You can't distribute copies of the book (outside of limited exceptions).
First Sale doctrine says you can pretty much do whatever you want with the physical item.
There's another thing you're missing: First Sale Doctrine. In the world of physical goods, once you've sold a copy of something, you have no rights whatsoever to constrain what people can do with that copy. Authors don't see a dime for used book sales, for example.
First sale doctrine in the US. If I buy a physical book, I can give it, loan it, throw it in the trash, etc. This doesn't apply to making electronic copies--see what happened with Google Books for example.
I can't quote you law but my understanding is that first sale doctrine applies to physical things. So virtually lending a corresponding digital copy to a physical book seems a creative application of first sale doctrine--which may or may not be strictly legal but apparently the publishers weren't interested in pushing that.
First sale doctrine explicitly limits the restriction that the seller of a copyrightable work can place on the buyer.
It is illegal for you to sell me a book and say "you can't let any of your friends read this copy of this book" because that violates the first sale doctrine.
The first-sale doctrine was also covered in the ruling. According to the letter of the law (17 USC § 109) it specifically only covers the distribution of existing authorized physical copies; it doesn't grant you permission to make a copy and lend that to a friend.
This is a copyright law issue, not a publishing industry issue. First sale doctrine applies to the physical book, you only have a license to the ebook. Even if you were to "disrupt" publishing, they could change their benevolence at any time and no longer transfer ownership of the ebook.
This is why the Internet Archive is fighting the Controlled Digital Lending issue in court; if all books are ebooks, libraries can no longer be libraries due to onerous publisher control, and culture is locked up in perpetuity (life+whatever in your country of copyright dystopia). You have to fix the delta between how the physical book and the ebook are treated legally.
TLDR Without physical media, there is no first sale doctrine. Everything is licensed, and locked up under license terms.
In the US we have the first-sale doctrine. So you own your copy. You can sell your copy of a book or a CD, even though the publisher might like to prevent that.
Except that the courts have said many times that a seller doesn't have carte blanche to add whatever restrictions they want to a purchase. The First Sale doctrine, for example, means you can't stop someone from reselling their purchased book. It is tricky for digital items, but depending on the exact details, the First Sale doctrine can sometimes apply.
Being able to take the legally purchased text and running it through a computerized reader might end up being legal... we need the courts to decide. It isn't enough that the person selling it doesn't want to allow it.
> The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner.
Yes, Amazon and Ebay are allowed to stop selling the book at the publisher's request, but they're not required to. This is voluntary action on their part.
That's not how copyright works on physical goods, like books, DVDs, etc... The Doctrine of First Sale is a crucial part of Copyright law. The author doesn't get to control your life because you bought one of their works. If you want to use it in some other way then they intended they don't get a say.
>> "The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner. The right to distribute ends, however, once the owner has sold that particular copy. See 17 U.S.C. § 109(a) & (c). Since the first sale doctrine never protects a defendant who makes unauthorized reproductions of a copyrighted work, the first sale doctrine cannot be a successful defense in cases that allege infringing reproduction."
To be clear, First Sale Doctrine does apply to physical goods: the doctrine pre-dates copyrighted digital goods. The idea was that a publisher couldn't prevent someone from reselling their paperback copy of a novel after they've read it (for example).
Of course, it in theory could apply to digital goods as well, but most copyrighted digital goods you don't actually buy, you just license. Good luck reselling a Kindle book. You have to strip the DRM first, which, while possible, violates the DMCA.
The court order discusses this, and says while the first sale doctrine means IA could resell or lend their physical books, that right does not extend to unauthorized reproductions (such as making an ebook by scanning in a print book).
So does the first sale doctrine not have any teeth at all? What is to stop companies from throwing a license on everything they sell, making the first sale doctrine meaningless?
Could a bookseller add a license to a physical book, and suddenly you can't sell it or lend it out?
Can you link to an example of such a contract? And besides, I thought the First Sale Doctrine meant that no matter what your contract said, once the book was sold that the copyright holder didn't have any say over that copy of it anymore.
First Sale doctrine evenly applied to digital books would allow you to freely resell the ebook you purchased. It probably wouldn't mean allowing you to make infinite copies and distribute them freely, abolishing the market for the actual book.
Yes, that's not the technical definition of FS doctrine, but that doctrine was written before this technological context existed.
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