They chafe against digital doctrines that identify human "progress" as a ceaseless march toward greater efficiency, the search for a frictionless machine.
In the digital context, inflexible doctrines that categorically foreclose any protection for data automatically generated by ordinary digital activity or that will be generated by the yet-to-be-conceived technologies of tomorrow are not sustainable.
In addition, do pre-digital era antitrust doctrines hinder the development of a fair, robust capitalism in our age?
"The real challenge for the first-sale doctrine in the digital environment," said Mark A. Lemley, a professor at Stanford Law School, "is that courts have generally said that if you've gone beyond using your copy, and made a new copy, then you're outside the scope of the doctrine".
However, Some have claimed that the first-sale doctrine does not apply to digital downloads, for instance, when that digital property has been licensed to the buyer, rather than explicitly sold.
Obviously, there are conflicting precedents for the first-sale doctrine in our evolving digital landscape, and these questions of ownership and right to resale tend to descend into gray areas and legal quagmires that often result in the sputtering and collapsing of those companies attempting to create legal secondary markets for resale.
The Copyright Act was written before digital media became popular, and the first-sale doctrine does not apply to electronic wares.
In a recent Supreme Court decision Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggested the doctrine is ill-suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks. She suggested the doctrine be rethought.
Owning digital content Thomas Baekdal | Baekdal | 13 June 2014 Should the "first sale doctrine" apply to digital goods in America?
A cyber-Monroe Doctrine, presumably, means any cyber-attacks against America's digital infrastructure could be met with military force.
