I dunno. American textbooks, especially engineering textbooks, have been sold at a steep discount in Asia for years, with the legend in the title page, “Not to be sold in the United States”.
I agree that textbooks are a rip off, but really, how does upholding this restriction affect my right to sell my grandmother’s jewelry? The books were sold *at a steep discount* precisely because they could not be resold into the U.S. market.
tagline fix.
Well in the USA we used to be able to "own" property and as such if I "own" something then I have the right to sell it.
If it was against the law for those books to enter the USA then it is up to customs to stop it. But since he brought thousands of books (if the stories are true on the amount of money he made that is) into the USA and he hasn't been charged with violating customs laws that tells me he had the right to do with those books as he saw fit.
And being we have a Constitutional challenge on the already overbearing copyright laws by Big Media who have bought huge changes to the copyright laws at the trun of the century, I gotta side with the kid. He found a market nitch and filled it.
If the publisher wants to protect his price in the USA its simple. Quit selling his stuff cheaper overseas. Problem solved!
But they were not sold in the US at first sale and that is what the coming SCOTUS argument hinges on.