[latepaul]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Actually, that's not true, at least in the US. Under fair use doctrine, you are allowed to make a copy for your own use, i.e. backup or format shifting.

However fair use is an exception to the general rule of copyright. And the fair use for backup/format shifting would only apply to an existing legitimate copy e.g. I can backup my DVD. But the existing copy is legitimate in the first place because of a license under copyright. (I can't backup someone else's DVD and call it fair use)

But if we're "buying" not "licensing" then we must be talking about something other than copyright. So what? Is there a law that grants us rights to our copy of an ebook but which is not copyright, which overrides copyright in fact. I've never heard of such a law.

The major case that is currently winding it's way through the court system is about the ability to sell a "used" ebook. The trial judge expressed skepticism about the ability to ensure there was no copy left behind, i.e. that it was treated the same as a physical book.

Well quite. Such scepticism is well warranted IMO.

My understanding of the question at hand is, when you "buy" an ebook, do you buy the book, or do you buy a license to download and read the book.

What do you mean by "book" in this sentence? In English we use it in a couple of ways - as an object ("where did I leave my book"), and as a creative work ("I've just written my first book"). In the case of buying a paper book, you buy an object. You could also, buy the rights to work inside the book, but you generally don't (even publishers usually only license it).

Now when you buy an ebook you don't get a physical object, so what is it that you're buying, if you're not buying a license? You're not buying the rights - because if you were you'd be paying a lot more and probably* only one person at a time could own it.

Now, I know what people mean when they say, "I bought this book I didn't license it". What they usually mean is that they consider that they ought to have the same rights they would have if they'd bought a paper book. Actually they usually have more, like the right to have several copies at a time on different devices (there's no "you can make X photocopies of this book" with paper books), but it seems like you have because physical objects bring more utility in some ways due to their physical nature - the ability to lend, re-sell, bequeath, etc is all really down to the ability to move (not copy) the physical object.

In general, my understanding is most caselaw says you buy the book, i.e. the book vendor can't just revoke the license and remove the book in question from your device. That file belongs to you regardless of what the legal boilerplate from the vendor says.

I think I'd say it differently. I think I'd say that the terms you can write into a copyright license are governed by law and that the caselaw may end up showing that certain terms are invalid - just as certain terms in a contract can be illegal and cannot be enforced.

However as a non-lawyer, I'd be surprised if the inability to revoke a license was written in law somewhere. If it were publishers wouldn't need to play games with authors keeping title technically "in print" but unavailable to avoid rights reverting.

Still, that aside, I don't think it makes sense to talk about "buying an ebook" because there's no legally defined object you can own. "A copy" or a "a file" isn't AFAICS.

(*I suppose I could imagine some sort of shared ownership scheme but let's not complicate matters. This is clearly not in effect at the moment)