Saturday, April 24, 2004
via josh clayborn
April 23, 2004
Law - Text book arbitrage and drug arbitrage
Last October, the NY Times published an article headlined "Students Find $100 Textbooks Cost $50, Purchased Overseas." It is no longer freely available, but here is the Times abstract:
American college students find that their textbooks cost far less overseas than they do in United States; more and more individual students and college bookstores are ordering textbooks from abroad; National Assn of College Bookstores has written to all leading publishers asking them to end practice they see as unfair to American students; publishing industry defends its pricing policies, saying foreign sales would be impossible if book prices were not pegged to local market conditions; textbook publishers have tried to block reimporting of American texts from overseas; Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that federal copyright law does not protect American manufacturers from having products they arrange to sell overseas at discount shipped back for sale in US; photo; chart (M)
Here is a link to a tool that "lets you search for a book on Amazon, and then compare prices across Amazon's UK, Germany, Canadien, and Japanese sites, including in shipping costs."
I recalled the above when I read this article in Forbes earlier this month on pharmaceutical arbitrage and this article yesterday in the San Diego Union-Tribune headlined "Are drug imports good medicine?"
Posted by Marcia Oddi at April 23, 2004 01:48 PM
April 23, 2004
Law - Text book arbitrage and drug arbitrage
Last October, the NY Times published an article headlined "Students Find $100 Textbooks Cost $50, Purchased Overseas." It is no longer freely available, but here is the Times abstract:
American college students find that their textbooks cost far less overseas than they do in United States; more and more individual students and college bookstores are ordering textbooks from abroad; National Assn of College Bookstores has written to all leading publishers asking them to end practice they see as unfair to American students; publishing industry defends its pricing policies, saying foreign sales would be impossible if book prices were not pegged to local market conditions; textbook publishers have tried to block reimporting of American texts from overseas; Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that federal copyright law does not protect American manufacturers from having products they arrange to sell overseas at discount shipped back for sale in US; photo; chart (M)
Here is a link to a tool that "lets you search for a book on Amazon, and then compare prices across Amazon's UK, Germany, Canadien, and Japanese sites, including in shipping costs."
I recalled the above when I read this article in Forbes earlier this month on pharmaceutical arbitrage and this article yesterday in the San Diego Union-Tribune headlined "Are drug imports good medicine?"
Posted by Marcia Oddi at April 23, 2004 01:48 PM
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