The first sale doctrine - Essay Example

Moreover, FSD serves to promote public access to information and culture since it functions as a vital limit on the copyright owner’s right to control the disposition of a work that is copyrighted. People can easily share digital copyrighted works. The FSD preserves and makes available works which are off the market; this is especially amplified within the library context. It also keeps prices low. When publishers realize that they are no longer economically beneficial to keep on producing particular works, the publication of those works will cease.

Without the FSD, preservation as well as circulation of those works would also come to an end. Nonetheless, with thrift shops, museums, libraries along with other 3rd parties able to purchase, sell, store and have possession of these works, they are preserved for posterity (Frankel & Harvey, 2011). With this principle and the digitization of media, content has become more available to the public. FSD basically serves to provide a means for works to remain in circulation after they are no longer printed, or after the owner of the copyright has withdrawn them from the marketplace.

This is a particularly vital function for institutions such as libraries. In the digital marketplace, these benefits are experienced to a considerably large extent. For instance, a book in digital form and copied page by page could be easily reproduced and accessed at one time and easily by everyone. Such physical copies cannot be easily copied in real space. The FSD has allowed buyers of copyrighted materials such as ebooks, music/film DVDs, CDs to resell or utilize the work in several ways with no permission from the holder of the copyright and has made things such as eBay and video rental stores legal (Perzanowski & Schultz, 2010).

Question 8: To what extent does the online market today provide opportunities to engage in actions made possible by the first sale doctrine in the analog world, such as sharing favorite books with friends, or enabling the availability of less-than-full-price versions to students? The marketplace presently does not provide such opportunities primarily because of license terms. The doctrine was established during a period of permanent physical reproductions of books, and the doctrine might be losing its relevance in today’s digital age (Small & Roberts, 2012).

In the current era characterized by licenses, people are more and more acquiring films, music and software through downloads which incorporate license terms. This has prevented people from owning copies; rather, they are simply licensees and have no right to re-sell. The FSD was meant to protect purchasers of copies of works that are copyrighted who want to resell their copies by preventing copyright holders from asserting that such re-sales breach their exclusive right of distributing and selling reproductions of the works.

Consequently, FSD led to a robust rental and re-sale market for music CDs, films, video games, books among other copyrighted materials with the exception of software (McSherry, 2012). Nonetheless, with the advent of the digital age, FSD presented challenges to some holders of copyright who want to control the re-sale market for their works. FSD is only applicable after the sale of the copyrighted mater