But they were not sold in the US at first sale and that is what the coming SCOTUS argument hinges on.
By your logic, I could buy a copy of a best seller, scan it, bind it and sell it on eBay. I mean, it’s my paper, my ink, my binder and my copy of the book.
Clearly importing them violated the “first sale” lisence agreement. Why would the lisence owner need to depend on customs to enforce his intellectual property rights?
The likely effect of a “favorable” ruling would be to curtail discount sales of textbooks in Asia.
Incidently, I bought a couple of Tom & Jerry DVD’s on eBay, turns out they were sold in and shipped from Singapore and are not supposed to be imported into the U.S. It doesn’t seem to be a copyright issue, since the same DVDs are not sold in the U.S. It appears to be racial sensitivity. The black maid is depicted as a , well black maid, with a thickly accented dialect. “Tom, yous is a shiftless, wortless good-fer-nuttin’ lay-a-bout old tom cat and eyes gonna toss you outen dis house if you don’t take cares of dat mouse around here!” She is an altogether admirable and noble character, but it just won’t play in the U.S. Disney’s “Song of the South” is not available on DVD nor VHS and they closely monitor eBay and Craig’s list to keep it that way.
It kinda fustrating because I have a VHS copy of the PBS miniseries “Mother Love”, which is absolutely riveting and I cannot get someone to copy it to DVD, even for my personal use, because of copyright restrictions. For whatever reason the copyright holder refuses to release copies, even though it is eagerly sought after.