Last month, a British tabloid reported that Bruce Willis was planning to sue Apple. The actor, the newspaper explained, was furious that iTunes’s terms of service would keep him from leaving his music collection to his daughters when he died. The story was soon revealed to be somewhere between fantasy and fabrication. But even before a five-word tweet from Willis’ wife (“it’s not a true story”) definitively refuted the article’s claims, the news had gone viral, spreading far beyond the usual haunts of fatuous celebrity journalism. Something in the rage of Imaginary Bruce Willis had touched a nerve.

Part of what makes the story so remarkable is that it’s also so implausible. Bruce Willis is one of the most successful actors of his generation, with a Hollywood career spanning three decades and multiple mega-hits. He’s so successful that surely he could afford to leave his daughters enough money to buy all the digital music they they can listen to. No child of Bruce Willis will ever want for music.

But the story blew up like something out of a Bruce Willis movie because it tweaked an anxiety many people share about copyright: that we no longer really own the songs we listen to or the books we read. Traditionally, a crucial part of copyright law’s bargain between author and audience was that the author owns the copyright, the audience owns their copies. This second half of the deal—that we have the right to give away our media, to lend them to friends or sell them to strangers—was enforced by the doctrine known as first sale. You buy something and it’s yours. Only the author has the right to authorize more copies, but you can do with yours as you please. Continue reading →