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An appeals court confirmed today that consumers have a right to re-sell promotional CDs, which could have implications for other copyrighted goods as well. A panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has now ruled in three landmark cases that relate to whether copyrighted items like software and CDs are sold\u2014and thus, out of the copyright owner\u2019s control\u2014or simply \u201clicensed\u201d to consumers.<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n In the case decided today, Los Angeles music re-seller Troy Augusto was in a copyright duel with Universal Music Group. Augusto makes his living buying and re-selling music, including the promo CDs sometimes issued by record labels such as Universal that are marked \u201cfor promotional use only.\u201d Universal sued Augusto and his company back in 2007, arguing that anyone distributing those CD\u2019s without its permission was violating its copyright.<\/p>\n See more of our latest Appeals<\/span> coverage<\/span><\/span><\/a> Not so, ruled a U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, which held in 2008 that just because Universal said<\/em> it retains ownership of the compact discs doesn\u2019t mean it actually does. UMG\u2019s handing out of the promo CDs had all the aspects of a gift\u2014the record label never required the return of the CDs, and didn\u2019t impose any conditions with distribution.<\/p>\n UMG engaged in a lengthy appeal to keep control of those promo CDs, which today it finally lost. Now that the 9th Circuit has ruled on the case, it\u2019s binding on all judges throughout the circuit, which covers most of the Western U.S. UMG\u2019s only other option is to ask for a re-hearing of the whole 9th Circuit or appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court\u2014and either option would be an extreme longshot in this case.<\/p>\n Joe Gratz of the Durie Tangri law firm, who worked together with the Elecronic Frontier Foundation digital-rights group to represent Augusto, said<\/span><\/span><\/a>: \u201cThe Ninth Circuit recognized an important principle: that you can\u2019t eliminate consumers\u2019 rights just by claiming there\u2019s a \u2018license agreement.\u2019 Once a copyrighted work is freely given, the copyright holder isn\u2019t in charge anymore.\u00a0 The copyright owner can\u2019t stop you from selling it or lending it to a friend.\u201d<\/p>\n Universal Music Group didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n A key piece of case law in the Augusto case was the Supreme Court\u2019s 1908 Bobbs-Merrill v. Straus<\/em> case, in which a book publisher slapped a notice on the inside of a book insisting that any sale of the book for less than $1 would constitute a copyright violation. Department store R.H. Macy & Co. went ahead and sold the book for 89 cents anyhow, and was ultimately vindicated at the high court.<\/p>\n Augusto\u2019s case was part of a group of three copyright cases taken by this 9th Circuit panel that all dealt with the sometimes blurry line between when copyrighted goods are \u201cowned\u201d and when they are \u201clicensed.\u201d The potentially widest-ranging of the three cases, Vernor v. Autodesk<\/em>, had a very different outcome than the Augusto case. In that case, the same panel of judges ruled that Autodesk\u2019s sale of software to its customers isn\u2019t a sale at all\u2014it actually constitutes a license, as Autodesk had argued, and it cannot be re-sold<\/span><\/span><\/a> without violating copyright law. The final case of the triumvirate, MDY v. Blizzard<\/em>, had mixed results<\/span><\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n While Augusto\u2019s victory confirms that copyright owners can\u2019t simply call a sale or gift a \u201clicense\u201d and have it be so, it is balanced out by Autodesk\u2019s earlier win over Vernor, which will uphold most types of licensing for software. That means that for a variety of digital goods, copyright owners will have a strong legal argument that consumers have licensed, not purchased, their content.<\/p>\n One key difference between the (now invalid) promo CD licenses and the (still valid) software licenses: unlike software vendors, UMG didn\u2019t have any evidence that the DJs and reviewers it sent promo CDs out to ever agreed<\/em> to the supposed license.<\/p>\n The different rulings in these landmark cases could lead to a situation where consumers have strong protections for their rights to use physical copyrighted goods in any manner they choose, but fewer rights when it comes to digital goods. <\/p>\n Source: Paid Content Organization<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An appeals court confirmed today that consumers have a right to re-sell promotional CDs, which…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
or<\/em> add an alert for future coverage of Appeals<\/span>.<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n