Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
With the ebook, you are purchasing, not renting.
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That isn't true.
Amazon, Sony, Barnes and Noble and other companies try very, *very* hard to pretend that they are selling the book, but in fact you are paying for license to read the book for limited time.
Let me quote BoinbBoing.net, that is quoting Jef Bezos:
Quote:
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Whereas a book that you buy comes with all kinds of rights, such as the right to sell or give the book away (Jeff Bezos: "[W]hen someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book, to loan it out, or to even give it away if they want. Everyone understands this.") a book that you license from Amazon comes with a very small subset of those rights, as defined by a lengthy and difficult-to-grasp "license agreement."
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The above quote is from when Mr. Bezos tried to defend Amazon decision to sell second-hand books. At that time publishers were accusing them of piracy (hehehe)
See whole letter here:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/1291
It is very entertaining, if you put it in context of e-books that Amazon pretends to sell.
- I can not sell an e-book I have purchased from Amazon or Sony or any of big players.
- I can not even give it away.
- I can not lend it to my friend or even to my wife (unless she has the same type of reader as I do)
- If my reading device dies of old age and the seller decides not to maintain licensing servers anymore(*) I lose the ability to read the book I have "purchased".
- Amazon has shown the ability and inclination to REMOTELY DELETE books that customers naively thought they bought!
(*) this has happened many, many times. Even with "big" players.