EFF: Your right to sell, lend books and music to others under threat

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has posted a blog on their website about the right to sell and lend your bought books, CDs and DVDs  to others. This is in danger as Thai graduate student Supap Kirtsaeng is sued by a book publisher because he sold books in the United States which were purchased from abroad.

These study books are used in colleges in the US  but  also sold in other countries for a much lower price. Kirtsaeng imported the books and sold them in the US for a lower price than US book stores.

Now the publisher of the books, John Wiley & Sons has sued him and and the big question of the lawsuit is if the US copyright protection also applies to products bought and made in another country and then resold in the US without the permission of the manufacturer.

The EFF is afraid that if this will be forbidden this will also be forbidden to lend and sell CDs, DVDs and other content you buy and own. According to the EFF there is one method the content industry is currently trying which is to license content to you.

This means that you won’t ever own music or a book but you will get a license to listen or read it. As the EFF states, we as consumers want that if it looks like a sale and feels like  a sale then it’s a sale. We don’t want any other restrictions where we can sell or lend out our books and music to others.

The EFF asks websites who want to raise awareness for this issue to embed the image below, so we did…