchaser is free to transfer ownership in any way it wishes.
http://thelicensinglawblog.com/2010/12/costco-v-omega-supreme-court-punts-on-another-big-ip-case/ But as the author of the blog points out copyright owners are writing into the sale contracts that the purchaser only buys a "license."
That leads to the distinction between digital purchases and purchases of tangible media (CD's, book's LP's). As the same blog explains: "If a publisher sells a book to a bookstore, the bookstore is free to resell it to anyone, and the purchaser is in turn free to sell the same book to anyone on eBay."
http://thelicensinglawblog.com/2010...0-in-eminem-and-autodesk-9th-circuit-rulings/. But according to the blog's discussion of the Autodesk decision (from the same court, I might add, that said
Disneyland needed to "study" Segway use), end user licenses can prohibit transfers of digital media. The decision is controversial,
http://copyrightandtechnology.com/2010/09/14/ninth-circuit-overturns-vernor-v-autodesk-decision/ to say the least but since the court sets law that governs California decisions, it will have a significant impact on intellectual property issues, at least until it is overturned. Of course, the problem becomes one of proof. While I think the distinction between digital media and fixed media pretty strained from a legal point of view, when you can make an exact copy of digital media, the publishers have a valid practical concern about being able to enforce legitimate anti-piracy laws.
(And if you want to get a real headache read this article
http://www.theatlantic.com/national...d-you-may-have-violated-copyright-law/258276/ about the application of the "first sale doctrine" to items first sold outside of the country.)
Why Bruce Willis wants to sue Apple beats me. They rarely if ever own the copyright in the music and movies downloaded through iTunes. Apple actually permits up to five copies to be made and played on different computers:
Movies, TV shows, and certain other items purchased from the
iTunes Store are protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM). These protected purchases can be:
- Played on up to five authorized computers
- Synced with your iPod, iPhone, or iPad
- Synced with or streamed to your Apple TV
All songs offered by the iTunes Store now come without DRM protection. These DRM-free songs, called
iTunes Plus, have no usage restrictions and feature high-quality 256 kbps AAC
encoding. If you have older iTunes Store purchases that are now available as iTunes Plus downloads, you may upgrade your existing purchases. To do so, visit the iTunes Store and follow the onscreen instructions.
I should be clear about one thing. If you buy a CD, copy it to your iPod, and then sell the CD to a used book store, you violate the copyright if you keep the songs from the CD on your iPod. (This is just a copyright explanation, so please don't take this as some kind of moral condemnation.)
Sadly, if you can count on anything in this area, it is that copyright law does a terrible job of keeping up with technology.
