COpyright Law

[Gregadd]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/b...opyright-case-on-imported-textbooks.html?_r=0

College textbooks are a ripoff?

A man from Thailand made 1.2 million by importing college textbooks from his homeland and reselling them. The rule is you can resell a book you purchased one time. Clearly the rule was not intended for him, But is it a legal loophole?

 

[amirm]

I am usually a defender of copyright holders but when I heard about this a few weeks ago, I could not hold that position here. It makes no sense to me to give them this protection.

We lived in a similar situation at Microsoft. Some of the government overseas where threatening to use Linux if we could not reduce the cost of Windows to it (i.e. free). So we experimented with a much lower cost version of Windows. What we did however was to reduce its feature set. That way if it was imported into US, it would not compete with the real thing. The notion that these guys sell the same book overseas at much lower cost and then get upset when it is brought into US is a problem they need to solve. Why not make the book somewhat different there?

 

[Whatmore]

I am usually a defender of copyright holders but when I heard about this a few weeks ago, I could not hold that position here. It makes no sense to me to give them this protection.

We lived in a similar situation at Microsoft. Some of the government overseas where threatening to use Linux if we could not reduce the cost of Windows to it (i.e. free). So we experimented with a much lower cost version of Windows. What we did however was to reduce its feature set. That way if it was imported into US, it would not compete with the real thing. The notion that these guys sell the same book overseas at much lower cost and then get upset when it is brought into US is a problem they need to solve. Why not make the book somewhat different there?

Amir, if you were doing this work in Asia you may know a friend of mine who was with Microsoft based in singapore

 

[kach22i]

An interesting case.

 

[GaryProtein]

When you buy something NEW, the manufacturer, publisher or copyright holder (who in effect is the first owner of the manufactured product stored in their warehouse) makes his money buy selling it to the first purchaser.

Once you have purchased an item and own it, you should be able to re-sell it without restriction or tax by the previous owner.

It's that way with a car, bicycle, tennis racket, TV, house, dining room set or stereo equipment.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Not that it matters in the legal case, but I'd be interested to know if the publishers in question are manufacturing the books that are sold in America in America. And I seriously doubt that the answer is yes, because large scale printing has been broadly outsourced to great advantage for a long time now. Lots of American printed material is made in Asia.

So...if that's the case, this Cornell student can have his relatives buy books at retail in Asia, ship them, I assume, a few at a time, to him in the US, turn around and sell them to American students at enough of a discount to make them very attractive and still make enough of a margin to earn 1/2 million doing it on his own?

Good for him.

The American publishers who are manufacturing the books in Asia, shipping them over here by the pallet load, and then marking up cost + shipping so much that they can't compete with this kid's little cottage industry? Can you say "price gouging?"

Yeah, I know, retail markup and all that. I still hope they lose this one. It's getting harder and harder for the middle class to send their kids to college. Below that level? Smart kids don't have much of a chance. And we cannot remain competitive as a nation by educating only the elite. Yeah. I hope they lose, and a whole underground industry grows and forces the textbook publishers to be more competitive.

Tim

 

[amirm]

The whole book pricing thing is crazy. When I wrote my book it came out with retail of $25 or something like it. When I checked last year it was up to $65! This was a thin book (a couple of hundred pages) so I can't imagine it getting so expensive to print when it is all machines that does it.

 

[Gregadd]

I think the phrase is "Hoisted on their own petard." I am curious what the damages are. It would appear a retail sale was made and you were paid. No books were copied or published. You have received your royalty. Sounds like prce fixing to me,

 

[amirm]

Amir, if you were doing this work in Asia you may know a friend of mine who was with Microsoft based in singapore

Indeed it was Singapore. But it was a parallel sister group to mine that worked on it.