Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
On the other hand, if you've agreed to the terms of sale of an ebook store which say "you can't give it away", then I think you should be bound by those terms which you've knowingly agreed to when you bought the book.
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But actually, you see, I don't "knowingly agree" to those terms. In fact, I knowingly disagree with them. As far as I'm concerned, when they tell me I can't give it away, they are blowing smoke. Obviously I can give it away. And what's more, they can't stop me from doing it. All they can do is try to place obstacles in my way.
The existence of an "agreement" is a factual question, a gloss on the exchange which extends to what happens
after the exchange. And the law, at least in the US, frowns very strongly on the idea that once an exchange takes place, the party who handed over the property to another person in exchange for money can continue to control what happens to that property.
That's why it is neither criminally wrong, or legally actionable, if I take my ebook and give it to someone else. The issues about that all surround what happens if there are
copies made, and the ambiguities concerning the transmission of originals by making copies.
But if you take the purest situation, where I acquire an ebook on my Sony 505, and then give or sell the 505 to some other person with the original ebook file on it, it is abundantly clear, utterly beyond question, that I can legally and morally do that. And if the terms of the "agreement" explicitly say that I can't, they are simply not enforceable.
When one party completely controls the terms of a sale, where the only leverage that the other party has is to take it or leave it, then there is no "agreement."
I think that's why you recognize that you are on shaky ground when a husband gives a copy of the ebook to his wife. You recognize the human situation - husbands, wives, sons & daughters, and friends, share things. A sale of an object to a husband presupposes that his wife may use it, no matter what the "agreement" says to the contrary. Neither law nor morality allows a seller to take that away in the absence of a real agreement, negotiated in good faith by the specific parties to the agreement concerning that particular copy of the ebook.