The Freedom to Sell

Since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, the federal government and the cabal of elitists who have come under the influence and auspices of it continually refuse to recognize the natural rights of individuals to keep the fruits of their labor and to use the fruits of their labor as they see fit. One such way people have exercised their economic liberty is to buy and resell products. A general assumption in economic life is that when you buy a certain product-a toothbrush, a TV, a MP3 version of a song, etc.-it is yours and that you may do with it as you see fit. An exception to this rule would be if there was a contract between buyer and seller that was voluntarily arrived at which limited the usage of such an item. What comes to mind with regards to products produced online from such outlets as iTunes are the Terms of Agreement. I will be honest here: no one, including myself, ever reads the Terms of Agreement when buying products online (or in my case, installing a game onto my computer, like Battlefield 3, or opening up a new account on some website).

But now our economic liberty is being brought under siege once again with a U.S. Supreme Court Case that very few people know about. This Supreme Court Case known as Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons deals with the principle of first sale in copyright law. This is the idea within copy write law (and thus deals with intellectual property) that allows you to sell things like furniture, CDs, books, electronics, silverware and so on without getting permission from the copy write hold of these products. Since 1908 (when the Supreme Court ruled on this issue), we haven't had to worry about selling our stuff because the copy write only had control over the first sale. We typically do not worry about selling our PSPs or our copies of college textbooks.

But as Jennifer Waters of MarketWatch at the Wall Street Journal (or is it the War Street Journal?), this is being challenged for products being made abroad. If the Supreme Court upholds this decision by the appellate court, then the products you own that were made in China, Japan, Europe or anywhere else would have to give you permission to sell your products. iPods, HD TVs; PCs, furniture, books printed overseas, you name it. As Jonathan Band of Georgetown University Law Center has noted, "It means that it’s harder for consumers to buy used products and harder for them to sell them,". The implications for this are huge. For one, manufacturers would have an incentive to produce all their products overseas, giving them control over every resale. Another implication is that the U.S. government is once again regimenting, planning and controlling another aspect of economic life that has existed for a very long time.

Does the U.S. government really believe that this kind of economic interventionism can be enforced?  The economic behavior of American will thus be altered toward the black market economy and the economic liberty to resell an product will be undermined. As Frederick Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises understood, an economic system of interventionism that attempts to regulate and regiment economic activities will slid towards totalitarianism as the State attempts to gain complete control over the lives of its' citizens. If the Supreme Court upholds this decision, then it will be up to the states of America to nullify this disastrous policy and protect the natural rights and economic liberties of the people within their state.