Where do you buy your textbooks? From the college store? The bookstore? Or perhaps online? If you buy them online, do you know where they are printed? If you buy textbooks printed outside of the United States, you may have a problem when you want to sell them back.

Just last year, a university student in America found himself sued for copyright infringement for selling his textbooks. As a Thai student, he had relatives who sent him textbooks from abroad; he then sold these textbooks while in America to pay for his education. Although normally one would be allowed to do whatever one wants with a legal copy, like selling it, the Copyright Act has a loophole for international copyrights. The first-sale rule which allows owners of copies a lot of freedoms with that copy does not apply to internationally copyrighted material, which American law deems as being under control of the copyright holder regardless of who owns a copy.

This is similar to the discussion of ASCAP in the Copyright’s Highway, where Goldstein writes a little on the freedom of owners over their own copies. In seeking greater control over how their music is used, the ASCAP targeted dance halls and restaurants which played without direct permission from the group. Though we are granted enough freedom with our own copies, when it becomes public or for profit, someone needs to pay. ASCAP won in determining that such performances are for profit. In the same way, Mr. Kirtsaeng’s selling of textbooks is clearly for profit, placing him in violation of copyright law.