Quote:
Originally Posted by DawnFalcon
Er...no. Gifis' "Law Dictionary, 2nd Edition":
"LICENSE: A right granted which gives one permission to do something which he could not legally do absent such permission; 'leave to do a thing which the LICENSOR [the party granting the license] could prevent.'"
"CONTRACT: A promise, or set of promises, for breach of which the law gives a remedy, or the performance of which the law in some way recognizes as a duty"
A licence is one-way, a contract is two-way. Sorry, but this is basic law and if you really don't understand this then the conversation's pointless :/
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All of which may be true but a not insignificant point is that when I buy an ebook from Amazon (perish the thought), or someone else, as a naive consumer I think I'm doing something which is pretty much like buying a pbook, a CD, a DVD and the like. I think, naively, that there's nothing wrong with lending it to my mate or selling it when I've got no further use for it.
I would probably think it was wrong to copy the CD and distribute it to all and sundry, or to scan a pbook and stick it on my blog as a PDF. Now I suspect that most consumers of Amazon's ebooks are of the naive kind like me, and we are not really concerned whether we have ownership of, or a license to use, a product. What we are concerned with is what restrictions are put on what we can do with the product having shelled out good money for it, often more good money than if we were to buy the pbook. We might also be concerned that it seems that Amazon can simply take away my ebook if they choose.
It is admittedly just a guess that most consumers are naive consumers like me, but if it is anything like a valid guess then Amazon and their ilk seem to be exploiting that naivety. Yes, they put stuff on the website that tells you that what you are buying is a license, but how many of us naive consumers take any notice or are aware of the implications of it? Our own fault you might say - but our naive model of doing business with Amazon is that they have something for sale, you give them some money and in exchange you get what it is they had for sale. Yes, consumers need to be better educated, but it is in Amazon's interest to maintain the naive belief that buying an ebook is a lot like buying a pbook, a CD or a DVD. They don't want consumers getting in a bother about license agreements, they just want you to pay your money. If the only people who bought stuff from Amazon were people who know in detail about the difference between buying something and licensing something their business model would be in a mess.