Copyright and The Internet: The First Sale Doctrine To Digital Goods Across International Boundaries

19 Wake Forest J. Bus. & Intell. Prop. L. 124

Current copyright laws are inhibiting future generations from
enjoying the activities of their parents. For example, let’s say a father
and his daughter share a common interest in jazz music. Between the
two of them, they have been collecting music from great artists like
Coltrane, Basie, Charlie Parker, and Boots Randolph, and have
innumerable hours of other jazz music loaded onto their hard drives.
This shared interest forms a deep, unique connection between the two.
When the father died, he left his hard drive filled with jazz music to the
daughter as a token of his affection. Some of the daughter’s most
precious memories of her father are on this small brick-like device.
Unfortunately, because of current copyright law, she is not legally
allowed to transfer his digital jazz library to her own computer, as it
would violate the Copyright Act of 1976. Even though it is technically
possible to remove the hard drive and transfer it to another computer,
this is both time-consuming and disallowed by the user agreements for
computers.