Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Doesn't the word "leasing" imply some sort of time restriction? There's no time-out on the licence that the Amazon content provider is selling you. It's yours forever.
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Yes.
Owning property (or having an ownership interest in property) means that you have a bundle of rights in relation to the property. Different types of ownership come with different bundles of rights; this generally depends on the rights that you purchased, although these rights may also be limited by law.
If you own your own home, you typically have the right to exclude others from the property, you have the right to lease the home to others, you have the right to alter the home, and you have the right to sell the home to someone else. Your ownership interest is, in theory anyway, perpetual. (Just to name a few).
If you lease an apartment, you have an ownership interest in your unit. You have the right to exclude others from your unit. You may or may not have the right to sublet the unit, depending on whether this right was transferred to you. You may have a limited right to alter the apartment. You don't have the right to sell the apartment. Your ownership interest will expire when the lease ends.
When you buy a license for an e-book, you aren't renting or leasing the book because your ownership interest won't terminate at the end of any particular time. However, you are getting fewer rights for your $9.99 than you would if you bought a paper book - you can't resell it, for example. Since most of the rights I'm not getting with an e-book aren't very important to me, this isn't really an issue for me. But YMMV.