Linked by Paul Cesarini on Mon 8th Sep 2003 03:02 UTC
Thanks to a provision in the 1976 Copyright Act, U.S. law allows the first purchaser of copyrighted material (a book, CD, etc) to subsequently re-sell that item without the copyright owner's consent. In this age of online distribution and the budding, halting attempts at legitimizing it, is the the right to re-sell going to be upheld?
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to qoute someone else...
The relevant section of US
copyright law is 17 USC 109:
[A person who owns a particular copy of a sound recording or
computer program is not allowed] for the purposes of direct or
indirect commercial advantage [to] dispose of, or authorize the
disposal of, the posession of that phonorecord or computer program
(including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program)
by rental, lease, or lending...
-- 17 USC 109 (b)(1)(A)
This subsection does not apply to [...] (ii) a computer program
embodied in or used in conjunction with a limited purpose computer
that is designed for playing video games and may be designed for
other purposes.
-- 17 USC 109 (b)(1)(B)
In other words:
* Renting out sound recordings is a violation.
* Renting out CD-ROMS for home computer systems is a violation.
* Renting out CD-ROMs for home videogame systems is not a violation
(there's a specific exemption).
The law prohibiting rental (17 USC 1101 as far as I can tell) applies
to sound recordings -- the format doesn't matter.