[Nate the great]

Here you used license to mean "rights under the law".

Originally Posted by HarryT

The licence is very real - it is the set of rights granted to you by the copyright laws of your country.

Originally Posted by HarryT

What do you mean by the word "license"? We can't meaningfully talk about it unless we know that we are both talking about the same thing!

See what Rlauzon said above; that's how I was thinking. I see a license (in this discussion) as an agreement between the seller and buyer where the seller gives the buyer permission to do certain things with the seller's property.

I started this discussion in order to ask some questions; when you buy an ebook, are you paying for ownership or a license? Why do so many people assume that it is a license? What legal basis exists to support the assumption?

Some people here automatically assume that you buy a license, not ownership. I disagree.

When I buy a pbook, I own the pbook. Similarly, when I buy an ebook, I expect to own the ebook. If I don't own it, then I don't buy it.

I really want to learn what the law says. I suspect that there is no law to support the assumption that the buyer is purchasing a license, not ownership.