Study On The Appliance Of The First Sale Doctrine In The Digital Context

Now more than ever, consumers can enjoy copyrighted works in digital form. Smartphones and e-readers allow users to download music and books at the click of a button. Millions of vinyl records and compact discs now fit on a single hard drive the size of a book. The digital revolution has brought with it a level of convenience and affordability unimagined by previous generations of consumers.However, Users are often prohibited from using digital products as they expect. Harsh use restrictions cripple consumer enjoyment of the digital revolution. For example, a user is often forced to repurchase digital files if she wants to put the same song on multiple devices. Digital confusion results from this disconnect between a given user’s expectation of their scope of enjoyment of digital goods and its legal reality. The change of Copyright Law comes with the development of technology. Copyright Law have had difficulty keeping pace with technology’s ever-increasing ability. How to balance the competing interests between the copyright owner and the public is the issue of the digital era.In the physical world, the first sale doctrine in the Copyright Law is to limit the monopoly of the copyright owner. Once the work is sold, the copyright owner can no longer controls the circulation of the copy of the work. Whether the first sale doctrine applies to the digital context differs among countries. The U.S. does not apply the doctrine to digital works, while the EU applies the doctrine to the software, the resale of software in any form is legal.Our country does not specify the doctrine, however, it is admitted in the practice. With the prosperity of our digital publishing industry, it is necessary to build the secondary market. Whether the first sale doctrine applies to digital works? Whether the dissemination through the Internet infringes the distribution right and the reproduction right? How to determine the nature of the digital work transaction, license or sale? To answer these questions would theoretically support secondary market.This thesis is divided into following three parts apart from the Introduction and the Conclusion:Part one discusses the problem existing in the appliance of the First Sale Doctrine in the digital environment. The first-sale doctrine is a basic principal of the Copyright Law. Due to the nature of digital works and the diversity of their transmission model, there are all kinds of problems in the appliance of the principal.Part two analyzes the appliance of the First Sale Doctrine in the digital environment. Analyze the problems of the appliance of the First Sale Doctrine in the digital environment based on theory and cases. And relate the necessity of applying the First Sale Doctrine in the digital environmentPart three gives the idea of Digital First Sale Doctrine. List the hurdles of establishing the Digital First Sale Doctrine and offer the solution.