Tech Dirt
Mike Masnick
Jul 31st 2020
Last month, we wrote about the big publishers suing the Internet Archive over its Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) program, as well as its National Emergency Library (NEL). As we’ve explained over and over again, the Internet Archive is doing exactly what libraries have always done: lending books. The CDL program was structured to mimic exactly how a traditional library works, with a 1-to-1 relationship between physical books owned by the library and digital copies that can be lent out.

While some struggled with the concept of the NEL since it was basically just the CDL, but without the 1-to-1 relationship (and thus, without wait lists), it seemed reasonably defensible: nearly all public libraries at the time had shut down entirely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the NEL was helping people who otherwise would never have had access to the books that were sitting inside libraries, collecting dust on the inaccessible shelves. Indeed, plenty of teachers and schools thanked the Internet Archive for making it possible for students to still read books that were stuck inside locked up classrooms. But, again, this lawsuit wasn’t just about the NEL at all, but about the whole CDL program. The publishers have been whining about the CDL for a while, but hadn’t sued until now.

Of course, the reality is that the big publishers see digital ebooks as an opportunity to craft a new business model. With traditional books, libraries buy the books, just like anyone else, and then lend them out. But thanks to a strained interpretation of copyright law, when it came to ebooks, the publishers jacked up the price for libraries to insane levels and kept putting more and more conditions on them. For example, Macmillan, for a while, was charging $60 per book — with a limit of 52 lends or two years of lending, whichever came first. And then you’d have to renew.

Basically, publishers were abusing copyright law to try to jam down an awful and awfully expensive model on libraries — exposing how much publishers really hate libraries, while pretending otherwise.

Anyway, the Internet Archive has filed its response to the lawsuit,

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The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200730/23251945010/internet-archive-responds-to-publishers-lawsuit-libraries-lend-books-thats-what-we-do.shtml Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Tech Dirt
Mike Masnick
July 25, 2019

It sometimes is difficult to get people to understand just how >utterly insane the college textbook market is. You have a captive audience who has no choice but to purchase what the professor requires (which is why it’s doubly lame when professors require their own books). But even people who went to college a few decades ago may not be aware of just how much textbook prices have kept rising. A study from 2015 showed that college textbook prices had risen over 1000% since 1977. 1,000%.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190716/17335842600/death-ownership-educational-publishing-giant-pearson-to-do-away-with-print-textbooks-that-can-be-resold.shtml Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Rashanda Bruce
LexBlog
December 21, 2018

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals returned a favorable ruling for major record companies in a copyright infringement case on December 12, 2018.  The ruling came down in Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi Inc., a lawsuit involving an online platform (“ReDigi”) designed to enable the lawful resale of purchased digital music files.  The Second Circuit concluded that ReDigi infringed the record companies’ exclusive rights under Section 106 of the Copyright Act.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.lexblog.com/2018/12/21/buyer-keeper-forever-second-circuit-affirms-decision-music-files-purchased-online-cannot-resold-online/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Tech Dirt

Mike Masnick

Fri, Aug 31st 2018

[ed’s note: we need no more evidence than this case to substantiate our claim that judges in the US court system have lost their collective memories from the contracts classes they took in law school. Apparently, not a one of them is willing to use common sense and legal judgment to mark terms of service and other wrap contracts as the crap that they usually are. Here, we have yet another stunning example of a judge sticking with bad precedent rather than pointing out the obvious and thereby bringing some wisdom into the void].

Tech Dirt

Mike Masnick

Fri, Aug 31st 2018

Earlier this year we wrote about Disney’s silly lawsuit against Redbox. If you don’t recall, Redbox, whose main business was renting DVDs out of kiosks started also offering digital download codes that could be purchased at their kiosks. What Redbox did, was it would buy Disney “combo packs” (that came with both a DVD and a download code) and would offer up just the slip of paper with the code out of its kiosks. This seems like perfectly reasonable first sale rights. A legitimate code was purchased, and then resold.

When we wrote about the case back in February, it involved the court smacking down Disney, and even saying that the company was engaged in “copyright misuse” in overclaiming what copyright allowed the company to do. . . .

So my prediction following that was: “this almost certainly means that Disney is quickly reprinting the packaging on all its Combo Pack DVDs to make this language more legalistic to match the Lexmark standard.”

And… bingo. That’s exactly what happened. In a new ruling, the court has now granted a preliminary injunction against Redbox all because of the new “contract” language Disney has put on its DVDs (though amusingly, in a footnote, the court notes “Disney does not concede that the changes were necessary.”)

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The content in this post was found at https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180831/00545440550/disney-fixes-sketchy-dvd-rental-license-wins-injunction-against-redbox-over-digital-downloads.shtml Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Lex Blog

AUGUST 9, 2018
The Ninth Circuit recently issued its decision regarding the validity of the California Resale Royalty Act (“CRRA”) in three consolidated appeals: Close v. Sotheby’s, Inc., No. 16-56234, The Sam Francis Foundation v. Christie’s, Inc., No. 16-56235 and The Sam Francis Foundation v. eBay Inc., No. 16-56252. 2018 WL 3322222 (9th Cir. July 6, 2018).

The content in this post was found at https://www.lexblog.com/2018/08/09/update-ninth-circuit-holds-that-crra-is-preempted-by-first-sale-doctrine/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com

Is There A Digital First Sale?

Above the Fold

The Copyright Act grants the owner of a copyright certain rights, including the right to reproduce, to distribute, and to perform and display the copyrighted work. 17 U.S.C. § 106. However, these rights are limited by other sections of the statute. One such limitation to the distribution right is known as the “first sale doctrine,” which states, “the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made [] is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord. Id. at § 109(a). For example, if you purchase a DVD at the store, you own a particular copy of a copyrighted work. You can resale the DVD, give it away, or destroy it without infringing the copyright owner’s right of distribution. The same is true for any number of copyrighted works fixed in a variety of mediums, e.g., a CD, cassette, vinyl record, book, photograph, art print, etc. But what about digital content? That is, can you resell a song or movie you lawfully purchase and download?

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The content in this post was found at https://advertisinglaw.foxrothschild.com/2018/03/digital-first-sale/ Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com.

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Jetlaw

Barrett Lingle

In November, Walt Disney Co. sued Redbox in an attempt to stop the DVD rental company from selling digital copies of its movies. At the center of the suit are movie download codes that can be used to download a digital copy of a Disney movie and are included with a Blu-ray disc and a DVD in each “combo pack” Disney sells. Disney filed a motion for a preliminary injunction against Redbox after Redbox began disassembling the “combo packs” it purchased from Disney and selling the codes separately to consumers.

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The content in this post was found at https://www.jetlaw.org/2018/02/13/misusing-mickey-mouse-the-fight-over-movie-download-codes Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post. and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com.

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