Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I've no qualms at all about Kindles in the same household being read by multiple family members, Duckie. It's when you start "lending" devices outside the household that, for me personally, the ethics become questionable.
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Since there is no family exemption I'm aware of in copyright law, I'm curious why you would make such a ethical exemption in the first place. And why does "lending" outside the household warrant scare-quotes, for that matter? From a pure copyright standpoint, isn't lending lending? Are Amazon's policies (and the word selection therein) even relevant from that standpoint? Surely Amazon cannot grant exemptions that the law does not recognize, can they?
My point is that it seems to me that Amazon's lending program is in pretty gray legal territory to begin with (not that I'm particularly concerned about it, mind you). Perhaps their contracts with publishers and right-holders explicitly give them permission to legally extend this lending right to end-users, and perhaps they don't. But I see very little reason to add any extra ethical confusion, RE DNA or place of residence, into the mix. Unless you believe people are really going to start buying thousands of Kindle devices, loading their purchases onto them (simultaneous device-use notwithstanding) and start handing them out to strangers on the street, then why worry (ethically, morally or legally) about a distinction between household and non-household lending of devices?