I don't even see the above in the tweet thread, but i think its pretty obviously true that the first sale doctrine doesn't make it illegal for shopify to ask more about your business and where you are getting your products from. They don't need any excuse to ask that, they are allowed to ask their customers anything they want.
If you buy goods from an authorized place and sell them, you do not require any authorization or proof to sell those 'branded' goods, because first sale doctrine means that the original seller has exhausted their legal rights to control the sale and distribution of those items.
So it sort of is what first sale doctrine does. shopify is asking them to produce proof they have authorization to sell something they've already purchased and need no special rights to sell, regardless of whether they're branded or not.
> If you buy goods from an authorized place and sell them, you do not require any authorization or proof to sell those 'branded' goods, because first sale doctrine means that the original seller has exhausted their legal rights to control the sale and distribution of those items.
Right, but it doesn't make it illegal, as stated by the seller, for Shopify to have these requirements.
I'm giving the seller full benefit of the doubt that they were not selling anything that violates copyright / trademark law. The point is the doctrine still doesn't make Shopify's request or requirements illegal.
Nobody said its a 'violation of first sale doctrine', merely that first sale doctrine precludes a requirement to be authorized to sell legally purchased 'branded' items.
Since shopify doesn't actually tell them what items are an issue, it is requiring them to compile a full accounting including 'proof' of their ability to sell all of their items within 48 hours, or else suffer financial consequences when their store is shut down.
So it doesn't involve the constitution, but rather its shopify's unreasonable and unexplained policies and vague threats that are causing financial damage to this small business owner, demanding something that might not exist at all, because no special rights are required to sell 'branded products' legally purchased, and shopify will not specify what the issue is, so demands such an accounting for the entire store within an unreasonable length of time.
>Nobody said its a 'violation of first sale doctrine'
These seem to be saying that:
> I’m gonna have an update for you later today on my continuing communications with @Shopify. They are now asking for purchase receipts to sell Star Wars books on their platform. This is both illegal and nonsensical.
>As detailed higher up in this thread, neither Shopify nor anyone has a legal right to demand documentation in order to sell, resell, give away, or otherwise dispose of published material, according to the First Sale Doctrine. Big thanks to Twitter mutuals for hipping me to this.
I agree with you that what Shopify is doing is bad and doesn't make sense. Freezing or taking money might be illegal. But I would think it's not illegal for Shopify to ban an account due to some system flagging it as suspicious, because I assume the Shopify TOS say they can do that.
You're assuming his use of copyrighted and trademarked material is authorized.
They're selling books and even soaps with "deadwood" in the name, and they / the publisher (sounds like they're both run by him?) appear to have directly lifted the photo for the cover of one of the books:
My guess is that Seitz got nailed by trademark and copyright infringement claims and is now spinning a story about how his poor poor book shop is getting screwed over by the Big Evil Corporation, as witnessed by the very histrionic language he uses in his tweets.
Trademark cannot stop someone from using that word on an unrelated product like soap. Nor can it stop someone from using a word in a book title.. Is Amazon killing the book industry? is a valid book title.
I'm not a lawyer, but "Deadwood Soap with a Prize Inside: Dirt" sounds like it could suggest sponsorship or endorsement to me.
Of course, as teh_klev pointed out, this most likely isn't the cause of the store's Shopify problems since HBO says they're OK with what the store does.
?file=Season-1-episode-1-deadwood.png){kind=link}
The rest of the thread notwithstanding, this is not what First Sale Doctrine does, at all!