Resale

Weblog:		Jeff Bezos' open letter on used book sales
Subject:		Resale
Date:		2002-04-15 15:48:25
From:		steve_wildstrom

Whether "everyone understands" the buyer's right to resell a book is neither here nor there. The right to sell, lend, or do just about anything you want with a book except copy it, a right technically known as the "first sale" doctrine, is enshrined in U.S. copyright law. (This is emphatically not true of copyright law in most other countries.) Tim is quite correct that the first sale doctrine is under attack in many ways with regard to electronic media including e-books. But no one has seriously proposed restricting it for printed material. As a writer, I believe strongly in the right of authors to be compensated for their work and I have been cheered by recent court rulings that have held that electronic distribution of printed work requires negotiation of a subsidiary right. But the Authors' Guild is simply completely off-base on this one.