Also though, I think the whole “is he a student” this is kind of a red herring. This guy bought these books, and I think that entitles him to do whatever he wants with them. I don’t think Wiley can put a sticker on them saying “you can’t do X” and have it stick in any legal sense – I mean, I don’t think companies can force people to enter into a contract that supersedes federal law.

Also too, if you consider this guy a “small business,” then this looks like a case of a big business trying to use the federal government to shut down competition. That, again once someone exploits it, could have much wider implications than just this one situation.

Whether any of this will ever go anywhere, I don’t know – I’m just alarmed at the precedent it might set, and the doors it could potentially open.

http://www.bloomberglaw.com/public/document/John_Wiley__Sons_v_Kirtsaeng_654_F3d_210_99_USPQ2d_1641_2d_Cir_20

According to this, “Wiley’s counsel proceeded to ask Kirtsaeng a series of questions about his “net worth” in an attempt to impeach his previous statements. Specifically, he attempted to enter into evidence a record of Kirtsaeng’s PayPal revenues, showing $1.2 million in revenues, in contrast to Kirtsaeng’s previous testimony that he had earned only $900,000 in revenues”.

Sounds like this person was basically making a business of reselling cheaper books by importing them – and while he did in all fairness do some checking on the ‘Net, it might have been better if he’d written to Wiley prior to engaging in this activity.

What I mean by all of this is, a student selling his/her books acquired abroad for the purpose of studying with them, or a library getting rid of books acquired abroad during a sale, is quite a different story from a person (who happens to be a student) making hundreds of thousands of dollars by doing something that’s clearly written not to do on each book then claiming he’d made sure it was legal by checking around in forums.

Once again – this probably sounds very naive, but could we expect publishers such as Wiley & Sons to be going after some of their most loyal customers (libraries) for doing something reasonable like sell old books (after presumably acquiring new ones)? Does this really fit into the same scenario as that of Kirtsaeng?

I thought it applied to works SOLD in the U.S., not manufactured. That would make more sense.

Love the goblin analogy:)

As the screams of outrage start, watch the authors see this as a method to get fees for lending out “their” books.

Think of this as ta “kill the American printing industry” decision.