Abstract
With tethered technologies permitting the monitoring of consumer’s use of copyrighted works and private copyright enforcement, copyrighted digital works are increasingly distributed solely through access-based schemes. This paper reviews the actual and potential implications of this development in light of consumer autonomies and copyright doctrine. It specifically evaluates the judiciary’s opposing views in the European Union and the United States on the matter, drawing attention to the need to radically rethink the application of the first sale/exhaustion principle for the transmission of digital content, and proposes a novel approach balancing individual and social interests at a broader scale.
Graber, Christoph Beat