The seedy sorta-legal multi-billion dollar grey market

How one student changed everything [Click to view in browser](. Dear subscriber, Before colleges had e-books, students bought the hard backed kind. And they cost a fortune. Campus bookstores would sell new editions for nearly $200 a pop, buying them back for $50 at the end of the semester. They’d then resell the used ones for $100. And professors got in on the action. They determined what books went with their courses. Oftentimes, they’d request their own work or collaborations. Every few years they’d release a new edition that was little more than window dressing on the old one. But overseas, ‘International Editions’ went for a fraction of the price. New might retail for $40. These books had the exact same material other than a cover that said ‘For use in Saudi Arabia’ or whatever country. As eBay and other online retailers popped up, U.S. students would pay someone across the world a premium to send them this book. And they still saved money. Publishers claimed the same thing drug companies do - that they use the profits from the U.S. to subsidize poorer countries. They used trademark and copyright laws to protect themselves. And then a 2013 case dismantled their empire. Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons arose from the Wiley & Sons attempts to use copyright laws to ban the import of these international books. A U.S. student used friends and family to ship him books from Thailand. He then resold them on eBay for millions in profits. After winding its way through the courts, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court stated that the first sale doctrine applied. Effectively, once someone buys the book, they can do what they please with it. It’s up to the company to permit or refuse this original sale. Because the books were purchased legally by the student’s family and friends, they retained rights to do with it what they will. This was different from the student purchasing the book from an overseas vendor directly as they could simply refuse the sale. And thus, the grey market was born. Really, it existed before. But now it had legal protections and rules. The grey market capitalizes on the price difference in similar or identical products across countries. Clothing is a great example. Try buying a pair of Levi’s in Europe and you’ll spend well over $100 for the same pair that costs you under $50 in the U.S. It’s a lucrative business that generates $7-$10 billion annually outside authorized U.S. channels. But don’t start your own eBay story just yet. While the concept is supported by consumer advocates, there are seedy elements to the business, the most common being money laundering. 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