How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling just about anything

Re:How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling ju... by tomp on Monday October 29, 2012 @07:39AM (#4711823)

Common sense says that the copyright holder shouldn't stop you and me from transfering goods from another country (where we are on vacation) to our home countries. It would be absurd that I would have to leave behind my iPod that I bought in Dubai or the magazine I bought in Vietnam.

However, it's quite reasonable to prevent business import of goods from abroad. Then, you're basically preventing the producer from assigning different $-value in different regions. Sometimes, that is desirable (market arbitrage), but sometimes, it's not (phisical goods should more closely follow PPP (purchasing power parity), especially if their marginal costs are low).

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Re:How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling ju... by Zak on Monday October 29, 2012 @09:50AM (#4712221)

However, it's quite reasonable to prevent business import of goods from abroad.

Why is it reasonable? They aren't counterfeit. They weren't produced in violation of copyright. They aren't dangerous. They aren't stolen. The only reason to ban their import is to protect the copyright holder's business model.

Whether the business model is desirable or not is not the question. The question is whether it deserves explicit protection in law, and I believe it does not.

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Re:How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling ju... by _delirium on Monday October 29, 2012 @10:00AM (#4712265)

If you mean there are sometimes reasons for import tariffs, then that might be true (it's a large debate in economics). I don't see why copyrighted goods should be treated specially, though. If a country wants an import tariff on books, just like on sugar or on steel, in order to maintain price differences, it should institute it directly, rather than via this roundabout copyright route.

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Re:How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling ju... by tomp on Monday October 29, 2012 @10:41AM (#4712456)

Tariffs actually achieve just the opposite - it increases the cost of foreign imports. Also, it does it for everybody, also for authorized importers/resellers.

Well, sometimes there is hardly anything else but copyright that constitutes products (e.g. media, books). Personally, I would also enable the same kind of protection for trademarks (so that iPad could be sold for different price in West and elsewhere).

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Re:How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling ju... by mindslight on Monday October 29, 2012 @11:29AM (#4712704)

Even better, why not set the price of an iPad to production cost + 1% of a person's yearly income? Resale under pain of death.

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Re:How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling ju... by hn_is_vile on Tuesday October 30, 2012 @04:37AM (#4716603)

Wouldn't that be a restraint of trade? According to this: http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/countries_e/thailand_e.h... Thailand is a member of the WTO. If you prevent a business in the US from importing goods from Thailand that are not illicit or restricted, then wouldn't that constitute a trade barrier?

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