Last week began a case that could spell trouble not only for media owners, but for the resell market as well. It’s between Timothy Vernor and the software company Autodesk (who sells mostly drafting software). It seems Autodesk petitioned eBay to remove not only Vernor’s auctions of Autodesk products but to boot him off eBay for good.

Since eBay is akin to a chihuahua who rolls over at the first sign of dominance, they obliged. The only problem? Vernor wasn’t selling pirated copies of Autodesk: he was selling legally-owned, used copies.

This has long been protected by copyright law by what’s called the “first-sale doctrine”. However, Autodesk is trying to get around this by saying they merely lease the software, not sell a copy of it. Tomato, tomAto…

This debate is nothing new: the rights we have to resell products is the very reason that DRM and tricky EULAs about “leasing” software exist. But this is a slippery slope. The moment you control how someone can resell software – even something as expensive as Autodesk – what’s to stop the RIAA from using the case as precedent for outlawing the sale of secondhand CDs? How about DVDs or even VHS tapes?

This is the bread and butter of companies such as EB Games, but the industries have always loathed resell and have looked to ban it for years. It’s not because resale is illegal: it’s simply to make more money – nothing more. However, if I am not allowed to buy a secondhand copy of any media, and can’t afford the newest version, I’d be more prone to pirate, wouldn’t I?

Hopefully, the judge will see this as more industry hair-splitting rhetoric and semantic balderdash. It’s still a legal copy, and the guy has a right to sell it. Let Autodesk do what other companies such as Blizzard are doing, and limit the number of times it can be installed, suffer the inevitable consumer backlash, and then reverse their tactics like any other company trying to defy the after-market. Letting law interfere with something that is perfectly regulated by consumer spending would be a grave mistake. It would hurt consumers and many companies making a living off resale, and only make a handful of companies more wealthy than they already are.

Point of fact, I highly doubt there are media manufacturers out there closing their doors due to the resale market, but if such outfits are allowed to bypass the first-sale doctrine, you can expect to see plenty of other companies doing just that – hanging the going-out-of-business sign.