Fictionwise's "Copyright Notice":
Quote:
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You may download eBooks that you have bought for your personal use, but may not distribute them to other people using email, floppy, or any other method. You may not print copies and distribute those copies to other persons. Doing any of these things is a violation of international copyright law and would subject you to possible fines or imprisonment. It also deprives authors of their fair royalties. We charge reasonable prices for our eBooks; please do not steal from us and our authors.
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This indicates that Fictionwise is claiming the reason for not sharing (or re-selling) is based on copyright law, rather than being a Terms of Use agreement. They are committing
fraud--telling customers lies in order to get more money out of them.
It is NOT illegal to share your ebooks with your family, especially if they're reading the book on your device. That "any other method" clause is what moves it from an odd phrasing of their interp of copyright law to outright lies. "Any other method" includes "reading it off my PC/ebook device." Potentially includes "placing it on a server, which anyone in the house can access and read." Or "showing it on a large viewscreen."
Some might say those aren't "distributing" copies. But if I hand you my Reader, I've distributed it to you, even if I expect you to hand it back later. (If I distribute plates to guests at my house, nobody expects to keep them later.)
It's also not illegal to purchase (a product) for someone else. If I buy a round of books & give them to a friend, that's equally legal whether those books are made of paper or pixels. Fictionwise's inability to transfer download ability has no connection to the copyright issues involved.
F'wise is trying to claim that copyright law supports "one purchase, one reader." It does not. The medium of the copyrighted material doesn't change how the law works for it.