Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
No, you buy the e-book or software. You own it. You are just restricted by the license by what you can do with it.
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So saying that an e-book is "licensed" rather than "owned" doesn't clarify anything in the way that "rented" vs. "owned" might.
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You are, of course, quite right. You do "own it" -
if you describe "it" (the ebook) as the set of rights granted by the license, just as the publisher and author continue to own the various rights that they have reserved. The thing is that in the common (rather than legal) vernacular, when a person speaks of owning an ebook they are generally speaking of the content of that ebook, not the abstract rights. Similarly when a person is speaking of a house they are speaking of the physical building as "it", rather than the rights that may be divided one way or another.
I believe it is this reason that you find continuing common reference to "owned" vs "licensed" - however imprecise that may be legally. To tell a non-legal-minded person that they "own" a widget and they will make certain basic assumptions, and this will most often include the presumption that they can sell it (even if there may be restrictions on exactly where and how).
So if you tell a non-legal-minded person that they own an ebook they will go away with a false impression based on their own internal assumptions. I see this as essentially the same as telling a renter that they own the property, when in fact the property in this case is merely a set of rights that doesn't include all the things the person is likely to associate with ownership.