Re: first sale doctrine

On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, Kathy Olson <kko[_at_]mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> Re the Stephen King novella, I downloaded both the software and the
> e-book to see what it said about first-sale and other rights. To
> download the software, users must agree to a standard agreement that
> seemed to be limited to the software itself and its documentation.
> There is no user agreement to download the book itself, but once it
> is downloaded, there is a notice called "Book Permissions" that reads
> as follows:
>
> "Copy: No text selections can be copied from this book to the clipboard.
>
> Print: No printing is permitted for this book.
>
> Lend: This book cannot be lent to someone else.
>
> Give: This book cannot be given to someone else."
>
> (By the way, the instructions that come with the Glassbook Reader
> software indicate that it is up to the publisher of the book to decide
> what rights readers are allowed.)
>
> To read these "permissions," you have to be looking for them -- I had
> to click Menu then Info then Permissions to get to them. And there is
> no language that says, "By reading this book, you agree to the terms
> of the publisher's permissions," such as you find on most Web sites
> that have User Agreements.
>
> Are these terms enforceable? Are readers "manifesting assent" to the
> terms, when the terms aren't readily found? I'm not sure I see a
> contract here.

As I read the documentation the restrictions are enforced by technology and thus there is no contract -- and no need for a contract until the technological measures are defeated. For example, you can't lend the book because it will only play on the machine to which you downloaded it.

--
Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH
 EMAIL: junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu    URL:  http://samsara.law.cwru.edu/
        NOTE: junger[_at_]pdj2-ra.f-remote.cwru.edu no longer exists