What specific law grants the right to sell your own possessions?

What specific law or piece of legislation grants a person the right to sell a hardback book to someone else they legally bought?



Say you bought a book at a book store, what grants you the right to resell that book? I imagine it is the same one that makes yard sales legal. Several people I know are worried about copyright infringement of selling hardback books legally purchased.What specific law grants the right to sell your own possessions?
None. That's not how the law works.



You have the legal right to do ANYTHING - unless a law says you can't.



Accordingly, there is no law that says "you can sell something that you own." You can sell anything you own unless there is a law that says you CAN'T.



If the State wants to prosecute you for something, they have to be able to point at a specific written law and say "You broke this law."



EDIT.... The post above about the first sale doctrine is basically right, but it misses the point a *little* bit. First sale doctrine doesn't really "give you the right" to sell a book that you own. What it really is is that copyright law establishes sets out situations where you CANNOT legally sell something that you have bought. The first sale doctrine excludes legally purchased media from that restriction - thus leaving intact your common law right to sell anything you want unless a law says you can't.



RichardWhat specific law grants the right to sell your own possessions?
I. The Legal Background: The First Sale Doctrine



The purpose of copyright law is set forth in the Constitution - to give artists and writers the exclusive right to their creations for a limited time in order "to promote the progress of science and useful arts."3 Because copyrights operate as government-sponsored monopolies, they give copyright owners expansive and sometimes anti-competitive powers, making legislative limitations especially critical.



The first sale doctrine is one such important limitation. The law grants any lawful owner of a particular copy of a copyrighted work the right to sell or otherwise dispose of that copy without the copyright owner's permission.4 The name "first sale doctrine" is actually somewhat misleading because any lawful transfer of ownership implicates the doctrine - whether a sale or a gift.5



To understand the doctrine, it is important to distinguish between ownership of the copyright and ownership of the material object. By selling or giving away a copy of a copyrighted work (for example, a book), the copyright owner loses the right to control what happens with that particular item. The transfer has no impact, however, on the right of copyright owners to stop others from copying the book. The law is really an extension of the "common law" right to control the disposition of personal property - that is, part of the judicially-created law of property. It extends only to the right to transfer physical copies of the work. It has important consequences for the free movement of ideas and expression in our culture - allowing, for example, libraries to loan books, video stores to rent movies, and music shops to resell used CDs, LPs and audio tapes.What specific law grants the right to sell your own possessions?
The rights of the government come from the consent of the governed.



I never gave the government permission to tell me what I could or couldn't sell regarding my posessions.

international house

pizza coupons