[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

In a case related to music, not ebooks, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled

The Supreme Court has just recently declined to hear the case. (from Teleread.) The ruling is now final, and a precedent for the 9th Circuit of the USA.

What's interesting, I think, and I haven't seen it mentioned in this thread, is that the licencees in this case are not the public who buy copies of the music. They are the retailers selling copies of the music.

So the case says nothing about whether the ebooks we buy are really sold or licensed. But it does say that Apple, Amazon, etc., are licensing the master copies from the producers, and any fees paid by them to the producers of the originals for this are license fees, not wholesale prices.

I suspect that publishers will be making sure that this is sorted out in new contracts. But if they insist that ebooks are covered by older contracts, it seems that there is a strong argument that they're covered only as licensing, for which the authors are generally due 50% of the net fee.

This also means that musicians who have been getting nothing from the music business for downloads because royalty rates are so low, and they've never 'earned out', might find that with 50% of the net income from downloads, they might actually be due some money!