Quote:
Originally Posted by RobertDDL
The "license" concept for e-books takes away some very basic rights from me -- most of all, the right to keep a book, regardless of future technical, commercial or political developments. In almost all cases, the necessary steps to ensure that I'll still be able to read an ebook in the future, and that I can share it with family and friends in the way that I can share a printed book -- all of it what I consider to be fair use -- explicitly violate the terms of the license.
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The fundamental issue, though, Robert, is that the pesky nuisance of copyright law gets involved, because pretty much everything you do with an ebook involves creating extra copies of it, which is not the case with a physical book.
The licence doesn't take away rights - it
grants rights over and above those that the law gives you. Without the licence you couldn't do anything with the ebook, because you'd need to get the copyright holder's explicit permission before copying the book from your PC to your reading device, for example. The licence grants you that right (and others).
You talk about "sharing with family and friends", but the trouble with digital content is that "sharing" really means "making additional copies". You're not lending someone
your copy of the book; you're creating an
additional copy and giving that additional copy to your friend. Both you and your friend now have the book.
Digital content is not the same as a physical product and different rules have to apply.