Please Vote: Exercises in TDPL?

[Nick Sabalausky]

"dsimcha" <dsimcha at yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:guinsl$g7v$1 at digitalmars.com...
> == Quote from Nick Sabalausky (a at a.a)'s article
>> > (By the way, how do intellectual property freaks deal with this?)
>> I've wondered that too.
>> I suspect, in the case of books, they've either given up on it or never 
>> even
>> thought about it. I mean, public libraries have been around a loooong 
>> time.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_sale_doctrine
>
> Of course, the RIAA/MPAA fascists seem to be doing everything in their 
> power to
> make sure nothing like a digital equivalent to the first sale doctrine 
> ever exists.

That just made me think of something that never really occurred to me 
before: For a long time now (before optical discs), recordings (definitely 
videos, not sure about music) have been sold (ermm, excuse me, *cough* 
"licensed" *cough*) with the license restriction of "not for public viewing" 
(or something along those lines). But I'm not aware of books having a 
similar thing. I admit I'm purely speculating here, but I could easily 
imagine that restriction as being intended as a way to get around the first 
sale doctrine enough to prohibit library use.

Oh, also, a large portion of the videogame industry also belongs in your 
statement above about the RIAA/MPAA trying to prevent a digital equivalent 
of first sale doctrine. There are a number of big-name people in the games 
industry that fully believe in first sale doctrine for videogames, but most 
of the industry has been very visibly moving towards a model (DRMed digital 
distribution) that would enable them to eliminate the second-hand market 
(despite the fact that the sales fairly clearly indicate that consumers 
usually prefer a physical medium). But the real scary thing is that many of 
these people are completely open about their, in many cases, outright 
contempt for the second-hand market. (Although some of them are a bit more 
veiled about it, like Nintendo, but in those cases their actions make their 
stance pretty clear anyway.)