Copyright First Responders NH

Section 106(3) of the Copyright Act gives the copyright owner the exclusive right "to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending." ... If read literally, section 106(3) would make it an infringement for book dealer to sell used books or for any private person to lead a book to friends. ... [Section 109(a)] articulates what has been a fundamental part of our copyright jurisprudence for a century: the "first-sale doctrine."

Digital transmissions of copyrighted works over the Internet do not comfortably fit within the constraints of the first sale doctrine. The principal reason is that the first sale doctrine is restricted to the transfer of physical copies of the work and provides no defense to infringements of the reproduction rights. Unlike transactions where a tangible copy changes hands, an Internet transmission results in a reproduction of the work through the electronic transmission of anew copy of the work to its recipient. (pp. 328-329)