Thread: Book resources
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Old 01-07-2008, 09:50 AM   #14
Nate the great
Sir Penguin of Edinburgh
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT View Post
Please explain here, Nate; I'm sure that many people would be interested.

I highly recommend FictionWise; it's where I buy most of my eBooks and magazines, and their "Club" gives excellent discounts which very quickly repay the membership fee for it.
This is a topic I didn't want to bring up again, but okay.

When you buy something, you can assume under US laws that you own it; you did not license it. If you do not own it, then the transaction must reflect that fact. For instance, on the outside of every retail box for Windows is the statement that you are buying a license, not ownership of the copy.

When you buy an ebook from Webscriptions, BooksOnBoard, or Ereader, there are no conditions attached to the sale that indicates that you do not own the ebook file in the same way that you own a pbook. None of these sites have a "Terms of Service" agreement (that I could find). Thus when you buy an ebook from them, you own that copy of the ebook.

Finctionwise and Amazon also sell ebooks, but they claim that they license the ebook to you instead of sell it. I will discuss them separately.

When you buy something from Amazon, you can use the exact same "One Click" process to buy a pbook, an article of clothing, home electronics, as well as a Kindle Edition ebook. There is no way to tell that you are not actually buying a copy of the Kindle Edition ebook. Instead, they claim in the ToS that they license it to you. There were a couple US Supreme Court cases in the early 20th century about this: one involved a patented industrial solution, the other a paper book. In both cases the IP holder claimed that the item was licensed not sold. The Supreme Court disagreed.

Fictionwise, on the other hand, has a slightly better legal position. While they also refer to the transaction as an "ebook purchase", they have on the transaction page a link to their ToS and a statement that the Tos applies to the transaction. The presence of the statement and link puts Fictionwise in a very good position should they ever go to court.The statement is in effect a condition of the sale.

But on the other hand, they do imply that they they sell you the ebook. A judge might decide that a sale is a sale, and that the ToS conditions don't apply. But then again, I am not a lawyer.
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