<p>Could there be a silver lining in the event the SCOTUS sides with the publishing giant? Perhaps we should hope for a victory for Wiley, and hope the government and public official find this so outrageous that they look into making this a Pyrrhic victory.</p>
<p>While there was never any doubt about the practices, Wiley admitted that it CAN sell academic books at prices much below the market rate in the USA. And to such degree that an entrepreneur could make massive profits in spite of having to research, purchase, and ship the goods from abroad. </p>
<p>Could this not give the entities that are now spending billions on YOUR purported behalf to request justifications for the higher prices charged in the United States? With all the discussion about reducing the cost of education, should this not be a MAJOR PRIORITY for our elected officials to attack the price gouging with the full force of the government? </p>
<p>Isn’t the reverse of protecting a market from “unauthorized” imports equivalent to engage in anti-commerce in our own country? Doesn’t this give company such as Wiley more power to engage in monopolistic policies --if we can discount the notion of price-fixing and collusion among the publishers? Our government attacks the foregners who attempt to dump cheap goods in the USA. Should it not worry MORE about the opposite?</p>
<p>Although most of the money spent on academic books comes from public purchases, the ultimate purchaser is none other than the US taxpayer, indirectly through K-12 and directlty at almost every college.</p>
<p>Of course, when it comes to make positive changes in education, and especially in reducing the costs paid by everyone, we get mostly lip service as our collective voice is a whisper against the cacaphony of the multiple lobbying (and bribing) forces.</p>
<p>It’s not illegal – or at least it wasn’t when this case started. Publishers can make an enforceable agreement with an international partner to not sell directly to the United States. That does not preclude someone else from buying these books in bulk in that country and then reshipping them to the United States.</p>
<p>Let’s keep in mind that the copyright holder has received payment and authorized sales or reproduction rights, so these are legitimate products. This is different than some small Asian printing company making exact replicas of a book without proper authorization and payment (which also happens).</p>
<p>Wiley should be wary of the Law of Unintended Consequences. If they are successful in shutting down the sale of foreign editions and used copies of all their textbooks, do they really believe that every student in this country will then pony up whatever arbitrary price they wish to slap on their textbooks? It will just start a run on digital bootlegs of their books.</p>
<p>Really all it would take to bring Wiley to its knees is one ornery individual with maybe $25,000 to spare: Buy one copy of every book Wiley makes and a couple of scanners and then hire a dozen or two college student for ten bucks a hour to scan the books and put them up on Bittorrent where anyone can download them for free.</p>
<p>It wouldn’t kill all sales, but it could put a major dent in them.</p>
<p>Interesting case. I could see the decision somehow involving the Commerce Clause. </p>
<p>Regarding physical textbooks. S1 was given CD w Physics text on it and told to print it out himself and store in 3-4" binder. They only need to bring relavent chapter to school and keep the rest at home for reference. Saves on his back, but puts a big dent in printer ink at home!</p>
<p>Fwiw, this outcome of this case will open all kinds of the proberbial cans of worms. </p>
<p>What if the purchases had been registered in Thailand, as in a US buyer sending his money via PayPal. Does it then make a shipment issue only? </p>
<p>Does it mean that I (as an example) could not buy books from a private seller via Amazon in the UK or in France? Would it make a difference if the books were unavailable in the US … think original versions in an European language. Aren’t certain technical and scientific books only printed in German? Would I need permission to purchase an original copy of Camus’ L’Etranger to be used in my French IV class? </p>
<p>For the record, I purchased a number of books via Amazon in England and France. The academic books were different without hardcovers and color graphics. In a way, the books were more useful as their weight was reduced. The savings were more than 50 percent. After a friendly resale, the cost was close to nothing.</p>
<p>It is good to remember that this is very different from purchasing pirated good of dubious origins. As LI wrote above, on the case of books, the manufacturer/publisher has received full payment in the original country of sale. </p>
<p>Again, the real question to ask should be why WE have to pay more for a similar product that is NOT a luxury item, and why we’d feel bad about using the benefits of a global marketplace and exploiting the loopholes created by reactions to the greedy policies of giant companies. </p>
<p>Perhaps, it is time to start a Occupy Wiley Site movement! :)</p>
<p>I believe that the price-to-market abroad is a clear result of the ability (and impunity) of purchasers to rely on download and cheap reproductions. In the town I grew up, there is a booming business for copy shops that specialize in copying academic textbooks and sell them for 2 cents a page with a color binding. </p>
<p>However, there is still a huge difference between promoting illegal uses and violations of copyright laws and expecting fairer prices for the academic publications.</p>
<p>xiggi, the government is in the case foursquare supporting Wiley.</p>
<p>As far as I can tell from my 15-minute dip, the various sides are:</p>
<p>-- The first-sale doctrine applies to anything sold legally anywhere, because that’s the traditional rule, and information wants to be free, man.</p>
<p>-- The first-sale doctrine only applies to copies legally produced in the U.S., not to anything produced abroad. That’s what the Second Circuit held in this case. But that seems way overbroad – as well as practically begging U.S. IP holders to outsource actual production to foreign companies.</p>
<p>-- The first-sale doctrine only applies to copies first sold legally to consumers in the U.S… This is what the Ninth Circuit held, and the Supreme Court split 4-4 on. To me, it makes obvious sense, unless you have to get there by reading the statutory language.</p>
<p>Yes and no. I’ll bet the books are sold cheaply in Thailand to better compete with bootlegs. In guerilla warfare – the little guy vs. the billion-dollar corporation – one needs to use whatever tactics work. Apple had success selling the iTunes concept to record labels only after the success of Napster.</p>
<p>I said the government is foursquare on Wiley’s side, but it turns out that’s not quite true. It is really supporting the Ninth Circuit position, not the Second Circuit one, i.e., it says the first-sale doctrine should apply to foreign-produced copies that whose first sale occurs in the U.S. or with authorization for re-sale in the U.S.</p>
<p>Or more like because average income in Thailand is 1/5 or worse of that in the US. The demand curve is totally different with so much less income. I think they simply cannot sell the books for the kind of price that they are selling in the US. $100 is probably about one week worth of a regular teacher salary.</p>
<p>All true, but the implications in the Omega v. Costco might not be as far reaching as a decision regarding the free global sales of books and IP.</p>
<p>At the risk of quoting Wikipedia, here’s a reasonable summary of the issues:</p>
Does the author have this wrong? Shouldn’t it read “…anything you own that was sold to you in China, Japan, …”? If it was legally sold to you in the USA, regardless of where it was made, wouldn’t that come under the normal first-sale laws as opposed to buying the product in that other location/market and then selling it here? That’s different than if I purchase $100K worth of books produced for sale in a third world country, bring them to this country, and then sell them here for $1M. </p>
<p>Hmm - now I wonder about those couple of paperback books I purchased at Heathrow to read on the plane - am I allowed to sell them when I’m back home when I’m done with them? Since I don’t really resell paperbacks I’ve purchased, instead I donate them to the library and they resell them, is the library really not supposed to resell them? </p>
<p>Is there anything in a book that states a contract whereby the purchaser agrees not to resell it in a different locale?</p>
<p>Save your 25K, there are online libraries (blocked in the US) that have them all already (free).</p>
<p>And remember, copying is only illegal (in another country) if it is prohibited by their law, not by US law. For example, in Iran copying and selling foreign material (such as software) is explicitly legal.</p>
<p>Indeed. The Supreme Court should strike down the Appeals Court decision on the basis of “you people at Wiley are either lazy or stupid.” All Wiley needs to do is to slightly differentiate its foreign edition: Have one editor/graphic designer take the master version, rearrange a couple chapters, add or delete a page or two in other chapters, and perhaps rearrange the sequence of homework problems. This would take one individual a few days, tops, and make the foreign edition effectively unusable since reading and homework assignments would not align with the class syllabus. Instead they spend millions on lawyers and, in the process, create hundreds of millions of dollars of future law interpretation work for even more lawyers?</p>
<p>GladGradDad – The distinction you are drawing is the difference between the positions of the Ninth Circuit and the Second Circuit. The Ninth Circuit (and the U.S. Department of Justice) say that the test (for whether the exception to the rule against importing copies applies) should be if the copyright holder sold your copy for distribution in the United States, or otherwise consented to its importation into the United States. The Second Circuit says the test is whether the copy was made in the United States or elsewhere, regardless of where it was sold. The Ninth Circuit test makes a fair amount of sense, but does not match up well with the statutory language. The Second Circuit test makes a lot less sense, but is at least a somewhat rational interpretation of the actual language in the Copyright Act.</p>
<p>Neither test solves your paperback-at-Heathrow problem. Without doing a lot of research, I bet it wouldn’t be too hard to conclude that that’s not what Congress meant by “importing” a copy, and realistically the copyright holders are not going to go after people who are selling one used book at a time via Powell’s or Amazon. They could conceivably go after Powell’s or Amazon, but I bet the appetite for picking a fight with Amazon is ultra-low.</p>
<p>In theory, under the Second Circuit test the copyright holders could try to impose resale restrictions on books they print in Canada or Mexico for sale in the U.S. (Remember, the Copyright Act itself only prohibits “importing” them without consent, and, according to the Second Circuit, the first-sale exception to that would not apply to books printed outside the U.S.) But if they tried to do that down to used books at the consumer level (or tried to get Amazon, etc., to stop enabling interconsumer sales of used books) they would (a) risk a lot of ill will with consumers/voters, (b) arguably discourage new book sales by effectively raising the cost of a new book, (c) tick off Amazon, and (d) invite the courts to conclude that the first-sale doctrine is not limited by the statutory language. I don’t think there’s any risk of that in the foreseeable future. They will be content to go after systematic importers like the guy in the current case, who had hundreds of new textbooks purchased and shipped to him in efficient ways so he could sell them in the U.S.</p>
<p>Just curious…why is this not a political thread but the one discussing the effects of the recent healthcare ruling was closed due to it’s political nature?</p>
<p>The “fight” is easy: if Amazon does not comply voluntarily with the publisher’s wishes, then Amazon “might” get low priority in receiving additional new textbook shipments. Since most textbooks are ordered with a few weeks in August/September or in January, publishers have Amazon over a barrel: students will simply be forced to buy from the campus bookstore.</p>
<p>I used to sell books on Amazon as a third party. To list on Amazon, you need to list by the book’s ISBN number. Each version (hardcover, softcover, new edition) has a unique ISBN and the foreign edition has a different ISBN from the US edition. Unless you know the ISBN of the equivalent foreign edition, it can be hard to find the version you want and not end up buying, say, the foreign edition of the 7th edition rather than the 9th. More importantly, it prevents cheap foreign versions from appearing on the same page as the overpriced US edition.</p>
<p>With this ruling in place, publishers could shut down foreign edition sales from Amazon, eBay and other venues where third parties may easily offer copies. A company that gets enough Google traffic to a custom website would also quickly receive a takedown notice.</p>
<p>It does not preclude another entrepreneur from doing the same as the current one, but on a more limited scale, perhaps playing whack-a-mole with the publishers. It might cause a resurgence of competition to the campus bookstore: offer “consignment sales” of “previously used” textbooks that, remarkably, look just like new. As long as textbook prices are insanely high and international equivalents are cheap, some enterprising folks will find a loophole to exploit, whatever the law.</p>
<p>Sale/Resale of text books is very applicable to college matters. Now, if the Health Care Ruling was discussed in terms of student health care choices …</p>
<p>What if Wiley sold you a non-transferable licenses to use the book, and not the book itself?</p>
<p>I would think all the Text Book Rentals has the potential for more substantive impact on profits than reduced profits from sale of international versions.</p>
<p>I think if Wiley really cared, they should change the homework questions for IE versions. That would make them a lot harder to use. If the author balked, then say: You make $x per US sale, and $y per international sale. Your choice if you want to make it more difficult to sell IE versions to USA students.</p>
<p>The author, in most cases, did not write the homework problems, at least not past the second edition. Publishers write to the professors that assign their books and ask them to submit old exam or homework questions. Sometimes grad students write them as part of their stipend.</p>
<p>" So, effectively, the courts are stuck with only two alternatives, neither of which is constitutionally respectable."</p>
<p>Wonder what the Founders “intended”? (As I remember, they were for the most part highly protectionist - I doubt they would have taken kindly to NAFTA, etc.)</p>