Sunday, 1 June 2008, was the 100th anniversary of the first sale doctrine in the US.
As I’ve mentioned before in this billso.com article on 24 March 2008, the first sale doctrine allows someone who buys a book to resell it or pass it along as they see fit.
This important principle of US copyright law applies to other media, too. Last month, a Federal court upheld the rights of eBay sellers to vend software, according to this Ars Technia article. First sale allows people to resell or give away CDs, DVDs and other works that they purchased.
Creative Commons licenses allow users to share and adapt applicable works, which is an excellent extension of the first sale doctrine.
See this article in Everybody’s Libraries for more details
