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Re: [ARSCLIST] Fw: [78-l] (Fwd) Naxos Wins LandmarkCaseAgainstCapitol/EMI
On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, James L Wolf wrote:
> Mike,
>
> To clarify, you're saying it's not illegal to buy a Naxos Met CD
> from a UK web-site (buying in the country where sale is legal) and then
> have them ship it to the US. But this isn't the case for items like say,
> Cuban cigars. It's just plain illegal to bring them into the US as an
> item for sale, no matter where they've come through, such as Canada. Why
> are forbidden CDs different, especially when a sale (via Amazon UK) is
> completed only when they arrive at the proper US destination? Any decent
> lawyer could argue that this is a sale in the US. In the global economy,
> "Not for sale in the United States" has to mean something other than,
> "not available from American distributors but go ahead and buy it from
> an our other on-line site with a server in a different country." Or does
> it?
It would seem that one could argue that the sale isn't complete until the
item arrives at its destination, however, to the best of my knowledge,
this issue has not been raised in the courts. The general thinking is
that, in the case of Amazon.uk, the transaction takes place in the UK.
Also, it would seem to be difficult to require any vendor to keep tabs on
what is ok in one country and not in another...not impossible, but I would
guess, problematic.
I wonder about all of those folks who take the bus to Mexico to buy their
medications.
> That said, and getting back to the original topic, the Metropolitan
> Opera, in restricting Naxos's sales as much as they did, have shown
> their intent to protect their copyrights in the US. The "grey market" of
> people hopping over to Amazon UK and subverting the intent of the state
> laws means much less in this case than the gesture of protection. The
> Met doesn't need to care that much about this grey market because their
> larger US interests remain protected.
It also seems interesting to me that, due to Edward J. Smith and others,
there are plenty of examples of the Met not "protecting" their interests.
I guess I wonder how much of this effects not only the commercial market,
but archives as well.
Karl