Quote:
Originally Posted by rlauzon
I've never seen this happen (for an eBook, or any other media), so it would be surprising to see a site that allowed this.
But, if you own something, why do you need permission to transfer ownership?
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You DO NOT own ebooks, drm'ed or not; the law is very clear on that; any content for which the primary mode of consumption is digital, is licensed not owned, so you cannot resell it; that was the argument music studios made in court when they asked for an injunction against used cd's sale.
Luckily for us, the courts disagreed since after all the primary mode of cd consumption is by playing them in a cd player, not uploading the content to an iPod or similar device which is an ancillary mode of consumption.
So you buy music from iTunes drm'ed or not you cannot resell it; you buy a cd from BMG you can; similar with books, movies... All software is digital by definiton so you cannot resell it and so on...
Transfering licenses can be done legally but is not the custom since the content creators by and large have no incentive to allow it. In the physical case since there is actual ownership, a secondary (used) market can exist independent of the wishes of content creators (who of course would love it to go away).