Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I'd consider that absolutely fine, because only one of us would be using it at a time. What wouldn't be fine would be for you to buy a new laptop, install all your software on it, and then give me your old laptop which had the same software on it, because then two of us would be using software that was only licensed for one person.
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Well chances are if I bought a new laptop it would come with a licensed copy of Windows pre-installed so I wouldn't need to copy that. But let's say I install Office on it. Specifically Office 365 the license for which allows me to install on 5 devices. Now if I lend out my old laptop we can both use Office at the same time and it's covered by the license.
Given that Amazon allows me to put my ebooks on several different devices at once, surely the same logic applies there. At least ethically if not in the fine details of the legalese?
I also note that you talk about software (and ebooks) by licensed for/to a person, and I agree that it's a person who needs the license in order to make copies of copyrighted material, in practice though the license follows the device, and at least in the computer case the copyright owner wants it that way.
And in the ebook case Amazon have specifically made it explicit that I can have multiple copies on multiple devices. So I'd argue they want it that way too. Whether they intend that to be used for lending is another matter and open to interpretation (in the courts if it ever came to it).
Put it this way, I think Amazon's TOS are an attempt to make sure we honour copyright and are putting restrictions on "use" as a way to do that. Morally I'm happy to ignore the letter of these use restrictions whilst honouring the spirit of copyright.