Digital Firsts; Library Journal, 12/18/13

Matt Ennis, Library Journal; Digital Firsts: "The U.S Department of Commerce (DoC) has been collecting public comment on the topic of the first sale doctrine and digital files in recent weeks; the agency was scheduled to meet about the issue on December 12 in Washington, DC. First sale doctrine is a set of exemptions to U.S. copyright law that permit consumers to resell used books or DVDs and libraries to loan books without seeking permission from publishers. Yet for reasons examined in more detail below, first sale exemptions have not translated well for digital content. The DoC’s call for public comment could mark the beginning of a campaign to reassess what copyright and first sale mean in the modern digital era, notes one expert. While the case did not directly address digital content, the Supreme Court’s Kirtsaeng v. Wiley decision in March “has reawakened interest, on the content owners’ side, to revise first sale,” says Mary Minow, Follett Chair of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Dominican University, and executive editor of Stanford University’s Copyright and Fair Use website. “Perhaps that’s even part of the impetus behind this call for public comment. The energy is there to revise copyright law in its entirety, including first sale. If libraries aren’t speaking up about what it is that we need, we’re just going to be bulldozed over.”"

Library Associations Brace for First Sale Fight with Owners’ Rights Lobby Effort; Library Journal, 10/23/12

Meredith Schwartz, Library Journal; Library Associations Brace for First Sale Fight with Owners’ Rights Lobby Effort: "The American Library Association (ALA) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) today teamed up with 17 other associations, retailers, and charities to launch a new coalition called the Owners’ Rights Initiative (ORI). ORI is an “informal alliance of stakeholders” that will defend the first sale doctrine, which allows libraries to lend books and other materials, as well as individual owners to resell them. The doctrine is under attack in the case of Kirtsaeng vs. Wiley, for which the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on October 29. Among ORI’s other members are eBay, Overstock, Powell’s Books, textbook buyer and seller Chegg, movie rental company Redbox, Goodwill, and Quality King Distributors, which is notable as the prevailing party in Quality King Distributors v. L’anza Research International, in which the Supreme Court in 1998 held that the first sale doctrine prevents copyright owners from controlling the importation of copyrighted goods sold outside the United States. (Notable for its absence is Costco, which was a party to the split decision Costco v. Omega case that raised similar issues.)"