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Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law
University of Michigan Law School
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Fighting The First Sale Doctrine: Strategies For A Struggling Film Industry, Sage Vanden Heuvel
Fighting The First Sale Doctrine: Strategies For A Struggling Film Industry, Sage Vanden Heuvel
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, grants the owners of a copy of a copyrighted work the right to sell, rent, or lease that copy without permission from the copyright owner. This doctrine, first endorsed by the Supreme Court in Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, was established at a time when the owner of a good necessarily had to forego possession in order to sell or lease the item to another.[...] The changes in technology and industry over the past two decades threaten to upend this balance. In today's digital world, an owner of a copy of …