15 ms·

I agree with your statement, yet the argument is that you are purchasing a license to consume the eBook and enforcement of that license is partially guaranteed

by 627467 6y ago

I agree with your statement, yet the argument is that you are purchasing a license to consume the eBook and enforcement of that license is partially guaranteed by DRM built into those licensed copies, and since in some jurisdictions it is ilegal (immoral/unethical?) to break DRM and breach the license than, legally you shouldn't do that. Edit: personally, I don't like to be told how I should compute so I reserve the right to do what I want with bits (state of my sillicon) I have. Regarding IP of the content: I make sure not to distribute things I'm not licensed to distribute.

the_af 6y ago
Honest question: where does it say you're purchasing a license to read the book, and not a book? If it's buried in fine print, I'd say that's deceptive. If it says "buy this book" on Amazon, then customers have every right to expect they are buying books, not licenses.
- 627467 6y ago
  Yeah, not a lawyer, yet I'm playing devil's advocate. Your's is a fair statement of our state of affairs. All these content distributors rely on increasingly complex models of distributions that rely on people's lack of willingness (or ability) to comprehend what they are buying.
- throwanem 6y ago
  From the Kindle Store TOS: > Upon your download or access of Kindle Content and payment of any applicable fees (including applicable taxes), the Content Provider grants you a non-exclusive right to view, use, and display such Kindle Content an unlimited number of times (for Subscription Content, only as long as you remain an active member of the underlying membership or subscription program), solely through a Kindle Application or as otherwise permitted as part of the Service, solely on the number of Supported Devices specified in the Kindle Store, and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Kindle Content is licensed, not sold, to you by the Content Provider. It's clickwrapped, of course. No doubt the argument would be that, whether you read this or not, you agreed to it as a legally binding contract when you "bought" a Kindle book. I'd like to see it really tested in court, but I don't expect to. For that to happen would probably take a very high incidence of people's accounts and/or access to paid content being revoked for no reason, and as far as I know that doesn't happen anywhere near often enough to make it an issue under public consideration - not that it's other than wrong either way, but I would be surprised to see Amazon legal permit a tactical blunder that would risk the company being hauled into court and forced to behave as if they thought their customers deserved fair consideration.

by 627467 6y ago

the_af 6y ago

Honest question: where does it say you're purchasing a license to read the book, and not a book? If it's buried in fine print, I'd say that's deceptive. If it says "buy this book" on Amazon, then customers have every right to expect they are buying books, not licenses.

627467 6y ago
Yeah, not a lawyer, yet I'm playing devil's advocate. Your's is a fair statement of our state of affairs. All these content distributors rely on increasingly complex models of distributions that rely on people's lack of willingness (or ability) to comprehend what they are buying.
throwanem 6y ago
From the Kindle Store TOS: > Upon your download or access of Kindle Content and payment of any applicable fees (including applicable taxes), the Content Provider grants you a non-exclusive right to view, use, and display such Kindle Content an unlimited number of times (for Subscription Content, only as long as you remain an active member of the underlying membership or subscription program), solely through a Kindle Application or as otherwise permitted as part of the Service, solely on the number of Supported Devices specified in the Kindle Store, and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Kindle Content is licensed, not sold, to you by the Content Provider. It's clickwrapped, of course. No doubt the argument would be that, whether you read this or not, you agreed to it as a legally binding contract when you "bought" a Kindle book. I'd like to see it really tested in court, but I don't expect to. For that to happen would probably take a very high incidence of people's accounts and/or access to paid content being revoked for no reason, and as far as I know that doesn't happen anywhere near often enough to make it an issue under public consideration - not that it's other than wrong either way, but I would be surprised to see Amazon legal permit a tactical blunder that would risk the company being hauled into court and forced to behave as if they thought their customers deserved fair consideration.