First Sale Doctrine: est. 1908

I've been called a troll, a hater, a shill, a Nazi, a policeman, a vigilante, and (my favorite, for ironic reasons we'll get to) a pedant for my support of copyright law. I'd say, "Pardon me for believing in merit." but I try not to use sarcasm on the internet. I ask no pardon, and expect none.

To be pedantic, for those of you who don't know, is to vehemently support and champion a rule entirely by virtue of its existence. In other words, "it is written, therefore I obey without question."
The irony is that I get called this AFTER I give my reasons for supporting the rule. What this boils down to is that those who pirate IPs or otherwise challenge rules and regulations are so self-deluded and paranoid that it's impossible for them to accept even the possibility that I might agree with the law on its own merits. It's a kind of self-incredulity paradigm that they're working under, "I don't see how anybody could believe that, therefore they are absolutely wrong."

That's the second problem: Absolute. Too many people see things as "black or white" (and I do mean OR, not AND, that's something totally different) and, much like the pedant accusations, believe everyone else to as well.
The reality is that I support what technically amounts to maybe 75% of copyright law, and that's being incredibly generous; it's probably more like 50%. Yes, believe it or not, there are parts of copyright law I disagree with, some even to the point of hatred.
The Sonny Bono Extension act which led to Eldred v. Ashcroft: Pointless and driven purely by greed. How long will you rest on your laurels?
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act: Puts too much pressure on rights-holders and gives service providers too much deniability. Websites aren't real estate.
Digital Rights Management: When has punishing the masses for the acts of a few ever made helped anyone's public image? Antibiotics over amputation.

Now, there's all this hullabaloo in the games industry about the used games market. Granted, I don't buy used games anymore; I don't trust people to take care of their stuff, especially something like a disc. I used to buy used games almost all the time when I had my N64; cartridges don't scratch and I liked a lot of obscure games that I couldn't get new anywhere else. See, I didn't even make the "I was poor" excuse (because I really wasn't at the time. I had a part-time job and I still lived at home). That said, I don't see anything wrong with buying a used game, much less selling one or even giving it away or trading it.

Before I get too much farther: here's the article that led to all this: [link]

This just makes me mad. It feels like a downright betrayal on some levels; the very people I defended have shown what greedy dicks they can be, or at least how ignorant they can be of the fact that they may have made a bad product. It really is like we all suddenly just forgot that used sales are permitted in our capitalist civilization, and have been for years. In fact, my copy of Poser 4 uses the phrase, "Treat this program like a book" in its End-User License Agreement (You know, those things that no one reads, yet everyone agrees to). The key concept is copying versus transferring. Transfers of copyright are as old as copyright itself, why change that aspect now just because of the internet or a slumping economy?
A comment on the article brought up the point that this seems exclusive to the games industry, as no one in the auto industry has ever complained about used cars, publishers have never complained about used books, film studios have never complained about used DVDs, and console makers have never complained about used console sales (except maybe those assholes who sell new systems for five-figures on eBay the day of release, but that's a worse reflection on the buyers than the sellers, really).

So, this graphic is to send a message to both pirates and rights-holders, lest they lose sight of the bigger picture and start seeing only gray instead of the whole scale.

Here's the black AND white on the first-sale doctrine, with a few gray areas thrown in for good measure: [link]