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Originally Posted by pwalker8
Of course, the use of the word license is a misuse of the word as well. It's a bit like the use of the word intellectual property, because it implies that ideas can actually be property which can be owned by someone. An idea is, of course, not property in any real sense.
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Forgive me for saying so, but you appear to be contradicting yourself. First you say that you consider that you own an ebook, not merely possess a licence to it, but then you say that intellectual property doesn't exist and can't be owned by anybody. You can't have it both ways: if intellectual property can't be owned, you can't own an ebook.
The dictionary defines the word "licence" to mean "a certificate, tag, document, etc, giving official permission to do something", and this is precisely what a licence to use computer software, digital music, ebooks, etc, is: permission to do something with the item. I honestly can't see how you can consider this to be a misuse of the term.
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For the most part, few people consider buying a digital book simply purchased the license to use that digital content.
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I can only conclude that if such people exist, they have not actually taken the trouble to research what it is that they are buying, because it is a licence. Amazon specifically tell you this in their Ts and Cs: "Digital goods are licensed, not sold".