[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

If the issue here is whether or not it is okay to ignore and violate the contract you agreed to when purchasing the books... well, legally and morally, no. When you agree to abide by a selling contract, that's it. There's no going back and unilaterally changing your mind, and claiming the contract is no longer valid just because your situation (or just your state of mind) has changed.

I don't see the issue as being whether or not it is okay to ignore and violate the contract.

Before you can get to that kind of issue, you have to ask: what does the contract really mean? Believe it or not, a contract can often mean something other than what it appears to say just from reading it.

For example, what a writer legally owns under the copyright act does not include the right to restrict fair use. So a contract can say "the buyer agrees that he does not have the right to fair use of this book" and it means nothing. The right to "fair use" cannot be eliminated by a contract. It is clearly against public policy.

In addition, if the contract in its terms is called a "license," that does not mean that it is, as a legal fact, a license. The contract that Amazon uses is probable a contract of sale, not a license. And if it is a contract of sale, then the reader/buyer has the right to resell the ebook.

So I don't see that the readers/buyers are ignoring or violating the contract. Rather, it is more likely to be true that the sellers are ignoring or violating the contract, because (1) they are trying to do something by contract that they have no legal right to do, and (2) they are claiming that the contract gives them rights which legally, they have conveyed to the buyer.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

If you even suspected that the contract would not be satisfactory to you in the future (or, for that matter, right now), you simply should have exercised your right to not buy the e-book. After all, it's not a necessity, it's entertainment... no one is forcing you to buy it.

You have got things exactly backwards. It is the seller who does not have a right to sell a book while trying to restrict the use of the book beyond the provisions of the copyright law. The copyright law gives the seller the right NOT to sell his book, but it does not give him the right to require the reader to give up his own rights under the copyright law in order to buy the book.

The copyright law is itself a contract between the sellers and buyers of ebooks, and overrides the provisions of any other contract that is contrary to its terms.

(And I also disagree that ebooks are entertainment. That is certainly a part of what many ebooks are, or at least try to be, but at their heart, books of any kind are about freedom of speech and freedom of thought. There's a reason the Nazis burned books.)

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

But don't forget the other important fact: An e-book isn't just a physical book that is "invisible" until you turn your reader on. It is, in fact, an electronic file, and therefore subject to different rules than physical media. The rules governing their use and trade should not necessarily be the same as physical media, so you should not necessarily expect to be able to buy, trade and resell them like a book. New media demand new rules.

There is only one problem with the use and trade of electronic files. The problem is with the copying of electronic files. It lies in the ability to, in essence, manufacture innumerable exact duplicates of electronic files. If it were not for this, there would be no reason at all to treat electronic files any differently than any other thing, physical or otherwise, that is bought and sold every day.

The copyright laws allow buyers to sell or give away the copy of the book or ebook that they buy. The copyright laws preclude the reader to make additional copies to buy or give away, unless the copyright holder agrees.

The problem we have could be entirely resolved if we could figure out some way to permit copying of electronic files in a manner which complies with the fair use rights of the reader without violating the economic rights of the seller.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

This is obviously a good example of why e-book contracts are overdue for review and rewriting, to make them work better for the majority of people (of whom many are likely to find themselves in the situation you are in) and sellers (who, by and large, refuse to consider the needs and realities of consumers).

I don't think that the problem can be adequately dealt with at the level of the contracts, until the copyright laws are reformed. Readers need a Copyright Bill of Rights of some kind, which would establish the parameters of fair use which cannot be breached by the sellers.

For example, such a Bill of Rights would establish that a reader has a right (1) to copy a file to any device he owns, and (2) to modify the file in any fashion that makes it possible for him to do so, unless the seller provides that service. It would establish that a reader has a right to sell or give away a file in any fashion, unless the seller has provided a service, at a reasonable price, to broker the transaction.

Once the Readers' Bill of Rights has been established, then would be the time to rewrite the contracts. Until then, the sellers will continue to do their best to overreach, until they figure out that the people who pass on their "used" ebooks to others are the best advertisement there is for a writer.