Quote:
Originally Posted by Liviu_5
Like others on the forum being there, done that with license vs sale, but I am still confused by what you perceive the difference to be between a license and a sale.
For me:
sale means first and first foremost right to resale, give away, get rid without any questions/strings attached
license means you have to ask permission for anything you do with the stuff in question outside of the narrow terms you signed on for
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A US court has decided that
"sale" means "you keep it," and a "license" means "you have to return it to the owner." It doesn't matter what the terms on the contract are--a sale is defined by the terms of use, not by what label the original owner put on the transfer of goods.
The "right to give away/resell" is not part of the terms of the sale; it's an inherent right that goes with any purchase. The seller can't legally restrict that right.
If you aren't expected to wipe it from your hard drive & return it to the copyright owner on request, it's a sale, not a license. This is also supported by the many websites that call ebooks "sales" not "licenses." The TOS may say "license," but the checkout cart calls them purchases, and groups ebooks in with physical books and other physical property.
One obvious "resell" option for ebooks would be to download them to a flash drive or memory card, and sell that with "the original" books on it.