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Originally Posted by leaston
My point was that if 'lending' is against copyright law and yet Amazon 'allow' lending to family members or whoever, then surely Amazon are in the wrong for misleading customers?
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No because it's not as simple as lending being "against copyright law". Copyright law creates the right to control how and whether a work can be copied. The copyright owner can authorise copies to be made but it's not a simple on/off switch. They can lay down terms under which the copies can be made in a license.
The terms can then be written in such a way as to allow limited copying that looks a lot like lending. But these terms could be varied - number of times a book can be lent, number of lending recipients, length of lending period etc.
Amazon, who are not the copyright owner in most cases, provide a mechanism for lending but crucially not all publishers choose to use it, or use it for all books. Similarly the number of devices one can simultaneously have a book on varies from book to book and is set by the publisher not Amazon. That's also a form of lending.