8 ms·

While short term, this sucks, I also think that in the way that eBooks work these days, this ruling is actually fair and it might well fix the situation for us

• wahsd 12y ago
  I don't think you appreciate the impact. Services are something you lease and use for a specific period and you never own. This seems at least to be an affirmation that ebooks cannot ever be owned by anyone but the publisher and there will now need to be legal mechanisms for revocation of ebooks from your device and reporting and even penalizing and prosecution of anyone who prevents revocation or even simply does not delete a book that is a service and therefore possibly being used illicitly.
  • dragonwriter 12y ago
    > I don't think you appreciate the impact. I don't think you appreciate the degree to which definitions of categories in law (and thus rulings on the boundaries of such classifications) are specific to narrow domains or even particular enactments. This is about categories under European Value-Added Tax (VAT) rules, not the general philosophical category you are describing.
  • detaro 12y ago
    I'm not entirely clear if this decision was about all e-books or only those that are provided as services (the article cites Amazon, which I would classify as a service, and it is not entirely clear if a download of an unrestricted file is covered or not)
    • Oletros 12y ago
      The argument is: > The Court points out, first of all, that a reduced rate of VAT can apply only to supplies of goods and services covered by Annex III to the VAT Directive. That annex refers in particular to the ‘supply of books ... on all physical means of support’. The Court concludes that the reduced rate of VAT is applicable to a transaction consisting of the supply of a book found on a physical medium. While admittedly, in order to be able to read an electronic book, physical support (such as a computer) is required, such support is not included in the supply of electronic books, meaning that Annex III does not include the supply of such books within its scope. Moreover, the Court finds that the VAT Directive excludes any possibility of a reduced VAT rate being applied to ‘electronically supplied services’. The Court holds that the supply of electronic books is such a service. The Court rejects the argument that the supply of electronic books constitutes a supply of goods (and not a supply of services). Only the physical support enabling an electronic book to be read could qualify as ‘tangible property’ but such support is not part of the supply of electronic books.
      • walterbell 12y ago
        What does this imply for downloadable music files, DRM and non-DRM? Neither is bundled with a computer or speakers for listening. For that matter, CDs are not bundled with CD players.
        • detaro 12y ago
          Are there any exemptions/lower rates for recorded music? From a quick google search I only found campaigns for it. If they exist(ed), downloaded music probably would fall under an analogous ruling. CDs are already physical mediums, so the "they are not bundled with players" is not important. eBooks on CDs should count as books if I understand it correctly.
  • tormeh 12y ago
    Except for the legal mechanisms it's all in place already. That the implicit becomes explicit is good, in my opinion.
  • pilif 12y ago
    I totally appreciate the impact which is why I said "this sucks right now". The thing is that publishers who continue their user-hostile practices can now be disrupted by more user-friendly publishers whose offerings will only be taxed at 5% VAT instead of the 20 plus % the user-hostile variant is charged for. We'll have to see whether publishers can keep this up or whether they have to fix their hostile attitude. I hope it's the latter, because if it's the former, then ebooks are dead.
    • scotu 12y ago
      do you think non-DRM'd ebooks will be seen as goods? Being digital, I can lend it or resell it but I would still own a copy, so how can that be a good?
      • nightski 12y ago
        Wouldn't the "good" be the DRM free license and not the digital copy of the book itself? i.e. if you resell your license you would no longer have it.
        • gknoy 12y ago
          I think it's really interesting to differentiate the license from the e-book -- rather than breaking the "e-book" category into two. Thanks for making me think about that in a different way.
        • walterbell 12y ago
          Yes, squatting on a piece of land does not transfer title, which is a legal construct.
          • icebraining 12y ago
            Well, except for adverse possession.
          • dragonwriter 12y ago
            Except, of course, when, as a matter of law, it does: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/adverse_possession https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/adverse_possession
  • pm24601 12y ago
    > Services are something you lease and use for a specific period and you never own. Yes. This is the reality of ebooks, downloaded music, and online games. Anything with a TOS attached to it is a service. We are a society of renters - never able to actual own something, but yet we pay the dollars and delude ourselves that we "own" DRMed ebooks and music.
    • vinceguidry 12y ago
      I don't think of my ebooks as purchased knowledge. I think of them the same way I think of articles I read online. I just pay for these and they take somewhat longer to read. If they disappeared the second I finished the last page, 99% of the time I wouldn't miss them. If I could pay less money for a temporal copy, I would, but the marketplaces and UX for borrowed books are completely inferior to buying on Kindle, such that I pay the price premium. I can't complain too much, I can't expect the market to create a perfect solution for my niche use case. As it is, books make up a tiny percentage of my spending. If I'd needed to refer back to it often, I'd buy a hard copy, and have a handful such hard copies of technical books. I rarely crack any of them open, the Internet provides all. The only hard copy I have that I've read in its entirety is Metaprogramming Ruby 2. I'm starting to think of consuming information as applying an 'insight delta' to your brain. Trying to actually hold facts and stuff is foolish, the Internet does that sort of thing much better than your brain does. So concrete information gets shuffled out after awhile, which is fine for my purposes. The stuff I'm dealing with every day, like how to refactor what kinds of code, that stays with me.
      • pm24601 12y ago
        You are think of just technical books. You are in the tech/SF bubble. How many tech books make it to the NYTimes best seller list? Zero. Or any best seller list? Zero. Most books sold are not "knowledge books" - they are fiction, cookbooks, self-help, etc. I have fiction books from years ago that I still re-read on occasion. Which is not possible with DRMed ebooks.
• tormeh 12y ago
  Totally agree. Ebooks, unless sold in a DRM-free format with no restrictions on reselling, are services. Goods are a thing you own, can use for whatever purpose you want and can sell on after you've bought it. This way of looking at things present new questions: Should phones on a contract be regarded as services too?
  • ralmidani 12y ago
    >> Should phones on a contract be regarded as services too? Legally, you own your phone, even when on contract. Philosophically, the manufacturer and/or OS developer own most phones, even those not on contract.
    • zanny 12y ago
      A good number of Android phones are unlocked, or unlockable, and are rootable, and have custom ROM support. The only really bad parts are the proprietary GPUs and cellular radios.
• simonh 12y ago
  Looking at the ruling, it says nothing at all about lendability or copyability. Their point was that ebooks are not tangible goods. The ruling seems to apply equaly to ebooks with or without DRM.
• drzaiusapelord 12y ago
  Except this means there's ZERO chance of any sorts of rights granting later. DVD's have protection and what we would categorize as DRM today. Yet, in 2012 the U.S. Copyright Office ruled that we have a right to rip these things into other formats for certain uses. It has also made similar rulings regarding jailbreaking, which Apple asserted was a DMCA violation. If everything is a service, then you own nothing, and pretty much have no historic property rights. Ever changing EULAs rule. How that's a good thing is beyond me. We should be attacking this ruling not praising it. I bought a book. Its my property. Hopefully, this stupidity won't come to the states. Lastly, if you think books sold in the EU without any DRM mechanisms will be seen as property.. well I've got a bridge to sell you. To EU bureaucrats, those are services too.
  • Silhouette 12y ago
    Lastly, if you think books sold in the EU without any DRM mechanisms will be seen as property.. well I've got a bridge to sell you. To EU bureaucrats, those are services too. It's not just EU bureaucrats, sadly. I can't immediately find it, but one of the most depressing things I ever read was some proceedings from a government review of copyright here in the UK prior to the recent legislation that finally added various new statutory exceptions. It consisted of a bunch of unelected people with power to legislate (members of the House of Lords), many of whom declared an interest as people with ties to Big Media one way or another, cross-examining IIRC a senior civil servant whose department were making formal recommendations about the new rules, who stated bluntly that his primary interest was "UK PLC". The general tone of the entire hearing was that obviously any changes to copyright law should make sure big business still gets its money one way or another, and the only interesting question was how. The idea that copyright might simply no longer be a reasonable model for the digital age and some other economic model might be more effective didn't seem to occur to anyone. The idea that copyright might inherently cause harm in terms of the public being able to enjoy works they had already paid for, and that any such harm should therefore be outweighed by some greater benefit for the existence of copyright in law to be ethical and justified at all, was mentioned briefly by I think one or two speakers right at the end of the discussion. They received the parliamentary version of a five-year-old being patted on the head and told how adorable they are. And this was in a debate specifically about new rules to allow people who had obtained lawful copies of a work to enjoy them in perfectly reasonable ways -- indeed, ways millions of UK citizens enjoy every day already, often blissfully unaware that they are even breaking the law, because the idea that what they are doing might not be completely reasonable and could possibly be against the law doesn't even occur to them. I have seen plenty of evidence of governments pandering to special interests. I have seen plenty of evidence of governments being completely disconnected from reality. I have seen plenty of evidence of government "debates" that were nothing of the kind. Few of these made me as nauseous as seeing that particular example of "democracy in action".